January 20, 2026 • 11 mins
Jon Wilner of The San Jose Mercury News and Wilner Hotline joins Dave Softy Mahler and Dick Fain to talk about Indiana’s National Championship win last night, Head Coach Curt Cignetti’s job, the historic nature of this Hoosiers team and the Big 10’s dominance.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for our weekly Pac twelve conversation with Senos
Mercury News reporter and John Wilner, brought to you by
Simply Seattle. Our friends at simply Seattle dot com have
the most amazing collection of all things Seattle Seahawks gear.
UW had some of the largest selection of Sonnex gear
anywhere in the world. Learn more at simply Seattle dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All right, big thanks to our friends at simply Seattle
dot com. You want to get geared up for Sunday.
By the way, kJ R fifteen for fifteen percent off
anything online. And by the way, every time I've ordered
something from simply Seattle, it's coming to mail like within
a day or two. It's very very fast. I don't
know what they have, like their own mail delivery service
trucks there. It's crazy, man, how good they are. So
(00:40):
jump online tonight, get something for the hot game on
Sunday and use code KJR fifteen for fifteen percent off
anything at simply Seattle dot com. All right here he
is the Pope of the pack, the big ten baron
the prints of prognosticators.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
This guy was fifteen to five.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Guys on the air this year nailing Miami and the
points against Indiana last night. Let's walkome in our friend
John Wilner from the San Jose Mercury News.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
How are you, man, I'm good boy.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
The six o'clock hour on this show is wild.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh yeah, just stick around man until six forty five.
We are fresh out of good ideas, man. We rely
on the audience to get us through. It's crazy. So,
first of all, to you, congrats on a hell of
a year picking games man, seventy five percent fifteen and five,
and like you said to me on text last night,
that just means next year is going to be a
(01:32):
disaster on the air.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
So congratulations, pretty much, pretty much, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Basically got the score of the game.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Last night, right, I had Wow, yep, I had Indiana
winning twenty seven to twenty twenty. Right, and yeah, twenty
seven to twenty one.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Great game.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
I mean it didn't start out like that, but boy,
the second half was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, you're off by a point, so do better next times?
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Right, Well, I will try. I will try.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
John put into words the historic nature of what Kurt
Signetti just accomplished.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Well, I would argue it's the best coaching job, short
term coaching job in the history of American pro college sports.
I mean, you're talking about the school that has lost
more games than any other in college football history.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
What were they?
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Three and nine in twenty twenty three, and in two
years they are not.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Only national champs but sixteen and ZHO. They're the first
sixteen and OH team since Yale in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
And I understand it is a you know, it is
a different error for error era for sure.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
But it is still incredible. He is a phenomenal coach.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
And you know, you think about all the schools that
didn't hire him, was that he was at James Madison
all those years.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, and the only reason he got the Indiana job.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
Two years ago is because really nobody else wanted it
was looked upon as a dead end job. And he
gets in there, and you know, they introduced him at
the basketball game and he says, like, screw Michigan School,
Ohio State, and then they just it's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
You know, Indiana is the last school.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
In major college football to undefeated and the last school
in major college basketball to go undefeated.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Well, your point about Signetti is right on.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I put that on Twitter today that I just don't
get how college football missed on this guy. The guy
was sixty two before he got his first FBS job,
and that was this job in Indiana. So I mean,
I don't know, Man, who's the next Signetti?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Like?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Is there a guy out there?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Is this going to force ads to maybe think outside
the box and hey, if there's a career life for
assistant coach who's in his mid to late fifties, maybe
we give the guy a look.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Well I think so.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
But you know, he's in a way you could argue
he's Kalin de Boor a little bit on steroids, right.
I know he's he's older than Debor, but it's the
similar path. I mean, Debor went, you know, plied his
trade through the ranks, moved, kept winning, kept winning, finally
got a shot at Washington, and Signetti is just that,
(04:05):
you know, times times a couple. But I think that
schools will start to do that. The most interesting pieces.
Signetti worked for Nick Saban, and you think about how
many people on Nick Saban's staff got over the years,
got head coaching jobs and he did not get one
of those opportunities. So he says to himself, you know what,
(04:25):
the only way I'm gonna ever be a head coach
is if I go to Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
And that's how he got his start.
Speaker 6 (04:32):
It's just incredible, John as the playoffs made college more
of a national game instead of a regional game, because
one thing I was noticing watching that game yesterday, I
was like, guys, I know these players because I've watched
them so many times over the last month.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
And that was never the case.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
We used to watch a team in November and then
saw them one time on January first, and that was it.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
I think that that and the portal is helping. And
you know, folks out on the West coast, because of
the realignment, we're getting to see more more players that
are in the Big twelve and in the Big Ten.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I think it's a combination.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
Certainly, four rounds of playoffs helps you kinda start to
learn who these guys are, and then of course by
the next year a lot of them are at different schools.
