BLOOMINGTON — Curt Cignetti’s mood Monday could be gauged by the length of his comments.
Not once across a dozen questions and nearly eight total minutes did Cignetti give an answer longer than what IU’s transcription service considered three paragraphs. So brief and to-the-point were Cignetti’s responses that somehow, the headline topic of the day became Indiana football’s travel itinerary to Eugene this weekend.
Never is Cignetti more businesslike than when the business at hand is serious, and this weekend is about as serious as it gets: No. 7 IU at No. 2 Oregon, inside Autzen Stadium, in one of the defining games of this year’s Big Ten title race.
Not long ago, these games seemed so novel for this program, given their historical infrequency. Now, for a program once again carrying genuine College Football Playoff aspirations, they’re nothing but normal.
“We have a veteran team,” Cignetti said. “They’ve been around the block. Most of them have been in games like this before.”
The college football season is beginning to separate wheat from chaff now.
Coast to coast, contenders have started separating themselves. Pretenders have too.
Penn State and Texas fell away from the pack this weekend, both with a steep climb back to the conversation. The relative weakness of the ACC is narrowing the potential path for teams other than Miami, while Iowa State’s loss Saturday at Cincinnati did the Big 12 few favors as a potential multi-bid league.
There remains the lingering question of what to do with (potentially) 10-2 Notre Dame.
Playoff projections across the landscape are right now delivering the SEC five and six bids, and still making room for Indiana. Depending upon your persuasion (or projection), the Hoosiers might even have an opportunity to host a first-round game.
All of which confers an inherent level of stress and risk onto each of this season’s remaining seven games. That might have been even more true last fall, given the weakness in IU’s schedule, but last season, too, all this seemed so new.
Every game seemed to bring with it a “first time since” or a “the last time was,” and most of that time, years referenced for historical context started with a 19. Some of IU’s achievements had no precedent whatsoever.
One of the many impressive marker points of Cignetti’s success thus far, though, has been how quickly what seemed so rare has become commonplace.
This will be the fifth time in the last calendar year IU plays in a game between two ranked teams (counting the Nebraska game last year, when the Cornhuskers were ranked in the coaches poll but not the AP Top 25). It’s the third all-top-10 game the Hoosiers have played on the road in the last year as well.
Cignetti will spend this week — and probably spent last week, Indiana’s first bye — trying to better fortify his team for this kind of challenge. The Hoosiers did not quite rise to meet it last year.
“You can dwell on the line of scrimmage,” Cignetti said, referring to the Ohio State and Notre Dame losses, “but I don’t think we won the battle at any position in those games.”
Especially given the narrative that stuck itself to IU football through the offseason, after those difficult road defeats, Cignetti will want the Hoosiers to acquit themselves better in Eugene than they managed in Columbus or South Bend.
A win of any description, however difficult — Ducks coach Dan Lanning has lost just one home game in his three-plus seasons in charge — would be worth its weight in gold.
But Cignetti won’t have to talk to anyone in his locker room about stage, stakes or expectations. The days of Indiana football feeling foreign to this kind of moment have retreated into the past with dizzying speed.
“I have confidence in our team, right. (The Ducks) are big. They are athletic. They are a very good football team. We’re a good football team,” Cignetti said. “We’re just going to go out there and play our game, and play it well.”
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