The new guy

 The man comes with a ready-to-serve nickname. Let's start there this morning.

An hour, maybe two, after Indiana announced it had plucked Curt Cignetti from the litter as its new football coach, folks were already calling him "Coach Cig." So that's something, right?

Why, you can already hear the puns coming, about how IU hired itself a Marlboro Man, and what a Lucky Strike that is. And forget any and all No Smoking ordinances, because it won't be long before Coach Cig has the Hoosiers smokin'.

OK, I'll stop.

Let's move on instead to just what sort of coach, and man, is coming to Bloomington to take on the Everest task of making Indiana football matter. His resume certainly suggests he's up to it; Nick Saban put him in charge of recruiting at Alabama back in the day, and as a head coach he's won everywhere he's been. And usually quickly.

He comes to B-town from James Madison, where he's 52-9 and has the Dukes at 11-1 in their first Division I season. Even got College Gameday to come to campus, a heck of a feat for a school of 20,000 undergrads located in Harrisonburg, Va.

Coach Cig's reputation for making chicken salad out of chicken poo was already well-established by then. He took an Indiana (Pa.) program that had lost 11 of its previous 14 conference games and immediately won 11 of 14. Then he went to Elon, where a program that was 9-37 in its previous four seasons went 8-4 in Cignetti's first year.

And, yeah, that wasn't the Big Ten, or even D-I. And, yeah, Cignetti's 62 years old. If he's such a hotshot, why has he never coached a big-boy program before now?

Legitimate questions, I suppose. And maybe a needed curb on the enthusiasm that always attends the hiring of a new coach.

That's why you heard the usual "great hire" reactions around the state yesterday, because we are a naturally optimistic species that always wants to believe the best. And if you can't believe it on Day One, when can you?

Well. Here's my contribution to all that: Judge Curt Cignetti not just by his resume, but by who else wanted that resume on their campus.

See, Indiana didn't land a guy no one else was looking at. A lot of people were looking at Cignetti -- including Duke just down the road a piece. The Blue Devils just lost Mike Elko to Texas A&M. Texas A&M. And looking for someone comparable, a lot of people around Durham were looking at the guy from little old James Madison.

What's that tell you, aside from the fact Indiana didn't for once settle?

Look. No one's laboring under any illusions here, Hiring Day giddiness notwithstanding. Cignetti's taking over a big-time program for the first time, and it's a big-time program buried under so many layers of mediocrity it would frustrate the most diligent archaeologist. So miracles need not apply

However.

However, the fact Indiana landed Cignetti, and a lot of others didn't, hints that maybe the school is finally going to get serious about football. So does the NIL money it's reportedly gotten its supporters to ramp up, because that's a big part of the deal now in college football. Money talks; BS walks out through the transfer portal.

In any event, all of this -- hiring Cignetti; sweetening the NIL pot -- at least whispers commitment. And that's something.

Right?