My Two Cents: DeVries Says Indiana’s Football Success ‘Awesome For All of Us’

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana basketball coach Darian DeVries met with the media on Monday, on the eve of his first game against bitter in-state rival Purdue. As always, it’s a huge deal.

But what’s also a big deal this week in Bloomington is everyone celebrating Indiana’s first-ever football national championship. That includes DeVries, who called Curt Cignetti’s 16-0 run to the title “incredible.” He started out his press conference by doling out his congratulations.

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“I want to start off by congratulating the football team on being national champs. What an incredible season that was,” DeVries said. “It was so much fun to watch them compete all year and to finish it off the way they did was very fitting. Again, congratulations. What an awesome, awesome deal.”

Indiana has long been a basketball school, with football simply being a way to pass the time on fall Saturdays until the basketball season rolls around. That’s all changed under Cignetti, with the national spotlight shining on Indiana and Bloomington all year now.

DeVries said the football team’s success is a huge deal for the entire athletic department, and that incudes his basketball team as well.

“I think it’s been awesome, not only for the football program but it’s been awesome of all of athletics and our school and the exposure that it brings,” DeVries said.

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“Even throughout the fall, being able to bring recruits in and having that atmosphere at the football games that we have, it only adds to our ability to recruit and have good recruiting weekends. I think it’s awesome all the way around, and I’m excited about what it does for our program as well.”

DeVries has only been here since last March, so this football stuff is all new to him. So is the rivalry with Purdue. The Boilermakers have been much more of a national contender lately, being ranked No. 1 at one point in four of the last five seasons and reaching the Final Four in 2024, where they lost to Connecticut in the national…

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Publish date : 2026-01-26 21:09:00

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