Longtime IU beat writers Mike Niziolek and Zach Osterman take readers inside Curt Cignetti’s historic turnaround with Indiana football, in an upcoming release from Triumph Books, “Unthinkable to Unstoppable: How Curt Cignetti and the Indiana Hoosiers Stunned College Football.”
Cignetti wasted no time provoking IU’s century-old rival, declaring his first night on the job that “Purdue sucks.” He would follow that bold statement by redefining the rivalry itself, beginning with a historic Old Oaken Bucket game victory in 2024.
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Long before then, old Hoosiers — with an unexpected assist from at least one Boilermaker — helped new ones understand how important it was to beat Purdue.
(Excerpt edited for length and clarity. Some text has been changed slightly to adhere to USA TODAY Co. guidelines regarding off-color language.)
One day, during the spring semester after Cignetti arrived at Indiana, linebackers Aiden Fisher and Isaiah Jones were hanging out on IU’s campus when they ran into one of their counterparts from Purdue.
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He wasn’t familiar to Fisher, who transferred to IU the previous December. But the Purdue player, a fellow linebacker visiting friends in Bloomington, knew of Fisher.
The IU-Purdue rivalry was fresh to Fisher then. A Virginia native, he’d played his entire college career to that point in Harrisonburg. Having just transitioned from the FCS to the Sun Belt Conference, the Dukes didn’t have a historic rival. The league tried pairing them with Coastal Carolina, but James Madison beat the Chanticleers badly in each of their first two matchups. It neither felt competitively nor geographically like a rivalry.
When he arrived in Bloomington, Fisher quickly recognized Indiana would be different.
The Hoosiers had been playing Purdue since 1891. The two schools sat diametrically opposed—IU, originally founded as a seminary before evolving into a liberal arts school, and Purdue, a mathematics and engineering hub of the Midwest. The Big Ten protected the rivalry in scheduling. The Hoosiers and Boilermakers played for the Old Oaken Bucket, one of the conference’s oldest trophies. The rivalry is so heated, it’s even been stolen.
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Players like sixth-year center Mike Katic made a point of emphasizing the importance of beating Purdue to all their new teammates. When they talked, Fisher listened. Now, he was about to experience the rivalry for himself. What began as friendly banter got under Fisher’s skin when his newfound rival suggested the JMU transfer’s accomplishments in the Sun Belt had come against a league of “plumbers.”
“You would have thought they had just won the national championship the year before, the way he was talking to us,” Fisher said. “I was able to use that.”
From that moment forward, Fisher had no trouble embracing one of Indiana football’s oldest and proudest traditions. Nor would any of his new teammates as they started the most-dominant two-year stretch for Indiana in the rivalry’s history.
Even as the Hoosiers climbed steadily above their historical station across the last two seasons, they learned to a man the importance of one of the core pillars of IU football.
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“When I came here, you know, I was full-on,” tight end Riley Nowakowski said. “F— Purdue, bro.”
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After Cignetti blasted Purdue during his first day on the job, Katic took it upon himself to indoctrinate his new teammates in the rivalry’s history. Starting with those get-togethers at Katic’s off-campus house, part of welcoming new Hoosiers into the fold was explaining to them what the series meant to Indiana.
“It’s hard having 40 new faces and they don’t understand the Purdue rivalry,” Katic said. “I also wanted to make sure that the Purdue rivalry and our trophy game at Michigan State were very instilled in them.”
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Background did not matter. Katic, a western Pennsylvania native, didn’t grow up in the middle of the rivalry. That didn’t stop him from embracing it—the only game in 2024 after which he lit a celebratory cigar was the Bucket game victory.
Seeking a statement for the selection committee, after its humbling loss the previous week at Ohio State, Indiana steamrolled the Boilermakers in the snow, in what turned out to be Ryan Walters’ last game as Purdue’s head coach.
Quarterback Kurtis Rourke passed for 349 yards and six touchdowns. By contrast, Purdue quarterbacks passed for 54 yards total, and IU forced five Boilermakers turnovers. Ever the taskmaster, Cignetti nearly always found something in his team’s performance to criticize at halftime.
No matter the score, his expectation never wavered. Up 28 at halftime against Purdue, Cignetti made it clear the job wasn’t done. “He was fired up,” Rourke said. “He was like, ‘Let’s stick it to them even more.’ He took that rivalry seriously.”
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Midway through the third quarter, Cignetti dialed up a play reflecting that mindset. With IU facing fourth-and-6 just inside the 50-yard line, Indiana called a fake punt. The decision itself was unorthodox—there was no real need to go for it on fourth down up 38—but that wasn’t even what made the call remarkable. Defensive lineman James Carpenter, a 6’2″, 288-pound defensive tackle, took the direct snap. He rumbled down the left side for an 18-yard gain to extend a drive that ended with another IU touchdown.
“[Cignetti] was, like, ‘We’re doing it,'” Carpenter said of the call. “That was a pretty good moment.”
The experience harkened back to high school for players like linebacker Jailin Walker, who lived the heated rivalry between his Varina program and nearby Highland Springs. Two of the state’s football powerhouses, located outside of Richmond, the Highlanders and Blue Devils play for “Beast of the East” bragging rights and a wrestling-style heavyweight championship belt.
Back in the furnace of a historic rivalry, Walker thrived in his lone Bucket game. He acted as IU’s wrecking ball with a career-high four tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, two pass breakups, three quarterback hurries, and a forced fumble.
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“It was a perfect game,” Walker said. “I had one of the best games of my life.”
The win also proved redemptive for longtime Hoosiers, including Carter Smith, who called the previous year’s Bucket game one of the lowest points of his career. Smith felt responsible for the 35–31 loss that marked the end of Allen’s tenure. He gave up three quarterback hurries, struggling to slow down Purdue defensive ends Nic Scourton and Kydran Jenkins.
“Both guys on the edge were really fast,” Smith told the Herald-Times in 2024. “They eventually figured out my game and we had to switch up so I could get some help from my guard when they were making interior moves.”
Smith wouldn’t need any assistance the following season. He didn’t allow a single quarterback pressure on Rourke over 35 dropbacks—his seventh completely clean game of the year, according to PFF—the Ohio native now living up to the hype that preceded his arrival in Bloomington.
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When he signed in 2022, Smith was among the highest-rated offensive signees in program history. He played his prep football for Ohio powerhouse Olentangy Liberty, near Columbus. The four-star offensive lineman’s list of scholarship offers included Tennessee, Auburn, Nebraska, and Ole Miss. Under offensive line coach Bob Bostad’s tutelage, he would become the top offensive tackle in the Big Ten, starting 41 consecutive games from 2023 to 2025.
Somewhere in the bloodletting, Fisher found his old friend in black and gold, months after that meeting on campus when Fisher took exception to the disrespect for Sun Belt football. They met on the field for one snap. The tenor of the conversation had changed.
“That was the only one when he was talking to me,” Fisher said. “Then I never saw him again.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How a Purdue player surprisingly helped Indiana’s culture-changing dominance in Bucket game
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