2025-26 Coaching Carousel | Page 9 | The Boneyard

2025-26 Coaching Carousel

I wanted Cignetti before we hired Mora. Dude literally just wins. Google it.

Indiana absolutely did the right thing to prevent Cignetti from getting poached by Penn St and continue the upward trend of the football program and this is only year two.
 
DoctorWho85 said:
I wanted Cignetti before we hired Mora. Dude literally just wins. Google it.

Indiana absolutely did the right thing to prevent Cignetti from getting poached by Penn St and continue the upward trend of the football program and this is only year two.
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And recruiting is about to get a whole lot easier.
 
Vowelguy said:
And recruiting is about to get a whole lot easier.
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The is winning mostly with the previous coach's players. Imagine what he's going to do when he has "his" players there. I'm not saying they'll be in the OSU echelon of things, but they're going to be very close. Cignetti basically can go in and be le like "i made the playoffs year one and Top 5 year 2. Can you imagine where we'll be next year with you on the team?" I'd run through a brick wall if someone recruited me like that.
 
DoctorWho85 said:
The is winning mostly with the previous coach's players. Imagine what he's going to do when he has "his" players there. I'm not saying they'll be in the OSU echelon of things, but they're going to be very close. Cignetti basically can go in and be le like "i made the playoffs year one and Top 5 year 2. Can you imagine where we'll be next year with you on the team?" I'd run through a brick wall if someone recruited me like that.
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Yes, except for that last sentence. This is a fan message board. No one here could run through particle board even if their life depended on it.
 
ZooCougar said:
I bet 100 out of 100 IU fans disagree with this take.
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I am a Hoosier- Basketball still more important than Football in the state.

Although- I wish Cignetti could coach the hoops team also. I am not very confident with the new coach, DeVries
 
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I get the criticism that Franklin had an awful record against top 10 teams. At the same time, college football is so stacked with the top 10-15 being so much better than everyone else. Everyone loses to top 10 teams unless you are one of the few like Ohio State. Sure Penn State wants to be one of those elite programs. Now Penn State has to really be worried because Indiana seems to have filled in the best of the rest Big Ten slots. Add in Oregon and USC, it may be a long time before Penn State has this level of success again. Very curious to see who will go coach in that environment.

particle board can be some heavy sheet. all that compressed wood and glue that holds it together.
 
Kolumbo said:
I get the criticism that Franklin had an awful record against top 10 teams. At the same time, college football is so stacked with the top 10-15 being so much better than everyone else. Everyone loses to top 10 teams unless you are one of the few like Ohio State. Sure Penn State wants to be one of those elite programs. Now Penn State has to really be worried because Indiana seems to have filled in the best of the rest Big Ten slots. Add in Oregon and USC, it may be a long time before Penn State has this level of success again. Very curious to see who will go coach in that environment.

particle board can be some heavy sheet. all that compressed wood and glue that holds it together.
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I get what you're saying and Franklin is still a good coach. He just isn't THAT guy that's going to get teams to the championship game. It's like Nebraska with Pelini, they just can't get passed their past and realize they are most likely never going to return to the JoePa days.
 
Kolumbo said:
I get the criticism that Franklin had an awful record against top 10 teams. At the same time, college football is so stacked with the top 10-15 being so much better than everyone else. Everyone loses to top 10 teams unless you are one of the few like Ohio State. Sure Penn State wants to be one of those elite programs. Now Penn State has to really be worried because Indiana seems to have filled in the best of the rest Big Ten slots. Add in Oregon and USC, it may be a long time before Penn State has this level of success again. Very curious to see who will go coach in that environment.

particle board can be some heavy sheet. all that compressed wood and glue that holds it together.
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I believe Indiana's stadium has a capacity of barely over 60k and I wouldn't be surprised if as recently as last season (they made the CFP) they had a game or two with less than 50k in the house.

