FIVE-A-LIVE ! INDIANA HOOSIERS

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:01

They come from the cities and they come from the smaller towns. More than 55,000 fans converging on Bloomington to watch the Indiana Hoosiers. Built from limestone extracted from local quarries, Memorial Stadium is 65 years old. But this is a completely new look. Home to a football dynamo. Indiana had always been a basketball school. No longer. This season the Hoogers have won at home and on the road. Rose to the corner, touchdown, Surrep! They've won in blowouts and won with their season on the brink. This game-winning touchdown against Penn State stands as the play of the year in college football. And they're hardly doing it with prized recruits. You say out outcasts and transfers and rejects, you guys are doing pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, I want to say we're like, for sure, outcasts and rejects. I think we're all still really, really good football players here.

SPEAKER_04 1:18

That's Fernando Mendoza, Indiana Star quarterback. He's come to embody the team. A few years ago, he was a midling Miami high school player. Recently, he won the Heisman Trophy and then became the NFL's top draft pick. Can you pause for a second and admire the story?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Human nature is like, wow, like how did I get here? And it's a little bit of an imposter syndrome at that point. Whoa, am I supposed to be here? I was a two-star recruit. I wasn't a five-star who's supposed to be in this position, who's supposed to be on the number one team in the nation. Talk about your imposter syndrome.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

Gone. Does the program still have imposter syndrome? I think that we we believe. We believe. The belief has been hard won. Indiana entered this season as the losingest program in major college football history. More than 700 defeats. 1967. Paint the picture of IU football the first 50 years you've been doing this job.

SPEAKER_03 2:31

I'd say up and down, except that most of it's been down.

unknown 2:36

40, 35, down to the 30.

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Don Fisher has been the voice of Indiana football since 1973.

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This is the greatest turnaround, and I hate that word because I don't think it expresses really what these last two seasons have been like here in Indiana.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

Turnaround doesn't do enough lifting.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

It's even bigger than that. No, it's not it's not a good enough term.

SPEAKER_04 2:56

So I'm thinking Peyton Manning wins a Super Bowl like an hour up the road. You've got Notre Dame. Football is not an alien sport to Indiana. Why did it seem so hard to unlock it here?

SPEAKER_03 3:08

A big problem for Indiana was we could not recruit offensive and defensive linemen. Big boys. The big guys. We just didn't have very many of them. And football here was not a big sport. It just hadn't clicked as a football place. Was there one low moment? Oh, I don't know if there was one.

SPEAKER_04 3:27

Here's one. It's Indiana legend, but the charismatic coach at the time, Lee Corso, confirms it to us. In a 1976 game, Lowley, Indiana took an early 7-6 lead over Mighty Ohio State. So unexpected that Corso burned a timeout for the purpose of commemorative photos. When the game ended, Indiana still had seven points. Ohio State had 47. One diehard fan in attendance that afternoon, John Mellenkamp, Bard of Indiana, who's been going to Hoosier Games ever since his father took him as a kid.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

No. I've been around thick and thin. How thin did it get? Pretty thin.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

He says that for years the tailgates drew more interest than the actual games. You're going to these football games and the stadium's half full and fans are leaving at halftime.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Whoa, whoa. They're not even half full.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

Less than half full.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah, less than half full. I mean, you know, like, if this is the stadium, there's just like a few people up here.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

In 2023, yet another dismal season, the team finished three and nine. And the athletic director Scott Dolson set out in search of answers. What was the hole you had to fill?

SPEAKER_02 4:52

I think certainly the right coach is the biggest hole to fill. As he scoured for candidates, he had some non-negotiables. We wanted an existing head coach. We wanted a coach who was offensive-minded, who had developed quarterbacks.

SPEAKER_04 5:05

So the slick offensive coordinator at the big school. That's not who you wanted.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

No, we really felt having that head coach experience was really important.

