Indiana Football is Earning Spring Commitments!

In recent history, Indiana found itself spinning its wheels on spring commitments. This has changed during the Curt Cignetti Era and continues for the 2026 class.

We need to talk about what Indiana is doing within the 2026 high school recruiting class.

At this point (May 1), the recruiting calendar has not quite hit its peak for the cycle. That usually occurs around late-May and through June. At this same point in the CFB calendar, Indiana has/had received the following number of verbal commitments:

• 2018 (foundational class for Allen Era): 2

• 2019 (ranked 37th nationally): 1

• 2022 (25th): 2

• 2023 (Tom Allen’s final signed class): 3

• 2025 (Cignetti’s first full cycle): 5

• 2026: 6

This is an extremely encouraging sign for high school recruiting at Indiana.

Six commitments, without context, isn’t a particularly impressive number. It ranks tied for 38th in the nation at the moment. USC has a massive 23 commitments right now, while Clemson has 14, Syracuse has 14, and schools like Illinois (13), Iowa State (13), Louisville (13), and Washington (9) are close behind. View the current rankings on 247sports here.

But this is Indiana Football, and because it was Indiana Football, there were several reasons why it never failed to spin its wheels on spring commitments. Whether it was not being prioritized by high-priority recruits, waiting for recruits to be squeezed out of high-level recruiting classes, or simply not building momentum from class to class, Indiana always found itself needing to build its entire recruiting class late in the cycle. Indiana was at a disadvantage that caused it to struggle in making long-term connections within the complex network that is college football recruiting. This was sometimes overcome in the form of highly rated classes in response to on-field success, but the meat of those classes rarely panned out, and by the end of the Tom Allen Era, the Hoosiers were really reaching, which was evident in the evaluation of the nearly complete 2024 class that Curt Cignetti and his staff immediately trimmed down in December 2023. Two of those non-Cignetti recruits have also hit the portal since signing.