Let’s take a look…
By Dave Wollman
“Everyone saw Indiana’s wins. I saw a coaching question that college football still hasn’t answered.”
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People keep asking how Indiana did it.
Not casually. Obsessively. Fans, analysts, rivals, recruiting coordinators at programs that lost to the Hoosiers — everyone wants to know. How did a staff assembled almost entirely from smaller programs walk into the Big Ten and not just compete, but dominate? How did they beat Ohio State for the Big Ten Championship? How did they go through Oregon in the playoff and close it out against Miami to win a national title that nobody — nobody — saw coming?
Nobody outside that building knows for certain.
Indiana isn’t going to tell us. Programs that find real advantages don’t advertise them. But here’s what I’ve come to believe after watching this team closely and studying this staff carefully: the answer isn’t hidden. It’s sitting right in front of us. We just have to be willing to follow the evidence where it leads.
Because the answer isn’t about scheme. It isn’t about recruiting. It isn’t about facilities or NIL or any of the things college football usually credits for sudden, dramatic success.
The answer is about teaching.
What I Saw on the Field
In the first article, I talked about watching Indiana’s film and seeing something that most observers missed entirely while they were celebrating the wins.
I saw technique.
Watch their defensive backs in open field tackle situations. Watch what happens when a Hoosier corner or safety closes on a ball carrier in space — the kind of moment where most players lunge, guess, or miss entirely. Indiana’s defenders squared their shoulders, kept their eyes locked on the center of the body, stayed under control, and made the tackle. Repeatedly. In big games. Against elite athletes. The missed open field tackle that plagues so many teams at every level was remarkably rare with this group.
Watch their offensive linemen. Not the unit — the individuals. Each one executing the technique he had been taught, holding true to his assignment on every single snap. One-on-one, offensive linemen handled their blocks. The quarterback had time. Not because Indiana had five future first-round picks up front. Because each individual knew exactly what he was supposed to do and had internalized it well enough to do it under the pressure of a national championship run.
Watch every position on that field and you see the same thing. Consistency. Precision. Execution that holds up when the moment gets biggest.
And then watch the sidelines between possessions.
I watched the coaches. What was happening wasn’t celebration or scheme review. It was teaching. Specific, technical, position-by-position reminders — hand placement, footwork, leverage, assignment. Coaches and players in constant conversation, not about what just happened emotionally, but about the precise technical adjustments that needed to be made on the very next snap.
That does not happen by accident. That is a coaching culture. And it came from somewhere specific.
Start With the Staff
When Curt Cignetti took the Indiana job in November 2023, he built his staff quickly. Seven assistants came directly from James Madison. One was a holdover from the previous staff. Three were outside hires.
Look at where those coaches came from before James Madison.
Bryant Haines, who became Indiana’s defensive coordinator and won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant in 2025, had coached at Manchester College, Adrian College, IUP, UC Davis, and Elon before landing at JMU. Mike Shanahan, the offensive coordinator, went from a volunteer assistant at Pitt to IUP to Elon to JMU. Pat Kuntz, who coached the defensive tackles, started at a high school in Indianapolis, spent years at VMI before Cignetti called. Grant Cain, the special teams coordinator, built his career at Catawba College, the Arena Football League, Coastal Carolina, and Mercer — before Cignetti cold-called him based entirely on his special teams results.
This is not a staff that was handed blue-chip recruits and told to manage them.
These are coaches who spent years at places where they had no margin for error. Where the only way to compete was to develop what you had into something better than it arrived as. Where a player out of position, a missed tackle in space, an offensive lineman who broke technique under pressure — those things didn’t just cost a play. They cost games that coaches at that level couldn’t afford to lose.
When coaches spend years in that environment, something happens to them. They become obsessive about details. They become exceptional teachers. Not because they chose to — because they had to.
That habit, that obsession with precision and execution, is what Cignetti brought to Bloomington. Not just in himself but in an entire staff shaped the same way, over years, at programs most college football fans have never thought twice about.
What We Know About How Athletes Actually Improve
Here’s where the science makes the Indiana story make complete sense.
Athletes do not improve simply because they repeat a movement.
That surprises people. We assume repetition is the engine of development. Get more reps, get better. But that’s not what the research says, and it’s not what decades of coaching elite athletes at the Olympic level has taught me either.
Athletes improve because the nervous system receives meaningful information.
The cycle is: observe, analyze, correct, repeat. That sequence — not repetition alone — is what actually changes movement. Repetition without feedback only strengthens whatever movement pattern already exists. If the movement is efficient, great repetition makes it more efficient. If the movement has flaws, those reps engrave the flaws deeper. The nervous system does not care whether a movement is correct. It only learns what is repeated.
Now think about what that means for a staff of coaches who spent their careers at places where they couldn’t afford inefficient movement. Who developed the habit — deeply, over years — of watching carefully, correcting specifically, and demanding that the right movement be repeated rather than just any movement.
Those coaches don’t just run more practice. They watch differently. They correct differently. They create feedback loops that most major programs, overwhelmed by recruiting demands and operational complexity, never fully prioritize.
That’s the sideline teaching I watched during Indiana’s championship run. That’s what the film shows in the DBs squaring up in space and the offensive linemen holding technique one-on-one. That’s not talent. That’s deeply ingrained movement learning — the product of a coaching culture that understood, long before it arrived in the Big Ten, exactly how human beings actually develop skill.
Football Already Knows This — For One Position
Here’s the part that should make every coach in America uncomfortable.
No one develops a quarterback by asking him to throw more passes.
