{"id":860436,"date":"2026-04-08T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/860436\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T07:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T07:00:35","slug":"imagine-having-both-curt-cignetti-and-dusty-may-couldve-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/860436\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagine having both Curt Cignetti and Dusty May. Could\u2019ve happened!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Until Saturday Newsletter \ud83c\udfc8\u00a0| This is The Athletic\u2019s college football newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive Until Saturday directly in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Hello. It\u2019s no longer March. I guess this is a college football newsletter again. But first:<\/p>\n

This Is April: If you can win at FAU, you can win anywhere<\/p>\n

On Nov. 30, 2023, Indiana gave JMU\u2019s Curt Cignetti the callup. It\u2019d become arguably college football\u2019s most\u00a0impactful<\/a>\u00a0hire of the last century, at least outside of Alabama.<\/p>\n

About three months after hiring Cignetti, the Hoosiers made another coaching decision\u00a0\u2014 retaining MBB coach Mike Woodson for another year after missing the 2024 men\u2019s tournament \u2014\u00a0that\u2019d go from debatable to enormous. It won\u2019t end up being as sport-changing as their football move (because almost nothing could be), but it\u2019s already created a wild alternate reality.<\/p>\n

What if Indiana, instead of bringing back Woodson, brought home\u00a0local native and Hoosier alumnus<\/a>\u00a0Dusty May, who\u2019d taken FAU (FAU!) to 2023\u2019s Final Four? Despite being mentored by Bob Knight, he\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0throw furniture. He was right there.<\/p>\n

Imagine the Hoosiers having both Cignetti and May right now.\u00a0Maybe May\u2019s hypothetical Hoosiers could\u2019ve signed UConn hero Braylon Mullins,\u00a0Indiana\u2019s top high school player last year<\/a>. Then maybe taken Michigan\u2019s place last night, winning the national title. In Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

But by the time Indiana was interested in May,\u00a0it was a year too late<\/a>, at least for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Michigan\u2019s gain, and what a gain.\u00a0First championship since 1989, breaking the Big Ten\u2019s drought since 2000 Michigan State.<\/p>\n

May\u2019s Wolverines finished as the\u00a0third-highest-scoring team<\/a> in tournament history, even though they beat UConn in a vision-warping sarcophagus whose left-side-of-your-TV-screen basket was apparently being guarded by gnomes (and also for half the game by Michigan\u2019s Morez Johnson Jr. and company).
\nPer Sports Reference\u2019s SRS metric, they\u2019re the highest-rated team since 2008 Kansas. In Ken Pomeroy\u2019s ratings since 2002, no other squad has ever been this much better than the average team from its season.
\nThese Wolverines were so dominant throughout that, when paired with last night\u2019s dismal scoring environment,\u00a0it sort of ruined the end of the tourney<\/a>. Not that Michigan will ever care, or should.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the lesson of Michigan hiring May and Indiana hiring Cignetti?<\/p>\n

Hire overachievers, first of all. Not just coaches who inherited machines and kept them rolling, and not just those who\u2019ve worked for guys you\u2019ve heard of. Rather, I\u2019d look for those who\u2019ve turned little things into big things.<\/p>\n

No Michigan championship could ever remotely compare to what Cignetti accomplished (though May inheriting an 8-24 team and\u00a0quickly portaling it<\/a>\u00a0into this behemoth in two years is of course amazing).\u00a0But you know which turnaround was comparable to Cignetti\u2019s championship? May\u2019s FAU, which fell two points shy of a title shot despite having vastly, vastly fewer resources than the Big Ten\u2019s Hoosiers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen May got his first head-coaching job at FAU in 2018, it was unimaginable that he\u2019d be cutting down nets eight years later. He took FAU sight unseen, only to find out\u00a0the program didn\u2019t have a practice gym. His tiny office backed up to a janitor\u2019s closet, and half the time it sounded like a construction zone. When grinding sounds could be heard on the other side of the wall, May would blurt out, \u2018Dental chair.\u2019 The Owls lifted weights in an area so small it looked like a closet, and May had goals installed on the second level of Baldwin Arena in what was once a yoga studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s from CJ Moore\u2019s report on\u00a0leaving the stadium last night alongside May<\/a>. It reminds me of\u00a0this story<\/a>\u00a0on Cignetti\u2019s pre-JMU gigs or\u00a0this story<\/a>\u00a0on those of his JMU successor, Bob Chesney, now at UCLA.<\/p>\n

If you can turn nothing into something, maybe you can turn something into everything.<\/p>\n

