I Googled Curt Cignetti Like He Desperately Begged Everyone To Do, And I Was NOT Impressed

Let me start off this blog by saying this: I am a Curt Cignetti fan. And aside from the other three Indiana "fans" (started Week 6, now diehards) in our office that I polled to see if they would sign up for a 10 point loss in Columbus on Saturday (they all emphatically said Yes quicker than if Cig were offered an SEC job tomorrow), there's no one who wants the Hoosiers to keep it close this weekend more than me. 

A rising tide lifts all Big Ten ships, and the fact of the matter is that if Ohio State blows out Indiana for the….checks notes….29th straight time on Saturday, then it's very likely that the committee realizes that a 2-loss Georgia/Alabama/Tennessee/Ole Miss is substantially more deserving of a playoff spot than an Indiana team that's beaten as many ranked teams as the 0-11 Kent State Golden Flashes. But if they can at least keep it close in their only pulse check of the season, I think the committee will continue this Make-A-Wish season that started when the Hoosiers paid $1,000,000 to cancel their Week 2 road game at Louisville to replace them with a home matchup against the vaunted 3-8 FCS powerhouse Western Illinois Leathernecks. 

Feasting on the FCS is nothing new for Curt Cignetti though. It's become his Green Bay power sweep to success that he runs over and over again, including next year at Indiana when they open up their cherry-picked schedule with what some people in MEAC are calling Murderer's Row.

Okay, that was disingenuous. It must be pointed out that Old Dominion (4-6) and Kennsaw State (1-9) both recently became FBS, so I guess Cig is not avoiding all FBS teams, just ones over .500. Anyways, the point of this blog is not to look into the future. The point of this blog is to look into the past, like Coach Cignetti instructed me to. No, I'm not talking about when he copy and pasted Jim Tressel's famous basketball halftime speech when he was introduced as the Ohio State football coach. I'm talking about when he was asked back in December how he plans to sell his vision to recruits and he very humbly replied, "I win. Google me."

Relax, Muhammad Ali. But at least The Greatest was the World Heavyweight Champion when he said "It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am"….not someone who was bragging about his back-to-back Sun Belt East Division Championships. But okay, fine, Cignetti….I'll Google you. And what I've found is the equivalent of a finely polished candy red Ferrari that has never gotten an oil change. Looks great on the outside, but when you actually lift up the hood, you find out it's nothing more than lipstick on a pig. 

The fact of the matter is that Curt Cignetti telling me to Google him is like challenging someone to a dick measuring contest when you've got a 4 incher…..hard. Your wife might tell you that your 29-4 overall record as an FBS head coach is all she ever wanted, but then you realize your career strength of schedule is a negative 3.09 rating all of your lying and deceiving has led you to a life in middle-of-nowhere Bloomington. And that's my favorite part about this entire two word Google quest that Cignetti put me on…..it's not just Indiana where he's used a combination of smoke, mirrors, and a big mouth to convince the world he's God's gift to football. He's done it for his entire career. 

You would think that this gauntlet of a schedule he's faced thus far at Indiana….filled with more FCS schools than ranked teams…would be the outlier on the resume that this iron sharpens iron, tough-guy has put together. He's a new coach and he has to play the schedule they made for him! But nope, it's actually the toughest schedule he's played by a country mile. His negative 1.52 SOS this year has substantially brought up his career mark, seeing as his time at JMU ended with a -3.01 and -4.73 level of toughness. 

The fact of the matter is the guy is a Weak Schedule Merchant and he parlays fake wins into bigger jobs and more money, which he is about to do at Indiana as well. Or wait, do people from the Nothing State think his new shiny contract means he's actually staying at a lower tier school that top talent looks down on as they fly over the state of Indiana on their way to Official Visits at schools that have more to offer than corn in NIL?

Oh, and for reference, here's Ryan Day's SOS over his entire career:

Point being, it's not that hard to get a positive rating…let alone a high one. Ohio State played Akron, Marshall, and Western Michigan in their non-conference this season, and they're STILL a 3.91. Curt Cignetti wanted me to Google him? All I found out is that he's a fraud that has to talk a big game since he never plays in them. I found out that his 11-1 season last year at James Madison consisted of playing one team with a pulse (barely)…Appalachian State…and losing at home. 

In fact, if you look back on his 29-4 record coaching in the FBS, he has zero career ranked wins (unless you count #22 Coastal Carolina back in 2022, which I do not). All 4 losses are unranked though. Google told me that. On the flip side, Ryan Day is 47-0 against unranked teams. But Indiana has the coaching advantage Saturday, right? 

Look, I don't want it to see like I'm coming at this Cignetti guy. I'm actually a big Indiana Hoosiers fan and I want them to make the College Football Playoff. Because the fact of the matter is, the more teams like Indiana that make the field, the easier it is for Ohio State to win the National Title. But at some point they're Houdini of a coach that has tricked the common people of this great country into thinking he's done a damn thing in the football world need to wake up and think for themselves. Google him, just like he wants! 

But the good news is that, barring a fake Covid outbreak or something crazy (which I'm not entirely ruling out), the ball will be kicked off tomorrow in Columbus and Curt Cignetti will have to play 60 minutes of football against a team that can walk and chew gum at the same time. And at that moment, there's no amount of smoke and no amount of mirrors and no amount of press conferences that can save him from the ass whooping that we all know is coming.

I wish Ryan Day would make an example of this fool and put up 100 on the Hoosiers, but he's not just the better coach on Saturday, he's the better person, too. Ultimately I think the Big Ten makes the call when it's 41-10 Buckeyes early in the 3rd, paired with the fact that Ryan has a heart + wants Indiana in the playoff, and the game ends Ohio State 41-25 or something more respectable than what it could be. Curt Cignetti will be helped not by himself, but by others, once again.