Quarterbacks receive constant, specific, relentless coaching. Every drop step. Every foot placement. Every shoulder angle at release. Every pre-snap read. Every decision under pressure. The feedback never stops, and nobody questions it — because everyone understands that quarterback is a technical position that demands technical development.
So why does that standard apply to one position and essentially stop there?
Why shouldn’t offensive linemen receive that same quality of movement instruction? Why not defensive backs? Receivers? Linebackers? Running backs?
Every position in football depends on precise, repeatable movement. Every position deserves the same coaching intensity that quarterbacks receive as a matter of course.
Indiana’s staff didn’t just apply that standard to their quarterback. The evidence — on film, on the sidelines, in the results against Ohio State and Oregon and Miami — strongly suggests they applied it everywhere. Because that’s what they had always done to survive. That philosophy traveled with them to Bloomington. And the Big Ten wasn’t ready for it.
The Problem No One Wants to Admit
If we know how athletes actually learn, and we know consistent feedback is essential, then the next question is uncomfortable.
Why aren’t more programs doing this?
The honest answer is capacity. Position coaches at major programs are already stretched beyond what any reasonable job description should allow. They recruit. They travel. They evaluate transfers. They game plan. They install systems. They meet with players. They handle administrative responsibilities. They teach football.
No matter how talented and dedicated they are, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to provide continuous, individualized movement feedback to every player at every position. The math doesn’t work.
NCAA rules have also historically limited when and how structured technical instruction can occur outside of the defined practice calendar. The intent behind those rules has been understandable. But if efficient movement improves performance and may also reduce physical stress on athletes, then limiting high-quality technical development creates consequences worth an honest conversation.
So here’s the real question Indiana forces us to ask: how did they create an environment where athletes received enough feedback — consistently, specifically, repeatedly enough — to genuinely change movement patterns at the level required to beat Ohio State, Oregon, and Miami? We don’t know exactly. They won’t say. But the science tells us it had to involve more than what happens between the whistles on a standard practice field.
What Happens Next at Indiana Will Tell Us Even More
Here’s the part that makes this story bigger than one remarkable season — or even two.
Indiana is going to keep getting better athletes. That’s what winning a national championship does — it changes recruiting conversations permanently. The program’s trajectory is unmistakable.
But I don’t believe those coaches stopped being great teachers the moment the talent level rose. The habits they developed — the precision, the obsession with feedback, the commitment to technical detail at every position — those don’t disappear when you land a five-star prospect. Those habits are baked into who these coaches are.
What happens when elite athletes receive that kind of coaching?
We may be watching the answer unfold right now. And if the science is right — and it is — Indiana isn’t going to slow down. They’re going to accelerate. Because the programs they’re competing against still believe physical gifts are the primary variable. Indiana is building something on top of physical gifts.
That is a compounding advantage. And most of college football doesn’t see it coming.
The Staff That Built It
Before we get to what this means for other programs, it’s worth understanding exactly who walked into Bloomington in 2024 — because the backgrounds of these coaches are the single most revealing piece of evidence in this entire story.
Of the eleven on-field coaches on Indiana’s 2025 national championship staff, seven came directly from James Madison. One — offensive line coach Bob Bostad, one of the most decorated line coaches in college football history — was a holdover retained from the previous staff. Three were outside hires who had never worked with Cignetti before.
Almost every coach on this staff built their reputation at programs where they had no choice but to outcoach their opponents. The defensive coordinator came from Manchester College, Adrian College, and IUP before JMU. The offensive coordinator came from IUP and Elon. The special teams coordinator came from Catawba, the Arena Football League, Coastal Carolina, and Mercer. The defensive tackles coach started at a high school in Indianapolis and worked his way through VMI.
Different backgrounds. Different levels. Different programs.
One common thread: years of coaching in environments where teaching wasn’t optional. It was survival.
That is what walked into the Big Ten. That is what beat Ohio State for a Big Ten title. That is what won a national championship against programs that have spent decades believing talent alone was enough.
The Answer Is Available to Everyone
This is the part I most want other programs to hear.
You don’t need Indiana’s staff. You don’t need Curt Cignetti. You don’t need to reverse-engineer whatever those coaches do in film sessions or on the practice field.
You need the science. And the science belongs to everyone.
The advantage Indiana built wasn’t constructed with money or facilities or recruiting rankings. It was constructed through years of coaching necessity at levels where technical development wasn’t a priority — it was the only path to winning.
That path is available to every program in America. Not by copying Indiana. But by understanding what Indiana actually did, and building a system that delivers it deliberately — within the rules every program operates under equally.
That system doesn’t exist yet in college football. Not in any structured, scalable, transferable form. That is not a criticism of anyone coaching today. It is an observation about where the sport is — and where it is about to go.
The Next Question
If a culture of teaching can produce what Indiana produced — a national championship built on technical precision that showed up in open field tackles, one-on-one blocking assignments, and sideline conversations about hand placement and footwork — then the next question is the one that matters most.
What would it actually look like to build that systematically?
Not by hoping your next hire happens to come from the right background. Not by accident. Not by waiting for the sport to figure it out on its own.
By design. By science. By creating a structure that delivers the kind of feedback athletes need to truly change movement patterns — within the rules that govern every program equally.
That structure doesn’t exist yet.
But it could.
And the programs that build it first are going to have an advantage that looks, to everyone watching from the outside, a lot like what Indiana had.
Inexplicable. Surprising. Dominant.
And entirely explainable — if you know what you’re looking for.
That’s where we’re going next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Wollman
Dave Wollman coached at the highest level of Olympic sport for decades, relying on movement science and biomechanics as the foundation of his athlete development system. That approach produced more NCAA individual champions and collegiate record holders in the throws and jumps than any coach in NCAA history.
davidwollman.com
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