I imagine that you would have to go back a few decades to find a Penn St home game that had less than 100k in attendance (likely to when they couldn't hold that many).

Cignetti has done great things in a very short amount of time but before it can be viewed as sustainable, they will need to have achieved over long stretches, with multiple coaches.

Penn St, due primarily to gravitas their history and current, sustained fan base provides is one good hire away from being back among the top few in college football's pecking order. Indiana would at a minimum need Cignetti to complete his contract with quite a bit of very successful season's, win it all once or twice and then replace him with a home run hire once he retires before they could be considered at Penn State's level.

Last season and this season for Indiana football could end up being nothing more than a football equivalent of Butler men's hoops in 2010 & 2011.
 
DoctorWho85 said:
I get what you're saying and Franklin is still a good coach. He just isn't THAT guy that's going to get teams to the championship game. It's like Nebraska with Pelini, they just can't get passed their past and realize they are most likely never going to return to the JoePa days.
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Everyone calls Franklin a good recruiter, but when you look at Penn St.'s recruiting classes, they aren't ranked as high as you might have thought:

2025: 15, 2024: 15, 2023: 14, 2022: 6, 2021: 21, 2020: 15, 2019: 12, 2018: 6, 2017: 15, 2016: 20, 2015: 14

Average = 14.

2025 Roster Talent Level per 247: #10.

For Penn St. to compete for championships, they need to recruit better as well as coach better.
 
UConnJim said:
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For Penn St. to compete for championships, they need to recruit better as well as coach better.
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Perhaps you're right, but they did just lose a 4-star commit yesterday.
Source: PSU loses commitment of 4-star QB Huhn
Four-star Penn State quarterback pledge Troy Huhn pulled his commitment from the Nittany Lions, a source told ESPN on Thursday night, exiting the program's incoming class four days after the firing of coach James Franklin.

Huhn, a 6-foot-4, 215-pound recruit from San Marcos, California, is ESPN's No. 9 pocket passer in the 2026 cycle and had been committed to Penn State since June 2024. He becomes the top-ranked uncommitted quarterback in the 2026 class.
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Hey Coach Mora, maybe give this guy a call, tell him to consider a bit more northeast of where he was going to go? ^_^
 
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Kolumbo said:
"If you asked 100 Hoosiers over the age of 65 . . . "

I wouldn't be surprised if football were actually in the majority today. Indiana is sitting atop the Big Ten standings and ranked 3rd in the country. You gotta strike while the iron is hot. Bonus is becoming the best football school in Indiana.
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Try it another way. If Cignetti can’t maintain this level of play, and the school drops back to 8-4 being a good season and 6-6 being the norm, few Indiana fans will care that much. Indiana’s current mediocrity in hoops drives the fan base crazy.
 
UConnJim said:
Everyone calls Franklin a good recruiter, but when you look at Penn St.'s recruiting classes, they aren't ranked as high as you might have thought:

2025: 15, 2024: 15, 2023: 14, 2022: 6, 2021: 21, 2020: 15, 2019: 12, 2018: 6, 2017: 15, 2016: 20, 2015: 14

Average = 14.

2025 Roster Talent Level per 247: #10.

For Penn St. to compete for championships, they need to recruit better as well as coach better.
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Recruiting is not nearly as important as it was in the pre-Transfer Portal era.
 
I don’t get why colleges pay their coaches so much when the programs increasingly look like pro organizations with GMs and scouts as important as the coaches. Coaches are now game planners and strategists, not the program CEO’s they were through 2021. A dummy like Mack Brown or Dabo Sweeney was able to win because they could out recruit other programs (often with the help of bags of cash).

Now every program can pay players, so successful programs are going to either outspend others or win with some version of moneyball. Either way, the coach is just a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole puzzle. So if coaches are increasingly disposable, they should be paid that way.
 
James Franklin not just gonna be on Gameday today, he is going to be AT gameday in Georgia.