But I do think that the nationalization. You know, there
were so many years where it was basically the SEC
and Clemson and Ohio State as the or maybe Oklahoma
(05:30):
as the playoff teams and the expansion has done wonders.
I mean, you think about where the game would be
if they had expanded or started at twelve or at
least expanded six or eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Well, should we be talking about you mentioned it?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
They were the first sixteen and OH team, John John
Wilner with US courtesy is simply Seattle dot com first
sixteen and OH teams since Yale, and we'll see more
teams like that, I think because of the playoff, obviously
you got to put that in context. But should we
be talking about this Indiana team as one of the
greatest college football teams of all time?
Speaker 4 (06:04):
I might be in the minority here, but I don't
think so.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I've seen a lot of stuff on social media about
comparing them to twenty nineteen LSU, and I mean I
think LSU would beat the pants off of them.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
It's different era.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
The concentration of talent in the twenty tens and prior
was much greater than it is now. It's so dispersed, right,
I mean LSU was the greatest offensive all time arguably
and had like five or six guys on defense drafted
the first three rounds in the NFL.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
India It's not like that Indiana.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
There's not as many elite players, but there's also not
as many on the teams that they're playing. So I
don't I think they are an incredible team for this era,
and ten years from now we could look back and
say they were the best team of the Portal and
nil era.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
But I don't think you can compare them to you know,
LUs nineteen, Miami one, even Washington nineteen ninety one. You
know those teams I think were better.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
Well, they were the consummate team, but they I didn't
even think they were the most talented team on the
field last year. Last night, you're just looking at NFL
draft picks. But John, what are they saying if the
SEC had a board meeting today? What are they saying
in the SEC boardroom? Now that we have a Big
ten national champion for three straight years with three different
(07:31):
Big ten teams?
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yeah, I think this is the one that is really
should be alarming to the SEC.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
The previous year.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Michigan and Ohio State are the two winningest programs in the.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
History of college football.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
You know, the fact that they won the national championship,
especially Ohio State, to me, did not signify this paradigm shift.
But the fact that Indiana has done it a team
that came from nowhere. Right If the equivalent in the
SEC would be if Mississippi State were winning the national
championship going sixteen to zero. So if I'm the SEC,
(08:07):
this is the thing that scares me the most, plus
my poor playoff performance, and the thing is what.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Do they need to do?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
They need to get more money to fund their roster,
and I think that they need to upgrade their coaching.
To me, the biggest difference between the Big Ten and
the SEC right now is the Big Ten's got better coaching.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
And it's deeper. It's a deeper group of elite coaches.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
And that has gotten even better now that Matt Campbell's
at Penn State and Kyle Whittingham is at Michigan.
Speaker 6 (08:34):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Do we now know when the Big Ten schedules coming out?
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Tuesday?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Tuesday? Okay?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
And it will be very interesting to see.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
I can give you a little bit of a preview
from what I've been able to uncover.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Anything with Washington.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I don't know specifics.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
I don't know specifics about Washington schedule, but I do
know that a lot of the West Coast schools voice
concerns about the unequal preparation time, about how many games
were played against an opponent that was coming off of buy.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
That happened in Washington five times.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
The thing to know about next year's schedule is that
there is only one by week. It's a thirteen Saturday schedule,
not a fourteen Saturday schedule, which means in the Big Ten,
there's only there's half as many opportunities this coming year
to play a team coming off of bye.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
So the Washington's not gonna be in that same position.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Maybe they'll play two teams coming off by is not
going to be five.
Speaker 6 (09:32):
John, I saw the Wall Street Journal program valuations for
college football, and were you surprised to see Washington as
high as they were there at one point one five
billion dollars, the twelfth highest in college football and ahead
of teams like USC and Oregon.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
Little surprised to see him ahead of USC, you know,
And I haven't read the entire methodology full.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Transparency, but I'm assuming that part of that calcul relation
is the media.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
Market, the economic strength of their community, and that dovetails
very well with what Washington's administration has been saying about nil,
which is we got Starbucks, we got Amazon, we got Microsoft.
We have got a wealthy, engaged donor base and a
(10:23):
community that cares. Even though it's a pro market, we
have a community that cares about COEG sports.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
And we should be thriving in this era.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
And I think that a lot of the Journal's methodology
kind of stems from that same place. Washington's got a
lot of value because of where it is and the
business community in Seattle.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
John great stuff man. Awesome job picking games on the
air this week. And if you ever get a hanker
in to maybe predict some NFL or NBA games, just
think of us.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Okay, pal let us know you got it all right.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
John Wilner, Well you bet he went fifteen to five
on the air this year.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Unbelievable run by John Wilner.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Got a break up back to the Hawks Rams next
on ninety three three kJ RFM.
