Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers opened Tuesday’s first playoff rankings at No. 4, which would hand them a first-round bye if the season ended today.
Most coaches would take that spot, nod politely, and keep quiet about the network that airs the rankings show.
Cignetti went on his radio show Wednesday night and did the opposite, and the tape from 2023 says he isn’t the first to notice.
Ten SEC Teams Made the Board and the Big Ten Got Six
The committee put Miami, Georgia, Utah, and Indiana in the top four, with Alabama, Kentucky, and Texas right behind them.
Alabama and Texas are both 6-2, and both sit ahead of a UCLA team that hasn’t lost a game all year.
Notre Dame is 7-1 and landed at No. 11, which makes the Irish the last team in the bracket if it were picked today.
By our count, eight of the ten SEC teams in the committee’s top 25 have already lost at least two games.
That list runs from 6-2 Alabama at No. 5 all the way down to 5-3 Florida at No. 24.
The Big Ten has four teams with two or more losses on the board, and the best of them, Ohio State, is parked at No. 12.
Cignetti Says the Script Gets Handed Out in a Tent
When the rankings came up on his show, a laughing Cignetti fired back with two words: “Come on.”
“These people, and there’s a whole bunch of them, they march out of the tent and they’re given instructions on what to say and they follow the company line,” he said. “And I don’t need to go any further.”
He never named a single on-air personality, which left every analyst in Bristol free to wonder if he meant them.
Then he got specific about who he thinks is handing out the instructions.
“SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN and all their writers that they don’t technically pay but march to their drum,” Cignetti said. “And that’s why you see all these SEC teams up there and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high.”
ESPN carries SEC, ACC, and Big 12 football, owns the playoff rights, and has no broadcast deal with the Big Ten at all.
Later that night, Cignetti went to X and posted, “Facts are stubborn things.”
The stubborn fact he left out is that Indiana is 0-1 against teams in the committee’s own top 25.
Kirk Herbstreit Already Ran This Play in 2023
Florida State went 13-0 and won the ACC in 2023, and the committee still picked 12-1 Alabama over the Seminoles.
On Nov. 18 that season, hours before quarterback Jordan Travis broke his leg, Kirk Herbstreit pointed at the FSU logo on College GameDay and called the Noles “debatable.”
When the field came out, Herbstreit told the selection show audience, “You have to give Alabama the nod.”
Ten days later, he answered an FSU fan on social media with “Because Alabama is BETTER!!”
Seminoles fans who still have Dec. 3, 2023 circled have called it an ESPN and SEC arrangement ever since, and Herbstreit has brushed that off as conspiracy theory.
A year later, he pointed to a Final Four of Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, and Texas as proof the network’s SEC love was overblown.
Even Finebaum Can’t Make It Add Up
The pushback this week isn’t just coming from Bloomington, because Paul Finebaum, the SEC’s loudest voice on ESPN’s payroll, called it “about as discombobulated a ranking as I’ve ever seen.”
Fans have piled into Cignetti’s corner online, cheering a coach for saying out loud what they think the rest of the profession won’t.
Cignetti still closed with the line every coach keeps in his back pocket: “But like I said, it’s all gonna be played out on the field.”
Three Two-Loss SEC Teams Cracked the Top 10 and the Big Ten Got Zero
What should have the whole Big Ten fired up isn’t Indiana at No. 4, it’s that the committee found top-10 room for three 6-2 SEC teams and none for a two-loss Big Ten team.
Alabama is fifth, Texas is seventh, and Ole Miss is tenth, while 6-2 Ohio State waits at twelfth.
By our math, the six 6-2 SEC teams on the board average a ranking of about 11, while the two 6-2 Big Ten teams average 15.5.
That’s 2023 all over again with a bigger bracket, because an unbeaten team is once more sitting behind SEC teams with worse records, and only the 12-team field is keeping UCLA safe.
Sure, Indiana hasn’t beaten anybody the committee ranks, but Cignetti’s gripe was never about his own seat, it was about Ohio State and Iowa getting less credit than SEC teams with the same record.
Saturday sends Alabama to LSU, Texas to Missouri, and Kentucky to Tennessee, so the SEC’s two-loss traffic jam is about to start running into itself.
With ESPN’s own Finebaum calling the board a mess and the next reveal airing Tuesday on the same network, this fight is nowhere near done.
Cignetti is the one on the hook now, because a coach who calls out the network that airs the rankings had better keep winning to hold onto that bye.
The SEC can keep the studio love, since the last three national title trophies all went home to the Big Ten.
Sources:
- David Ubben, “Indiana’s Curt Cignetti takes aim at CFP rankings: ‘SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN’,” The Athletic, November 4, 2026.
- College Football Playoff, “CFP Selection Committee Releases First Rankings of 2026,” CollegeFootballPlayoff.com, November 3, 2026.
- Stan Becton, “Miami, Georgia lead the first College Football Playoff rankings of 2026,” NCAA.com, November 4, 2026.
- News9, “Miami tops initial College Football Playoff rankings as committee raises eyebrows,” News9.com, November 5, 2026.
- Yahoo Sports, “Week 10 has a ton of ranked games,” Yahoo Sports, November 4, 2026.
- Awful Announcing, “Curt Cignetti accuses ESPN talent of following ‘the company line’ on SEC in CFP rankings,” Awful Announcing, November 6, 2026.
- The Spun, “Curt Cignetti Accuses ESPN Of Having A Major SEC Bias,” Yahoo Sports, November 5, 2026.
- Pro Football Network, “Fans Back Curt Cignetti for Calling Out CFP Rankings, ESPN’s SEC Favoritism,” Pro Football Network, November 6, 2026.
- Awful Announcing, “Kirk Herbstreit lobbied for Alabama over Florida State before Travis injury,” Awful Announcing, December 2023.
- Awful Announcing, “Kirk Herbstreit returns to Tallahassee for Florida State-Miami,” Awful Announcing, date to confirm.
- Kade Kimble, “ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit Goes Off on Florida State Fan in Twitter Tirade,” Sports Illustrated (NoleGameday), December 2023.
- Kade Kimble, “ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit Plays Victim Over Backlash From Florida State’s Fanbase,” Sports Illustrated (NoleGameday), December 2023.
- Sportskeeda, “Kirk Herbstreit addresses ESPN’s alleged SEC bias,” Sportskeeda, date to confirm.
- Sports With Balls, count of SEC and Big Ten teams with two or more losses in the Nov. 3 CFP top 25, compiled from the official College Football Playoff rankings release, November 6, 2026.
- Sports With Balls, count of two-loss teams by conference in the CFP top 10 and average ranking of 6-2 SEC and Big Ten teams, compiled from the official College Football Playoff rankings release, November 6, 2026.
