Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti delivered a stark warning about the future of college football tied to rising NIL costs.
- His comments come just days after the Hoosiers claimed a national title using a roster built largely on high-profile NIL deals.
- The timing exposes a contradiction in the conference's stance on NIL amid ongoing disputes with rival leagues.
Since the legalization of Name, Image and Likeness payments the Big Ten Conference has won four of the last five football national championships. There's a myriad of reasons why that is but just as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did in Watergate, you've got to follow the money.
Entering the 2025 campaign, nine of the Top 25 largest NIL collectives were from the Big Ten. That's three less than its arch-rival conference in the SEC. In a vacuum, having that much success when the competition is outspending you would be impressive, but according to Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, it's hurting the game.
Curt Cignetti calls for NIL change sooner rather than later
“The market is pretty expensive — it’s scary. It’s scary. I think players should get paid," he told reporters Thursday. "But something’s going to have to be done in the next 12 to 24 months, or universities might not be able to handle this. College football won’t exist the way we’re going right now.”
That's a dramatic statement dropped into the ether as the sport can't seem to agree on how to handle a myriad of issues from eligibility to the format of the College Football Playoff. Cignetti essentially made an ultimatum to the powers that be with a veiled threat that schools are going to somehow get out of college football as a result.
Curt Cignetti's ultimatum deprives Big Ten of high ground in feud with SEC
Cignetti and the Hoosiers just won the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship with a roster made up almost entirely of transfers enticed by NIL payments. The timing of his ultimatum for the sport is rather convenient and undercuts the Big Ten's upper hand in their argument against the SEC's complaints on changes to the sport.
With high-profile coaches like Georgia's Kirby Smart suggesting the SEC could separate from the NCAA if the playoff expands to 24 teams, Cignetti's comments make the Big Ten look like hypocrites in the NIL game. He can't take this concerned stance about the future of the game when he is complicit in partaking in what he believes will destroy it.
The only good this does is expose how out of touch college programs really are with reality. Coaches now sound like politicians, calling for an end to corrupt practices all while benefitting from them in the meantime. Either college sports, football in particular, embrace student-athletes as employees and pay them their fair share or they go back to the way things were and payments are once again under the table because it was always a business.
Cignetti is no different from the SEC coaches firing off wild ideas of secession or droning on about conference superiority. If he were to put his ultimatum into the proper context by admitting the very evil he wishes to abolish is one he participated in, then he'd have more credibility in the discussion. But until he and more coaches step up and are honest with themselves, this problem is just going to continue going in circles until the sport does eventual collapse on itself.
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