Indiana fans immediately took umbrage in the comments, but I did not change my tune the following week<\/a>. \u201cPerhaps Indiana will get there one day, but right now, it\u2019s only five games into the second year of its hike.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, two weeks later, after the Hoosiers\u2019 eye-opening 30-20 win at No. 3 Oregon, someone followed up with, \u201cDo you still believe Indiana can\u2019t win a national championship?\u201d And I freaking tripled down<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWinning three straight games in January against top-10 teams requires a level of depth that teams like Ohio State and Alabama almost always have, and where teams like Indiana are at a perpetual disadvantage.\u201d<\/p>\n Self-destruction. Got me again.<\/p>\n But hey, I did say at the time, \u201cI\u2019d be thrilled to be proven wrong.\u201d As it turns out, win or lose against Miami, I absolutely was.<\/p>\n What have we learned from Cig\u2019s evaluation of talent and roster construction? That evaluating high school talent is more of a crapshoot than we thought, and that the subsequent star ratings should be taken with more of a grain of salt? What are the implications for the college football industry? \u2014 Kevin K.<\/strong><\/p>\n Curt Cignetti has broken the entire recruiting evaluation industry. Or at least exposed how outdated it is, given all the recent changes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that the recruiting analysts have gotten worse at assigning star ratings; it\u2019s that those ratings should really come with an expiration date at this point. Once a guy goes in the portal after his first two years, what does it matter whether he was a three-star or a five-star coming out of high school? Everyone now has new, fresher data.<\/p>\n Take Indiana\u2019s undersized cornerback D\u2019Angelo Ponds, who, as Bruce Feldman wrote Tuesday<\/a>, only had one P5 offer, from Syracuse, at the time he committed to Cignetti at James Madison. He immediately \u201cproved the doubters wrong\u201d his first year at JMU, earning Freshman All-America honors while ranking 11th nationally with 15 passes defended.<\/p>\n And yet, when he went in the portal, he was still ranked behind 83 other cornerbacks, well behind guys such as Denver Harris, a former five-star who was suspended for parts of his first two seasons at Texas A&M and LSU and played sparingly for them. Perhaps that should have been a red flag, because Harris has since bounced to UTSA, where he made three starts, and UNLV, where he barely played. But the people who do those transfer rankings still tend to default to potential over production.<\/p>\n But not Cignetti. His lineup is full of guys who had proven themselves at mid-level P4 schools (Cal\u2019s Fernando Mendoza, Maryland\u2019s Roman Hemby) or G5 schools (JMU\u2019s Ponds and Elijah Sarratt, Kent State\u2019s Stephen Daley) by the time they got to Indiana, yet they still get counted simplistically as \u201cnot four stars.\u201d<\/p>\n It may be that 10 years from now, we look back and realize that Cignetti\/Indiana and future national championship participants will still primarily be the schools that hoard all the five-stars. But no doubt, other coaches and programs will try to emulate his model. The recruiting rankings system will need to adjust as well.<\/p>\n Miami returning to the mountaintop after almost 25 years in the wilderness would be the story in college football if it weren\u2019t for Indiana. Win or lose, for Miami to be back in the conversation is a remarkable achievement for a coach and a program who have had their share of doubters. What are your thoughts on Miami\u2019s rise again, and do you think they can remain a title contender in the future? \u2014 Brian R.<\/strong><\/p>\n If Miami wins a national championship Monday, it ought to give a ring to Kirk Herbstreit. The ESPN analyst inadvertently touched off this renaissance in 2021 with a scathing \u201cCollege GameDay\u201d rant about the program\u2019s demise in which he called out then-president Julio Frenk (now at UCLA) and athletic director Blake James (now at Boston College) for a lack of commitment to football.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In short order, these things then happened:<\/p>\n Frenk publicly pledged to become more involved in athletics and ousted James, soon replacing him with Clemson\u2019s Dan Radakovich.<\/p>\n With the university\u2019s coffers humming thanks to its highly profitable UHealth system<\/a>, the administration began throwing money at the problem in the form of facilities upgrades and staff salaries, including \u2026<\/p>\n Frenk and a couple of his lieutenants (one of whom, Joe Echevarria, succeeded Frenk as president) went hard after Mario Cristobal at Oregon, despite not yet having fired Manny Diaz. They convinced him to come home with a 10-year, $80 million contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wealthy Miami boosters (remember the since-shelved John Ruiz<\/a>) embraced NIL in a big way. Cam Ward and Carson Beck put off the NFL to collect big checks at Miami, and the Tuscaloosa News reported this week they tried to convince Ty Simpson to do the same<\/a> with an unprecedented $6.5 million offer. Beck is reportedly making between $3-4 million.<\/p>\n All of which is to say, it\u2019s a different world now than it was back when Howard Schnellenberger and the coaches who followed him were dominating recruiting in the \u201cstate of Miami.\u201d South Florida high school kids still play key roles in Cristobal\u2019s program \u2014 see Rueben Bain, Mark Fletcher, Malachi Toney and many others \u2013 but he\u2019s been given the resources to go find the best players wherever they may be.<\/p>\n As long as that continues, I see no reason why Miami can\u2019t keep this going. It\u2019s not like Florida State or Clemson are going to get in the Canes way anytime soon.<\/p>\n Stew \u2014 Is the Demond Williams saga evidence that schools have figured out how to lock players into their NIL deals, or was there something else that happened behind the scenes? And if so, what comes next? Are multi-year contracts a possibility? \u2014\u00a0Isaac O<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s definitely an example of the post-House settlement \u201csystem\u201d working.<\/p>\n All along, schools have been hoping their rev-share contracts would prove more stabilizing than outsourcing roster retention to a third-party NIL collective. And the Big Ten was particularly proactive about it. It came up with the template language that Washington and most of the conference\u2019s other programs use, which includes a liquidated damages (buyout) clause. It certainly deterred Williams in this case, given the university was threatening to demand the full reported $4 million value of the deal.<\/p>\n Whether his situation becomes a precedent for other schools remains to be seen. This was an extreme case, given how much money was at stake. It would have been extremely risky for Williams to leave for LSU or Miami without knowing whether he\u2019d be able to get out of paying such a huge amount. We also don\u2019t know whether Washington would have been as strident if this were a lesser player who tried to break, say, a $100,000 deal within days of signing it.<\/p>\n I\u2019m all for a model with more stability\/less chaos, but we\u2019re a long way from knowing whether the current version will hold up in court. A Big Ten rev-share agreement<\/a> I viewed last year stated that \u201cthe Athlete is not, and shall not claim to be, an employee of the Institution,\u201d and that the compensation is \u201cnot provided in exchange for the Athlete\u2019s commitment to attend the Institution or participate in the Institution\u2019s Program (i.e., not \u2018Pay-for-Play\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n Schools like Wisconsin (with Xavier Lucas) and Washington claim these contracts are nothing more than agreements to license the athlete\u2019s NIL rights, while also claiming they legally bind the athlete to play football for their school. Kind of like an employee who is compensated to attend their Institution and participate in the Institution\u2019s program.<\/p>\n While Washington and Williams avoided a legal clash, Georgia and former defensive end Damon Wilson II remain in the early stages of litigation<\/a> over a similar situation. If it makes it to court, a judge will determine whether the school is justified in claiming Wilson caused $390,000 in damages when he broke his contract last year, less than a month after signing it. There will likely be other challenges like it very soon.<\/p>\n By the way, multi-year contracts are already here, though mostly for quarterbacks and other high-end players. Schools still want the flexibility to cut other guys loose.<\/p>\n
![\"Dan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-2254510186-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n