BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Neal Brown called the job Curt Cignetti has done at Indiana the most impressive coaching job he has seen in his lifetime, in any sport, four days before Brown’s North Texas Mean Green open the season against the defending national champion Indiana Hoosiers. Kickoff at Memorial Stadium is 11 a.m. CT Saturday on FOX.
Saturday is Brown’s first game as North Texas coach after the school hired him on Dec. 2. He made the comment Tuesday at his weekly press conference in Denton. Brown grew up in Danville, Ky., and played wide receiver at Kentucky from 1998 to 2000 before finishing his career at UMass.
“I think it’s the most impressive coaching job in any of the major sports, at least in my lifetime,” Brown said. “It’s the most impressive coaching job. I grew up in the state next door and saw Kentucky and Indiana play several times in football, obviously because of the geographic, how close, even at West Virginia. And so I don’t mean this lightly. I think it’s the single most impressive coaching job in any of the professional sports or the major sports at the collegiate level that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Curt Cignetti At Indiana
Cignetti took the Indiana job before the 2024 season after five years at James Madison, including the program’s first two seasons at the FBS level. Indiana had three winning seasons between 1995 and 2023, according to FOX59.
In Cignetti’s first season the Hoosiers went 11-2 and reached the College Football Playoff, where they lost to Notre Dame. In his second they went 16-0, beat Ohio State 13-10 in the Big Ten championship game on Dec. 6, and beat Miami 27-21 in the national title game on Jan. 19 for the program’s first national championship. His record in Bloomington is 27-2.
A school-record eight Hoosiers were selected in April’s NFL draft, including quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner, at No. 1 overall. Cignetti is on the cover of the Deluxe Edition of EA Sports’ College Football 27, according to the Denton Record-Chronicle.
Indiana opens the season ranked No. 6 in the AP poll. Before Saturday’s kickoff, the school will unveil permanent national championship signage inside Memorial Stadium, with an Air Force flyover scheduled as part of the pregame program, according to The Daily Hoosier.
A Former TCU Quarterback Starts For Indiana
Indiana’s starting quarterback Saturday is Josh Hoover, who spent four seasons at TCU and transferred to Indiana in January. Hoover is from Heath, Texas, played at Rockwall-Heath High School, and won the 2021 Landry Award as the top high school player in Dallas-Fort Worth.
At TCU, Hoover completed 771-of-1,183 passes for 9,629 yards, 71 touchdowns, and 33 interceptions in 36 games. His 3,949 passing yards in 2024 set the school single-season record. In 2025, he threw for 3,472 yards, 29 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions in 12 games.
Hoover is the third transfer quarterback in three seasons to open the year as Indiana’s starter, after Kurtis Rourke in 2024 and Mendoza in 2025. He originally committed to Indiana in June 2021 as a high school junior before flipping to TCU that December.
Neal Brown’s Path To Denton
Brown is 72-51 in 10 seasons as an FBS head coach. He went 35-16 at Troy from 2015 to 2018 and won the 2017 Sun Belt title, then went 37-35 in six seasons at West Virginia before the school fired him in December 2024. He spent the 2025 season on Steve Sarkisian’s staff at Texas.
Brown replaced Eric Morris, who left for Oklahoma State after a 12-2 season in which North Texas played for the American Conference title and won the New Mexico Bowl. North Texas returns zero starters from that team and brought in 70 newcomers.
Brown has been in this position as a head coach 10 times before, and he said this opener is different from the others.
“I think it’s huge for the university,” Brown said. “I think it goes bigger than just our football program. It’s a huge opportunity for the entire UNT community. It’s huge for our athletic department. And it’s great exposure for our football program. The fact that we’re playing in this time slot on this network versus this opponent, these opportunities don’t come along very often. And so regardless of what happens, we’ve got to embrace it and we’ve got to truly enjoy this. But I do think this is a moment that is a long time coming for this university in this type of setting.”
Indiana is paying North Texas a $1.2 million guarantee for the game, according to a contract obtained by FBSchedules.com. The teams have met twice, with North Texas winning 24-21 in Denton in 2011 and Indiana winning 49-24 in Bloomington in 2014.
FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame show airs from Bloomington ahead of the game. The radio call is on 1190 AM and The Varsity Network.
