Indiana Hoosiers football coach Curt Cignetti scoffed at the latest College Football Playoff rankings in a radio interview with Inside Indiana Football on Thursday.
Asked about the CFP committee ranking Indiana at No. 4, Cignetti laughed at the question and followed up by criticizing ESPN for favoring the SEC, which featured 10 schools among the 25 selected. Cignetti, later in the show, issued his thoughts on the league and its relationship with the network.
“SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN and all their writers that they don’t technically pay but march to their drum, Cignetti said. “And that’s why you see all these SEC teams up there and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high.”
Cignetti also shared a post on X, which read “Facts are stubborn things,” along with a list of quality wins among teams over the .500 mark this season.
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Miami, with a perfect record of 8-0 and the No. 1 team in the AP Top 25 Poll, unsurprisingly remained the leader in the CFP rankings. Indiana (8-1), listed at No. 6 in the latest poll is listed behind Utah (8-0) at No. 3 and Georgia (7-1) at No. 2.
The Big Ten featured six teams (Indiana, UCLA, Ohio State, Iowa, USC and Oregon), with just two – Indiana at No. 4 and UCLA at No. 8 – inside the top 10. The Big 12 saw with five total teams, with Utah at No. 3 and BYU at No. 9, helping their respective conference in the playoff race.
For the Hooisers, the next four weeks are critical in backing up Cignetti’s position. Indiana’s lone loss – a 19-15 home loss to then-No. 4 Ohio State – must be rectified with a 3-0 finish against No. 20 USC, Washington and Purdue to effectively clinch a seat among the top 5. It’s not hard to imagine they’d slide further back with a loss in any of those three matchups.
