{"id":814866,"date":"2026-08-15T21:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T21:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/814866\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T21:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T21:30:09","slug":"curt-cignetti-says-he-wants-indiana-to-play-notre-dame-on-certain-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/814866\/","title":{"rendered":"Curt Cignetti says he wants Indiana to play Notre Dame \u2026 on certain conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody takes shots quite like Curt Cignetti. And nobody cancels Power 4 nonconference games quite like him either.<\/p>\n<p>The Indiana football coach did the latter earlier this year when the Hoosiers asked out of a two-game series against Notre Dame. But he told the Big Ten Network he would be happy to put the Fighting Irish back on the schedule \u2014 on certain conditions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey ought to come to our place twice, and we\u2019ll go up there once, since they\u2019re not in a conference,\u201d Cignetti said in an interview on the network that aired Friday.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;I&#8217;d love to play them. It&#8217;d be a great in-state game.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udde3\ufe0f Curt Cignetti on Notre Dame and future non-conference schedules <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/f6V9F02OIz\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/f6V9F02OIz<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BigTenNetwork\/status\/2088653691624518139?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">August 15, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Indiana has faced Notre Dame once during Cignetti\u2019s tenure: a 27-17 Fighting Irish win in South Bend in the opening round of the 2024-25 College Football Playoff. The Irish hold a 24-5-1 edge over the Hoosiers in their series history, with the most recent regular-season meeting coming in 1991.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d love to play \u2019em,\u201d Cignetti said of Notre Dame. \u201cIt would be a great in-state game. I guess there is a backstory to that. I don\u2019t quite know what it is, so it is what it is, and the Big Ten schedule is pretty darn tough, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Hoosiers went 17-1 in the Big Ten regular-season schedule over Cignetti\u2019s first two seasons, but they have yet to play a regular-season nonconference game against a Power 4 opponent during that period.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the program has made headlines for backing out of nonconference games against Power 4 schools in recent years, including dropping home-and-home series against both Louisville (2024 and \u201925) and Virginia (2027 and \u201928).<\/p>\n<p>After Notre Dame dropped the defending national champs from its schedule, at the Hoosiers\u2019 request, in 2030 and 2031 and replaced them with USC, Cignetti\u2019s squad was left without any games against Power 4 programs on its future nonconference schedules. Indiana hosts North Texas (Sun Belt), Howard (FCS) and Western Kentucky (Conference USA) over the first three weeks of this upcoming season.<\/p>\n<p>Asked about Indiana\u2019s nonconference scheduling decisions before the 2025 season, Cignetti responded, \u201cThat was a scheduling philosophy that began before I was hired, but I did sign off on it upon being hired before our first season, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cignetti later added, \u201cWe figured we would just adopt an SEC scheduling philosophy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The trademark zinger was a reference to SEC teams playing eight-game conference schedules that also required them to play just one Power 4 nonconference game each season. Now that the conference has added a ninth conference game to match the Big Ten, however, each SEC team will play at least 10 Power 4 opponents this fall \u2014 one more than Cignetti\u2019s Hoosiers will.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody takes shots quite like Curt Cignetti. And nobody cancels Power 4 nonconference games quite like him either.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1607,399,6815,398,396,397,1778,99],"class_list":["post-814866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-college-football","tag-football","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}