Indiana Football Coach Curt Cignetti Pleads For ‘Regulation’ In Chaotic College World

By now, coaches in all college sports were supposed to know the lay of the land.

Many hoped the House settlement would be a done deal by mid-April and everyone could move forward with certainty about the major changes it would bring.

That didn’t happen. The House settlement has yet to win final approval from a federal judge. Colleges, which already have implemented many of the key changes detailed in the House settlement, have been caught out. The rules on revenue sharing, an athletic department spending cap and a NIL clearinghouse were supposed to go into effect on July 1. With barely a month to go, there is no answer whether this ground-breaking settlement will be approved.

Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti is no different than any other coach in terms of the limbo he’s been placed in.

Cignetti feels confident the settlement will be passed despite the impasse regarding the status of athletes who lost roster sports as part of the premature implementation of the agreement. The NCAA and the power conference schools have been in a showdown with U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken over how those athletes will be protected or not protected by the settlement.

“That part of it (the House settlement delay) hasn't affected anything (recruiting-wise),” Cignetti said at the Hoosiers Connect fundraiser at Huber’s Winery, Orchard and Vineyards on Wednesday. “And I'm confident it'll get passed, that there's a plan in place and it'll be green lighted.”

That doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing to get there. The NIL clearinghouse component is just one sticking point. Many believed that players signed before the House settlement went into effect would be able to reap richer benefits with no clearinghouse available to determine “fair market value.”

Without the settlement in place, it’s uncharted waters.

“The NIL piece, it will be interesting to see how that plays out. The (NIL) clearinghouse, because obviously there was a lot of front-loading of NIL deals, people trying to make big transactions before the rev share did pass, because the NIL would have gone into effect immediately. That created a little bit of a different world, and some anxiety, a little more anxiety than normal,” Cignetti said.

What Cignetti is sick and tired of – and he’s undoubtedly not alone among college coaches in all sports – is how the rules keep changing and how they can’t logically operate going forward without knowing what the state of play will be in college athletics in the near future.

“Look, we need regulation. We just need regulation. We need rules so that we all can plan and do what we're hired to do. Because right now there's just a lot of uncertainty,” Cignetti sad. “How many portal windows are there going to be? When are they going to be? Go on and on and on. We got to get the industry fixed. The game is great. We got to get the industry fixed.”

Some of those questions, like the transfer portal window, are unique to football. The sport has two transfer windows, and both are inconvenient. The primary window begins at the close of the regular season, but interferes with postseason games, both in the College Football Playoff and bowl games.

The other window, a shorter one, takes place in late April. It’s after some, but not all, teams are close to being done or are done with spring practice.

No decision has been made on what time frame or how many transfer portal windows there will be. It has hurt Cignetti – and other coaches – in terms of how they handle Class of 2026 recruiting.

“If I just knew when the portal date would be and what that portal pool is going to look like, I could figure out whether we're taking 20 high school guys or 17 high school guys relative to what our team needs to look like next year. But right now, it's hard to plan, because you can’t get any answers,” Cignetti said.

Cignetti constantly says he wants his players and coaches to focus on controlling the controllables. The uncertainty surrounding the state of play in college athletics makes it hard for Cignetti himself when it comes to creating a long-range plan for his program.