CHARLOTTE — With an ever-changing college football landscape, coaches around the country are trying to wrap their heads around how to lead, recruit and retain talent in an era of the sport dominated by the transfer portal and NIL money.
Indiana is serving as a model with Curt Cignetti’s No. 1 Hoosiers are preparing to face the No. 10 Miami Hurricanes in the College Football Playoff national championship game in Miami Gardens, Florida, on Monday. So as coaches at the American Football Coaches Association Convention this week contemplated the changing dynamics of the sport, I polled their CFP title game predictions.
In all, I asked 25 coaches from across the country and across divisions who they think will win Monday’s national championship game, and 22 of them picked Indiana. Just three picked Miami.
“You show me a more disciplined team?” a Power 4 assistant coach told me. “What Cignetti is doing is what we all want. They’re mean. They’re disciplined. They’re robots. Can I say murder robots? They’re football murder bots.”
(Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
Cignetti filled his roster with veterans, players who not just played a lot of football but also started wherever they were prior to arriving in Bloomington. He “dropped” into the Group of 6, as well as picking up good players on losing teams the year before to help flip his roster in 2024 — and again in 2025. The resources at Indiana are now widely known, and they are considerable with the country’s largest living alumni base. With them, Cignetti’s team is one win away from winning the national championship.
But Indiana’s opponent, Miami, ain’t no rags-to-riches story. “The U” is flush with cash, and has been since Howard Schnellenberger took over Coral Gables, Florida to coach ball more than 40 years ago. And they’ve made considerable additions via the transfer portal this season — chief among them former Georgia QB Carson Beck — while also winning in high school recruiting with dynamo freshman and Hurricanes wide receiver Malachi Toney.
For some folks, the game feels like a fair fight. But as I worked my way through the crush of coaches ranging from grad assistants in their first years on the job at Division III schools like George Fox and former Virginia Tech offensive coordinator Philip Montgomery, I asked coaches from across the country and across divisions who they thought would win the Monday’s title game.
[The Big Picture: Indiana Looks Unstoppable Ahead of CFP Title Game]
Next to eight bulletin boards covered with resumes from coaches looking for the next job, one who very much had his “for now and would like to keep it for a while yet” told me he was going with Indiana.
Another Power 4 assistant coach picked Miami knowing Indiana could become the first team to finish its season 16-0 since Yale accomplished the feat 132 years ago.
“Because I saw that 1894 stat, and I just don’t want it to be Indiana,” he told me.
(Photo by CFP/Getty Images)
Four coaches later admitted to me that Indiana’s 56-22 demolition of No. 5 Oregon convinced them that the Hoosiers simply don’t have a weakness they feel an offense or defense can exploit.
“The [Indiana] quarterback feels it and then makes the right decision all the doggone time,” an FCS defensive coordinator told me.
“Miami’s defensive line looks like what everyone says they are,” Central Missouri running backs coach Jamal Morrow told me, “but Carson Beck might have to play the game of his life on offense.”
[2025 CFP Title Odds: Indiana Favored Over Miami in National Championship]
“Bro,” Shorter offensive line coach Keith Otis said to me, “their O-line is as fundamentally sound and well-coached as any I’ve seen, and Fernando Mendoza puts that ball right where it’s supposed to go.”
Mendoza, the Heisman winner, is the fourth-consecutive transfer QB to win the stiff-armed trophy and seventh in nine years. Given the kind of popularity and positive effect on ticket sales as well as applications for enrollment Heisman winners and national championship teams have experienced in the past, I would not expect any coaches’ concerns about the transient nature of the sport will dissipate or be regulated in the short term.
The attitude many have taken is simply to coach and recruit through it.
RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him @RJ_Young.
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