Indiana football is 4-0, but coach Curt Cignetti doesn’t want his team to relish too much in their early success. He used a famous phrase from Nick Saban to illustrate that.
Curt Cignetti resembled legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban going into Indiana’s crucial Week 5 matchup against Maryland.
Cignetti was a wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator on Saban’s staff at Alabama from 2007-10, which included a national title in 2009. Now off to a dominant 4-0 start coaching the Hoosiers, and on the precipice of Indiana’s first 5-0 start since 1967, Cignetti knows danger can come with success.
He’s confident his team will avoid that because of its maturity and heavy veteran presence, but he used a famous Saban phrase to keep the Hoosiers locked in.
“When you win, it’s about maintaining your edge and avoiding complacency,” Cignetti said. “And not having the warm fuzzies and not taking the rat poison, right?”
Saban often used the term “rat poison” on his way to winning seven national championships. The rat poison he refers to is the outside praise from fans and media that comes with success. If a team takes that “rat poison,” it may relax too much and not take its next opponent seriously, which could lead to a loss.
Cignetti is familiar with this challenge. He went 52-9 over the last five seasons at James Madison and has a 123-35 record as a head coach, with stops at Elon and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
He often talks about the role of mental preparation, in addition to the X’s and O’s and physical attributes required by a winning team. Cignetti wants his team to carry a business-like approach, never getting too high or too low during and after games.
Following Indiana’s last two wins over UCLA and Charlotte, Cignetti said he’ll give the team 24 hours to enjoy the win, then it’s back to work. This isn’t to say Cignetti discourages confidence, but there’s a balance to strike.
“Success leads to confidence, which leads to success, and so they go hand in hand,” Cignetti said. “But you still have to put the work in during the week because everything we do isn’t fun. You’ve got to pay the price in terms of your commitment level, make some choices and decisions, good ones, and sacrifices. But we should be a confident football team right now, but we’ve got to put the work in.”
Indiana’s 4-0 start has come with success on both sides of the ball. The Hoosiers rank fifth nationally with 50.5 points per game and 11th with 513.8 yards per game. Indiana was the first FBS team to surpass 200 points in 2024, and its 202 points are the most in a four-game stretch in program history, breaking the previous record set at the end of the 2015 season.
Defensively, the Hoosiers have allowed 300 total yards or fewer in all four games, the program’s longest stretch since at least 1990. Indiana has forced seven turnovers, and it is one of three FBS teams, along with Georgia and Louisville, that hasn’t turned the ball over.
Starting with Maryland on Saturday at Noon ET at Memorial Stadium, the task becomes more challenging. ESPN ranks Indiana’s strength of schedule 119th, accounting only for the games it has played so far, and its remaining strength of schedule ranks 34th.
And despite its early success, Cignetti holds his team to a high standard and is not satisfied yet.
“We don’t want to maintain the level. We want to improve the level in everything we’re doing,” Cignetti said. “We want to improve because we’re not – nobody is in a position in college football where they afford to go backwards. So you’ve got to keep striving. This is a really good football team coming in here. We’re going to have to play our best game. But I’ll be shocked if our guys don’t understand that.”