Yeah, there is this weird desire some have to make Cignetti out as some sort of miracle worker and acting like it has been business as usual at Indiana but he has managed to overcome that when no other coach has.
Cignetti is jerk but he is also clearly a really good coach and has surrounded himself with other really good coaches. That in combination with this current college landscape and a big influx of money into the football program to get players has allowed them to go out and assemble the roster they have which has them in position to do what would have seemed impossible a few short years ago.
He deserves a ton of credit for being able to identify the players he needed and then going out and getting them. They caught lightning in a bottle where everything has come together perfectly. But it also is highly likely that what Cignetti is doing at Indiana would not be happening if he had been hired there like 5 years ago under the old way of doing things.
He almost certainly would have been able to elevate Indiana to that same tier we live in which is below the Ohio State's of the world. But they wouldn't be doing what they are doing right now.