Bizarre . But reading the room was not his strong suit.
 
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Kolumbo said:
I get the criticism that Franklin had an awful record against top 10 teams. At the same time, college football is so stacked with the top 10-15 being so much better than everyone else. Everyone loses to top 10 teams unless you are one of the few like Ohio State. Sure Penn State wants to be one of those elite programs. Now Penn State has to really be worried because Indiana seems to have filled in the best of the rest Big Ten slots. Add in Oregon and USC, it may be a long time before Penn State has this level of success again. Very curious to see who will go coach in that environment.
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I think this is the right take. Franklin was never going to put Penn State over the top. The question is, can they actually get anyone that's better?
 
nelsonmuntz said:
I don’t get why colleges pay their coaches so much when the programs increasingly look like pro organizations with GMs and scouts as important as the coaches. Coaches are now game planners and strategists, not the program CEO’s they were through 2021. A dummy like Mack Brown or Dabo Sweeney was able to win because they could out recruit other programs (often with the help of bags of cash).

Now every program can pay players, so successful programs are going to either outspend others or win with some version of moneyball. Either way, the coach is just a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole puzzle. So if coaches are increasingly disposable, they should be paid that way.
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Basketball is really no different.
Hurley has done an incredible job and is being highly compensated for his success.
If Uconn were not to make the tournament 4 years consecutively - we would be having the same discussion.
Big money equals big expectations
 
nelsonmuntz said:
I don’t get why colleges pay their coaches so much when the programs increasingly look like pro organizations with GMs and scouts as important as the coaches. Coaches are now game planners and strategists, not the program CEO’s they were through 2021. A dummy like Mack Brown or Dabo Sweeney was able to win because they could out recruit other programs (often with the help of bags of cash).

Now every program can pay players, so successful programs are going to either outspend others or win with some version of moneyball. Either way, the coach is just a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole puzzle. So if coaches are increasingly disposable, they should be paid that way.
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Aren’t you proving the counter point? When you could stockpile blue chippers, you didn’t need to be great because you had all the talent.
Now that talent can easily transfer, squads can be more equalized.
It’s why pro coaches get so much $$$$
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Try it another way. If Cignetti can’t maintain this level of play, and the school drops back to 8-4 being a good season and 6-6 being the norm, few Indiana fans will care that much. Indiana’s current mediocrity in hoops drives the fan base crazy.
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Fair, but that's not the way the question was posed. Yes, being mediocre in hoops drives hoosiers crazy. I'll bet most would still rather win a football championship than another hoops championship. In football you join a list of about 30 programs who have won it all and a football championship is supposedly worth a heck of a lot more.
 
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Kolumbo said:
Fair, but that's not the way the question was posed. Yes, being mediocre in hoops drives hoosiers crazy. I'll bet most would still rather win a football championship than another hoops championship. In football you join a list of about 30 programs who have won it all and a football championship is supposedly worth a heck of a lot more.
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If they were given the option of no future men's basketball titles but they'll be very competitive, at the highest level in football and win as many national titles as as the other top few schools or their football program returns to where it was from ~1980 - ~2010 but they'll be highly competitive, at the highest level in men's basketball and win as many national titles as the other top few schools they would almost unanimously choose the option with successful men's basketball.
 
Nick Saban, on Game Day, essentially scolded Penn State for firing Franklin. I was surprised Franklin chose to go on Game Day like that, but he handled himself very well. He’ll definitely get another top tier opportunity.
 
CCSUblue said:
Fickell looks like toast.
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After the Oregon game next week they have 2 weeks off, so ….

But with 2 straight shutouts does he last that long?

2-5 and Oregon & Indiana Ls to come
Wash, Ill, and Minnesota could be losses as well
 
Have to wonder about our old friend Joe Moorhead at Akron, too. Lost at Ball State yesterday (Akron was favored) and can't seem to get out of their own way. Contract through 2027, buyout is 650K.
 
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