NFL analyst Joe Buck on whether Indiana football can win it all
Some of IU’s tackling is better than some he sees in the NFL.
- Pat Knight believes his late father, legendary coach Bob Knight, would have greatly admired the success of Indiana’s football team under coach Curt Cignetti.
- Pat Knight sees similarities between Cignetti’s coaching style and his father’s, particularly their relentless nature and focus on improvement.
- The article draws parallels between the current undefeated IU football team and Bob Knight’s 1976 undefeated national champion basketball team.
Pat Knight can see his dad with that proud smirk on his face, giving a firm handshake to coach Curt Cignetti, telling him what an incredible job he’s done leading Indiana University football to an undefeated season and a chance at a national title.
“Cignetti knows how hard that is,” said Knight. “My dad knows how hard that is.”
Bob Knight, after all, led his 1976 basketball team to an undefeated season and a national title, the last college basketball team to achieve that feat. On Monday in the national football championship against Miami, Cignetti can make Indiana the first college football team to achieve that feat in a 16-game season in modern history.
“Man, I wish my dad was still alive,” said Knight, who played at IU and coached for two years under his dad. “He loved football. He absolutely loved it. Football was, by far, his favorite sport to watch.”
And Cignetti loved watching Bob Knight.
“I was a big Bob Knight fan as a little kid. I liked sort of the shenanigans and the faces at the press conferences and throwing the chair across the court,” Cignetti told reporters Sunday. “I thought that was pretty cool.
“But it really has no effect on what’s going to take place here at 7:50 (Monday) night. But it was 50 years ago, and if we’re able to climb that mountain, it’ll be a unique coincidence.”
During his 29 years coaching at Indiana, from 1971 to 2000, Bob Knight always kept close tabs on IU’s football team. He went to all the home games, sitting in the press box so he wouldn’t be bothered by the crowds, and so he could analyze every play.
“So football, that was his thing,” said Knight, now basketball coach at Marian University, “and that’s why I tell people ‘Dad would be so jacked right now with what they’re doing,’ because that was his main deal.”
Bob Knight was close friends with Indiana football coach Bill Mallory, who was at IU for 13 seasons. And Bob Knight wasn’t just close friends with legendary NFL coach Bill Parcells and his brothers Don and Doug, they were like brothers to him, Knight said.
When Knight was an assistant coach under his dad, he loved how much his dad loved football because practices were always over early on Sundays so Bob Knight could go home and watch whatever team Parcells was coaching at the time.
“He would have had the biggest kick out of seeing this with Indiana football because he really loved coach Mallory,” Knight said. “He would have gotten a huge kick out of it.”
‘Dad begged him not to get rid of coach Mallory’
Bob Knight didn’t just like Mallory as a friend, he admired him as a coach for what he had accomplished with the Indiana football program.
From 1984 to 1996, Mallory became the program’s all-time winningest coach with 69 wins, 77 losses and 3 ties. He led the Hoosiers to six bowl games and impressive wins over Michigan and Ohio State.
Needless to say, says Knight, his dad didn’t like what happened at some “bull(crap) cocktail thing” with Indiana University alumni — the kind of stuff he hated anyway, the mingling, the hobnobbing — when president Myles Brand walked up and told him something on the sly.
Hey, you know, we’re thinking of getting rid of Bill Mallory.
“And my dad was like, ‘That’s the biggest mistake you can make, because that guy’s the one guy that’s been able to turn this thing around and keep it consistent,'” Knight said. “My dad begged him not to get rid of coach Mallory.”
The IU brass didn’t listen to Bob Knight and mid-season 1996 on Halloween day, Mallory was fired.
“And, you know,” Knight said, “it really hasn’t been the same since they got rid of coach Mallory.”
Not until a guy named Curt Cignetti came onto the scene.
‘We never thought Indiana football would get to this level’
Bob Knight died Nov. 1, 2023. Cignetti was hired by Indiana 29 days later. Bob Knight never got to see IU football return to glory. Pat Knight said his dad always rooted for that, but he knew how tough it had been for Mallory, even with his success, and for other IU coaches.
“My dad and I always talked about it’s such a hard job being the Indiana football coach because you couldn’t out-recruit Michigan. You couldn’t out-recruit Ohio State,” Knight said. “They could come down into your state and get your kids.”
Knight hears a lot of grumbling about NIL. “Everyone complains about it. And I think that’s what’s evened the playing fields now. It started with NIL, but no one ever knew that was coming, so we never thought, honestly, Indiana football would get to this level.”
As a former IU basketball player and assistant coach for two years, like his father, Knight has kept close tabs on his football counterparts through the years. And he sees striking similarities between his dad and Cignetti as coaches.
“I just see a lot of what my dad did because for IU to do this, I don’t think people understand how hard it is,” Knight said. “And it starts from above. I mean you got to have a guy that really hates losing more than he likes winning.”
Knight also has noticed that Cignetti doesn’t rest on good games, even on great ones. There is no perfect game. That was Bob Knight’s mantra.
“Even when you have a good game, and this is how my dad was and, obviously, this is how coach Cignetti is, they say, ‘Alright, you had a good game.’ They’re still going to tell you what you did wrong,” Knight said. “You’ve got to have a guy that’s going to stay on your ass and be relentless.
“That’s the thing that gets overlooked, and it’s a rare deal to have somebody like that. And you’ve got that in Cignetti, just like my dad.”
‘This football team, they are focused’
Take the last time Indiana was making national headlines for an undefeated team going for a national title. That was in 1976 when IU basketball went 32-0 and ousted Michigan in the national championship.
Going into that 1975-76 season, Knight says his dad wasn’t standing for anything less than a national title, especially coming off what his team had accomplished the season before.
That team went 31-1, 18-0 in the Big Ten and were conference champions before losing star Scott May to a broken arm then losing to Kentucky in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.
“My dad went in, told the guys that the season would pretty much be a failure if you didn’t win the national championship,” Knight said. “So, they went into that year expecting to win it. Everybody talks about, as coaches we all talk about that. But that was their goal. It wasn’t just to have a good year. It was to win the national championship.”
And to do that, it takes both sides of the ball. Bob Knight had a familiar quip: “You can’t win a championship without a defense.”
“Defense is a huge deal. The 1976 team, (Quinn) Buckner, (Bobby) Wilkerson were probably the two best defending guards. And now I think IU’s defense for football gets overlooked,” Knight said. “And I get it because you’ve got probably the best quarterback in the country, but God, their defense is unbelievable.”
Instead of cartoons when he was little, Knight grew up watching the 1976 NCAA men’s basketball championship games on old Beta tapes down in the family basement.
“I watched that tape a hundred times, you know, people had Spider-Man and Superman. I had the ’76 team growing up. That’s all my dad talked about, just hearing him talk about that group,” Knight said. “And now you see this (football) team and it reminds me a lot of ’76.”
He points to great leaders in Cignetti and quarterback Fernando Mendoza, a team that’s bought in, and “there is no bull(crap) to this football team. I mean, they are focused, the toughness. People say this is hokey stuff, but it still works. It works.”
Knight loves how this Indiana football run has brought a state together. He was barely 6 years old when IU basketball went on its magical run. But he remembers the electricity of the Hoosier nation and the joy it seemed to bring the fans.
“It’s pretty cool for me, from growing up and hearing the stories and being around those ’76 guys, to get to see another group do it,” Knight said, “that’s really cool.”
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: [email protected].