More Madness:<\/p>\n

Sunday, UCLA\u2019s women won the school\u2019s first hoops crown since the men\u2019s in 1995. Some might say\u00a0this means the Big Ten has<\/a>\u00a0both basketball titles\u00a0and\u00a0the football title, but we all agree the Bruins are still in the Pac-12, right? Increasingly rare sentence\u00a0about a national champ<\/a>: \u201cSeniors accounted for every point UCLA scored, starting with the two who had been Bruins for their entire college career.\u201d
\nBy Jerry Brewer, the\u00a0best thing I\u2019ve read<\/a>\u00a0about Geno Auriemma\u2019s emotional Friday meltdown against rival Dawn Staley.
\nWomen\u2019s early top 25<\/a>\u00a0for next season, headlined by the return of USC\u2019s JuJu Watkins.\u00a0Men\u2019s rankings<\/a> led by \u2026 Illinois!
\nTwo other new additions to this season\u2019s list of champs: the men\u2019s Division II Gannon (Pa.) Golden Knights and DIII Mary Washington (Va.) Eagles. UMW did it with\u00a0a wild buzzer beater<\/a>.
\nQuick Snaps<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcb0 Everything to know about\u00a0the state of the SEC championship<\/a>\u00a0(and thus all other conference title games as well), now that prominent voices are saying\u00a0the moneymaker\u2019s time is running out.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf00 Revised portal rankings:\u00a0top 20 transfer QBs<\/a>\u00a0for the upcoming season, led by Miami\u2019s aggressive grab of Duke\u2019s Darian Mensah.<\/p>\n

Also,\u00a0the top G6 transfers<\/a>\u00a0heading up to the Power 4, led by Oklahoma State importing North Texas\u2019 roster.<\/p>\n

\u23f0 I would say Uar Bernard is the\u00a0prototypical NFL Draft prospect, but his pro day workout was somehow way more impressive than that. Minor complication: The Nigeria native\u00a0just started learning football<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude10 There\u2019s another White House executive order on college sports, this one attempting to restrict transfers.\u00a0Great news for lawyers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83e\udd14\u00a0James Franklin\u00a0intends\u00a0to be much more involved<\/a>\u00a0in Virginia Tech\u2019s offense than he recently was in Penn State\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc8e\u00a0Diamond time.\u00a0Texas Tech overtakes the top spot in\u00a0our softball rankings<\/a>, while Alabama and Auburn enter our\u00a0baseball top 10<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh Right, Football: Who\u2019ll be this year\u2019s top-10 tumble?<\/p>\n

Almost every football season<\/a>, at least one highly ranked team will end up nowhere near its initial ranking. Last year was special, with a series of slip-ups ranging from preseason No. 2 Penn State beating No. 4 Clemson in the Pinstripe Bowl to No. 17 Kansas State going 6-6.<\/p>\n

(As always, this unpredictability is what makes college football fun, and isn\u2019t any particularly viable argument against the existence of preseason rankings, which are harmless. It\u2019s true.)<\/p>\n

Last offseason, I managed to clock LSU as fraudulent, though I was a believer in Clemson for once, so I deserve no credit. However, the search is on for this year\u2019s most suspicious team that could start in the top 10.<\/p>\n

That search starts with Manny Navarro\u2019s list of\u00a0the biggest questions facing each team<\/a>\u00a0that finished in 2025\u2019s AP Top 25. Yeah, that photo of Kalen DeBoer was a spoiler alert, because this was the part that unsettled me the most:<\/p>\n

Q: Can the Tide get back to being bullies at the line of scrimmage?<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you\u2019ve been hiding under a rock, we\u2019re sure you heard about Alabama\u2019s struggles running the football. Not only did the Crimson Tide swing and miss at landing a premier running back in the portal, but six of their top seven offensive linemen need to be replaced. Six O-linemen were added via the portal, but\u00a0Mississippi State<\/a>\u00a0right tackle Jayvin James was the only Power 4 starter among them. The defensive line will also have several new starters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plenty more here<\/a>, including new QBs all over.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it for today. Be safe, and maybe try to turn an enemy into a friend.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s most-clicked:\u00a0Obviously, it was the post on\u00a0arguably the 20 greatest shots<\/a>\u00a0in March Madness history.<\/p>\n

Love Until Saturday? Check out\u00a0The Athletic\u2019s other newsletters<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Until Saturday Newsletter \ud83c\udfc8\u00a0| This is The Athletic\u2019s college football newsletter. Sign up here to receive Until Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,7,5480,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-860436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mens-college-basketball","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116367801945372680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}