Ryan Silverfield and other coaches are surely taking notes from Indiana's meteoric and instant rise. What's the main lesson Curt Cignetti is teaching?
If Indiana can go from doormat to dominant in two seasons, why can't Arkansas? You know some Hog fans are asking themselves that question after Curt Cignetti's juggernaut trampled Oregon 56-22 in the Peach Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal on Friday. Indiana went from being a hapless, hopeless, helpless 3-9 nobody to a 15-0 steamroller which will play for the national championship on January 19 against Miami. It's the most incredible two-season turnaround we have ever seen. You know that Ryan Silverfield and other college football head coaches are looking for answers and solutions here. How can they replicate the Cignetti formula and vision and carry it to their own programs?
There are a lot of lessons for coaches to take from Cignetti. His player evaluations are meticulous, detailed, precise, and unsparing. He doesn't settle. He drills down on the details and knows exactly what he wants. He is 64 years old and has done player evaluations for a long time. He has this thing down to a science.
Cignetti coaches his assistant coaches and gets them to coach the way he wants. Quality control and maintenance of high standards exist through the whole program and staff. Culture, technique, standards -- they flow through everyone in the building and are maintained. Players demonstrate humility and are focused on the next play, never getting too high or low. All of these things are done better by Cignetti than anyone else in the sport, and they matter.
Yet, the most important lesson provided by Cignetti might be something other than the way he coaches or the way he builds a culture, as important as those components are.
The number one reason Indiana is in this position: Cignetti has found older, veteran football players in the transfer portal, putting them together and creating a situation in which he has ready-to-coach players. What do we mean when we say "ready to coach"? It's the concept of not having to start at square one. Players know what the coach is trying to achieve and can quickly understand and apply what is being taught.
Translation: These aren't high school recruits who need a year or two to be developed and molded. These are 22-year-olds with more physical and emotional maturity who are ready to execute schemes and compete at the highest level.
In other words: Curt Cignetti is showing that getting veterans in the portal, rather than using high school recruiting as the backbone of a program, can be the fast track to excellence. Notably and crucially, the veterans don't have to be five stars. They just have to be productive players with good character and physical traits which translate to the field. It all sounds so simple, but Cignetti is doing this at a level other coaches aren't. This is the number one thing for Ryan Silverfield to grasp.
If Silverfield's portal haul is really as good as Arkansas fans hope it is, maybe a Hog rebirth isn't as far away as some people think.
Indiana really is changing our sense of what is possible in college football, and how to win quickly at places where it is hard to do so. This is something every Arkansas fan hopes Ryan Silverfield is learning how to replicate.