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Dolson went off the board and settled on a little-known lifer who'd won relentlessly, but also been overlooked relentlessly. So two years ago, when Kurt Signetti's name surfaces as a candidate, what'd you know about him? Anything? Nothing. You've been covering college football for more than 50 years, and you've never heard his name before.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

I never heard his name. And when he became the hire, uh I was surprised by it. But then I looked him up a little bit. I googled it. I Googled it. Googled him. Yes, I did. That was a direct order from the new coach.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

How do you sell your vision of your culture?

SPEAKER_04 5:46

Mere weeks on the job, tired of the who are you questions, Kurt Signetti dropped his usual modesty and said this. Yeah, it's pretty simple. I win. Google me. Here's what Googling would have revealed. Signetti pinballed around the country's sidelines. Once an assistant for Nick Sabin in Alabama, he left the big time to take head coaching jobs at smaller schools like Elon University and James Madison. When Indiana called, Signetti was well beyond the usual sell by date for a maiden job at this level.

SPEAKER_05 6:30

The chip probably came from when I got here. Right away. I detected an atmosphere that you can't get it done here. You said that. Oh, absolutely. As soon as I walked in the building, facilities that had been neglected, the stadium banners that looked old, the offices that looked like they were from 1980. And then, you know, just the general attitude of the people I met, the lack of excitement. Coming from a winning program, he was well. I was furious, pretty much, because all we did was win conference championships year in, year out of this step. That you're old school. Yeah, and I mean we win. And so it was a clashing of two worlds, and I wasn't going to lower my standards.

SPEAKER_04 7:15

It erupted when Signetti was first introduced to fans at an Indiana basketball game.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

Purdue sucks!

SPEAKER_05 7:27

But so does Michigan and a highest me! Go ARU!

SPEAKER_04 7:33

As the kids say, shots fired.

SPEAKER_05 7:36

I had to see if the fans were dead or just on life support. I had to wake him up and set an expectation and create some buzz and excitement.

SPEAKER_04 7:45

I think they woke up.

SPEAKER_05 7:46

A little bit.

SPEAKER_04 7:47

Get locked in, good warm-up, good. The irony, Signetti is skeptical of anything resembling look at me. He may be from Pennsylvania, but his temperament is pitch perfect for Southern Indiana. He's measured, he commands respect, his fallback language is coach speak. Coaches aren't in the habit of sharing the playbook, but what is the magic here?

SPEAKER_05 8:10

There's no magic here. It's fundamentals. You know, I would like to think the leader, which is me, knows what he's doing and has a blueprint in a plan. Create the intangibles on your football team, the culture, the mindset, a philosophy on how you want to play.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Under Signetti, the program is unrecognizable. The last two seasons, Indiana's gone 24-2 without losing a home game. That's the what. The how is more complicated. It starts with the coach, not just his eye for recruiting talent, but his ability to develop it once it arrives. Based on what he's seen from his perch, a shack atop the stadium press box where he can smoke, John Mellencamp has his own explanation for Signetti's success.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

He does not show emotion.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

He's not emotional.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Not outwardly. John, I've made my worst decisions being emotional. I bet you have to.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

The poise of Signetti and the turnaround he's orchestrated, it makes for a hell of a Cinderella story. But this is also a story about contemporary college sports. Indiana's rise has been helped by new rules. Athletes are now able to enter the so-called transfer portal and switch schools at will. Signetti fortified the roster by bringing 13 players with him from James Madison. Fernando Mendoza played at Cal Berkeley last season. Then there's the money. College players now can be paid for the licensing of their name, image, and likeness, and starting this year, they can get a cut of team revenue. Mendoza is reported to be making $2 million this season.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

I wrote a paper in high school saying why NCAA athletes should not be able to get paid. Should not be. And then now I'm contradicting myself as I'm getting paid now. So there's so many different dynamics that were never there in college football. And I think that's why you see so many teams either rising or fizzling, just because the new structure.

SPEAKER_05 12:15

Attack at all times.