It's time for our weekly Pac twelve conversation with Senos
Mercury News reporter and John Wilner, brought to you by
Simply Seattle. Our friends at simply Seattle dot com have
the most amazing collection of all things Seattle Seahawks gear.
UW had some of the largest selection of Sonnex gear
anywhere in the world. Learn more at simply Seattle dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All right, big thanks to our friends at simply Seattle
dot com. You want to get geared up for Sunday.
By the way, kJ R fifteen for fifteen percent off
anything online. And by the way, every time I've ordered
something from simply Seattle, it's coming to mail like within
a day or two. It's very very fast. I don't
know what they have, like their own mail delivery service
trucks there. It's crazy, man, how good they are. So
(00:40):
jump online tonight, get something for the hot game on
Sunday and use code KJR fifteen for fifteen percent off
anything at simply Seattle dot com. All right here he
is the Pope of the pack, the big ten baron
the prints of prognosticators.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
This guy was fifteen to five.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Guys on the air this year nailing Miami and the
points against Indiana last night. Let's walkome in our friend
John Wilner from the San Jose Mercury News.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
How are you, man, I'm good boy.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
The six o'clock hour on this show is wild.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh yeah, just stick around man until six forty five.
We are fresh out of good ideas, man. We rely
on the audience to get us through. It's crazy. So,
first of all, to you, congrats on a hell of
a year picking games man, seventy five percent fifteen and five,
and like you said to me on text last night,
that just means next year is going to be a
(01:32):
disaster on the air.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
So congratulations, pretty much, pretty much, thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Basically got the score of the game.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
Last night, right, I had Wow, yep, I had Indiana
winning twenty seven to twenty twenty. Right, and yeah, twenty
seven to twenty one.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Great game.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
I mean it didn't start out like that, but boy,
the second half was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, you're off by a point, so do better next times?
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Right, Well, I will try. I will try.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
John put into words the historic nature of what Kurt
Signetti just accomplished.
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Well, I would argue it's the best coaching job, short
term coaching job in the history of American pro college sports.
I mean, you're talking about the school that has lost
more games than any other in college football history.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
What were they?
Speaker 5 (02:21):
Three and nine in twenty twenty three, and in two
years they are not.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Only national champs but sixteen and ZHO. They're the first
sixteen and OH team since Yale in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
And I understand it is a you know, it is
a different error for error era for sure.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
But it is still incredible. He is a phenomenal coach.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
And you know, you think about all the schools that
didn't hire him, was that he was at James Madison
all those years.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, and the only reason he got the Indiana job.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
Two years ago is because really nobody else wanted it
was looked upon as a dead end job. And he
gets in there, and you know, they introduced him at
the basketball game and he says, like, screw Michigan School,
Ohio State, and then they just it's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
You know, Indiana is the last school.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
In major college football to undefeated and the last school
in major college basketball to go undefeated.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Well, your point about Signetti is right on.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I put that on Twitter today that I just don't
get how college football missed on this guy. The guy
was sixty two before he got his first FBS job,
and that was this job in Indiana. So I mean,
I don't know, Man, who's the next Signetti?
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Like?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Is there a guy out there?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Is this going to force ads to maybe think outside
the box and hey, if there's a career life for
assistant coach who's in his mid to late fifties, maybe
we give the guy a look.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Well I think so.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
But you know, he's in a way you could argue
he's Kalin de Boor a little bit on steroids, right.
I know he's he's older than Debor, but it's the
similar path. I mean, Debor went, you know, plied his
trade through the ranks, moved, kept winning, kept winning, finally
got a shot at Washington, and Signetti is just that,
(04:05):
you know, times times a couple. But I think that
schools will start to do that. The most interesting pieces.
Signetti worked for Nick Saban, and you think about how
many people on Nick Saban's staff got over the years,
got head coaching jobs and he did not get one
of those opportunities. So he says to himself, you know what,
(04:25):
the only way I'm gonna ever be a head coach
is if I go to Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
And that's how he got his start.
Speaker 6 (04:32):
It's just incredible, John as the playoffs made college more
of a national game instead of a regional game, because
one thing I was noticing watching that game yesterday, I
was like, guys, I know these players because I've watched
them so many times over the last month.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
And that was never the case.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
We used to watch a team in November and then
saw them one time on January first, and that was it.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
I think that that and the portal is helping. And
you know, folks out on the West coast, because of
the realignment, we're getting to see more more players that
are in the Big twelve and in the Big Ten.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
I think it's a combination.
Speaker 5 (05:09):
Certainly, four rounds of playoffs helps you kinda start to
learn who these guys are, and then of course by
the next year a lot of them are at different schools.
But I do think that the nationalization. You know, there
were so many years where it was basically the SEC
and Clemson and Ohio State as the or maybe Oklahoma
(05:30):
as the playoff teams and the expansion has done wonders.
