The 2025 season for the Indianapolis Colts ended in disappointing fashion. Let me rephrase that. The 2025 season for the Indianapolis Colts ended disastrously as it was engulfed in flames and left everyone with a sick taste in their mouth. Not only did they make unfortunate history as the last team in thirty years to start 8-2 and miss the playoffs, but they appear to be heading towards next year with no real direction. Here’s the potential silver lining though. If you have watched a second of Indiana University football the last two years, you know the improbable and the hopeless can change in an instant.
I am no college football expert and fully understand the games are very different. NIL and the transfer portal dominate the game now with more than a few saying it is ruining the sport. That may be so, but it is how the “game” is played. No one has played it better than Curt Cignetti who has taken the doormat of the FBS and turned it into a powerhouse. IU football was an afterthought. Sorry, that is unfair to afterthoughts. IU football bordered on joke territory.
Two years later, IU is playing Oregon with a chance of going to the National Championship game to take on Miami. I’ll let you read that sentence as many times as you need because it is truly unbelievable; maybe one of the most unbelievable things in sports. One of the few things that gets remotely close is Tyrese Haliburton’s run though last year’s playoffs. Both were absurd, but IU’s history of losing is so long that what we are witnessing defies logic.
All of that is to say, if IU can turn things around in two short years, why can’t the Colts? Cignetti adapted to a changing landscape. The Colts could too. Instead of playing old school football, they could modernize. Instead of being sucked into a player’s RAS, they could focus on production. Instead of running back the same staff, they could look to Indiana who brought in a winner and changed the landscape of IU football, potentially forever. Is there unlimited money to spend as long as Mark Cuban writes a check? Is there a portal that all NFL players can enter if they want to each year? Of course not. The games are different, but the tenants remain the same.
Curt Cignetti has removed excuses from every other college team. Excuses should be ripped from most NFL teams as well. The Colts appear to be wandering no man’s land. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t turn it around quickly. In a parity league, last place teams can win the division the following year. Cignetti showed that if he can bring Indiana University football onto the grandest of stages, anything, anywhere can be accomplished.
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