I mean, you think about where the game would be
if they had expanded or started at twelve or at
least expanded six or eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Well, should we be talking about you mentioned it?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
They were the first sixteen and OH team, John John
Wilner with US courtesy is simply Seattle dot com first
sixteen and OH teams since Yale, and we'll see more
teams like that, I think because of the playoff, obviously
you got to put that in context. But should we
be talking about this Indiana team as one of the
greatest college football teams of all time?
Speaker 4 (06:04):
I might be in the minority here, but I don't
think so.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I've seen a lot of stuff on social media about
comparing them to twenty nineteen LSU, and I mean I
think LSU would beat the pants off of them.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
It's different era.
Speaker 5 (06:18):
The concentration of talent in the twenty tens and prior
was much greater than it is now. It's so dispersed, right,
I mean LSU was the greatest offensive all time arguably
and had like five or six guys on defense drafted
the first three rounds in the NFL.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
India It's not like that Indiana.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
There's not as many elite players, but there's also not
as many on the teams that they're playing. So I
don't I think they are an incredible team for this era,
and ten years from now we could look back and
say they were the best team of the Portal and
nil era.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
But I don't think you can compare them to you know,
LUs nineteen, Miami one, even Washington nineteen ninety one. You
know those teams I think were better.
Speaker 6 (07:07):
Well, they were the consummate team, but they I didn't
even think they were the most talented team on the
field last year. Last night, you're just looking at NFL
draft picks. But John, what are they saying if the
SEC had a board meeting today? What are they saying
in the SEC boardroom? Now that we have a Big
ten national champion for three straight years with three different
(07:31):
Big ten teams?
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yeah, I think this is the one that is really
should be alarming to the SEC.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
The previous year.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Michigan and Ohio State are the two winningest programs in the.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
History of college football.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
You know, the fact that they won the national championship,
especially Ohio State, to me, did not signify this paradigm shift.
But the fact that Indiana has done it a team
that came from nowhere. Right If the equivalent in the
SEC would be if Mississippi State were winning the national
championship going sixteen to zero. So if I'm the SEC,
(08:07):
this is the thing that scares me the most, plus
my poor playoff performance, and the thing is what.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Do they need to do?
Speaker 5 (08:13):
They need to get more money to fund their roster,
and I think that they need to upgrade their coaching.
To me, the biggest difference between the Big Ten and
the SEC right now is the Big Ten's got better coaching.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
And it's deeper. It's a deeper group of elite coaches.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
And that has gotten even better now that Matt Campbell's
at Penn State and Kyle Whittingham is at Michigan.
Speaker 6 (08:34):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Do we now know when the Big Ten schedules coming out?
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Tuesday?
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Tuesday? Okay?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
And it will be very interesting to see.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
I can give you a little bit of a preview
from what I've been able to uncover.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Anything with Washington.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I don't know specifics.
Speaker 5 (08:50):
I don't know specifics about Washington schedule, but I do
know that a lot of the West Coast schools voice
concerns about the unequal preparation time, about how many games
were played against an opponent that was coming off of buy.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
That happened in Washington five times.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
The thing to know about next year's schedule is that
there is only one by week. It's a thirteen Saturday schedule,
not a fourteen Saturday schedule, which means in the Big Ten,
there's only there's half as many opportunities this coming year
to play a team coming off of bye.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
So the Washington's not gonna be in that same position.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
Maybe they'll play two teams coming off by is not
going to be five.
Speaker 6 (09:32):
John, I saw the Wall Street Journal program valuations for
college football, and were you surprised to see Washington as
high as they were there at one point one five
billion dollars, the twelfth highest in college football and ahead
of teams like USC and Oregon.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
Little surprised to see him ahead of USC, you know,
And I haven't read the entire methodology full.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Transparency, but I'm assuming that part of that calcul relation
is the media.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
Market, the economic strength of their community, and that dovetails
very well with what Washington's administration has been saying about nil,
which is we got Starbucks, we got Amazon, we got Microsoft.
We have got a wealthy, engaged donor base and a
(10:23):
community that cares. Even though it's a pro market, we
have a community that cares about COEG sports.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
And we should be thriving in this era.
Speaker 5 (10:32):
And I think that a lot of the Journal's methodology
kind of stems from that same place. Washington's got a
lot of value because of where it is and the
business community in Seattle.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
John great stuff man. Awesome job picking games on the
air this week. And if you ever get a hanker
in to maybe predict some NFL or NBA games, just
think of us.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Okay, pal let us know you got it all right.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
John Wilner, Well you bet he went fifteen to five
on the air this year.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Unbelievable run by John Wilner.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Got a break up back to the Hawks Rams next
on ninety three three kJ RFM.
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