Perhaps it's fitting that the story of college football's most amazing turnaround this year should begin on a basketball court last year. That turnaround, after all, belongs to Indiana, and it began just about a year ago, at center court of Indiana's hallowed Assembly Hall.

Curt Cignetti, the Hoosiers' new football coach, was newly hired to take over a program that hadn't won more than eight games in almost 60 years. He shocked the crowd.

"I'm super fired up about this opportunity. I've never taken a back seat to anybody, and don't plan on startin' now! Purdue sucks! But so do Michigan and Ohio State! Go IU!" Cignetti roared at the crowd, his left fist in the air. The Hoosiers faithful had never heard anything quite like it -- at least not as it pertained to their football team.

A coach almost no one other than some college football diehards had ever heard of was then, at that basketball game, in the early stages of captivating a long-suffering fan base. But he was also at the start of lighting a fuse inside a program desperate for an identity -- and a jolt of confidence.

It would all pay off.

Cignetti, the son of a college coach who had spent four years as Nick Saban's recruiting coordinator at Alabama before posting 11 consecutive winning seasons as a small college head coach, was practically dripping with bravado three weeks after that basketball game when a reporter asked him at a signing day news conference about his selling of his vision at Indiana.

"Yeah, it's pretty simple," Cignetti said. "I win. Google me."

Coaches on his staff at say that while that brash persona is definitely Cignetti, don't get it twisted: Cignetti's attitude is about puffing up his players and their fans -- not about his ego.

One of Cignetti's assistants noted how his head coach's "calculated" nature means that whatever he says, he means:

"What I've seen is that he's telling people he had to get this place excited. He knows that he's said things to get people excited. He did it because he knew he needed to set an expectation. Who would come in and say Ohio State and Michigan sucks, after you say Purdue sucks? Only him. To me, that's calculated. That's why we were able to beat Michigan -- because he'd already come in on Day One and said, 'F -- these guys!' You've got to think about what that means to a kid who has never beaten Michigan."

Corey Hetherman, currently Minnesota's defensive coordinator, was Cignetti's DC at James Madison. He agrees.

"I do think that he has (a great feel for what people need at the time). He'll get it to where his guys are confident. Every time we took the field, it didn't matter who we were playing. His message was always very consistent," said Hetherman.

Of course, Cignetti entered the Big Ten just when another strong personality exited the league.

Jim Harbaugh was never one to worry about stepping on anyone's toes either. He actually seemed to relish doing it. Before Harbaugh turned his alma mater into a national champion, he transformed a woeful Stanford squad into a top-five team. And before Harbaugh started winning at Stanford, he wasn't shy about calling out the then-Pac-10's resident king, Pete Carroll, and his USC team.

Harbaugh's players loved it.

Harbaugh, another scion of a big football family and son of a successful coach, could be brash and bold, but he was also incredibly authentic even if a lot of folks didn't always know what to make of him. There are a lot of parallels with the guy looking to take down Harbaugh's hated rival this weekend in Columbus.

The Hoosiers brass is so sold on Cignetti that he was just rewarded an eight-year contract extension that almost doubles the salary he signed for just last year -- up to an average of $8 million per year.

And why not? Cignetti's Hoosiers at 10-0 are No. 5 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings. They will, of course, face their toughest test of the season this Saturday at No. 2 Ohio State, a program that, in their last three meetings, has beaten Indiana by a combined score of 133-24.

Thanks to a big influx of Cignetti's old players from JMU, the Hoosiers have been dominant this season. Indiana has overrun almost everyone it has played this season; only its last game played, against Michigan on Nov. 9, was decided by less than two touchdowns. Indiana's average margin of victory is a Big Ten-leading 30.1 points. Ohio State is next at 27.5. It feels very much like watching Cignetti's former teams crushing opponents in the Colonial Athletic Association and in the Sun Belt Conference; those teams were 52-9.

Cignetti has assembled a mature and focused team. Most of his starters transferred from non-blue blood programs. The Hoosiers have gone from No. 105 in scoring to No. 2. On defense, they've gone from No. 101 to No. 7. Coaches who have worked with Cignetti from as early as his stop at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania note a lot of the same mantras he's harped on with his new team: "Never satisfied." "Play the first play and the last play the same." "Never too high. Never too low."

"He has an air about him," said former NC State offensive coordinator Norm Chow, who coached with Cignetti in 2000, when Cignetti was his tight ends coach (and a recruiting coordinator) and both coached under head coach Chuck Amato. "He was very confident and disciplined. He was loyal."

"I'm really not surprised at all the success that he's having," said Chris Demarest, a defensive backs coach on that Wolfpack staff. "He was serious and very cerebral like he is now. He probably learned how to do things, and how not to do things from all the places he's been. I think his time with Saban was really valuable for him."

Growing up the son of a coach, Cignetti gained a unique perspective on the world of football. His dad, Frank Cignetti Sr., was head coach for four years at West Virginia. Curt Cignetti played at Morgantown High and then served as the backup to star quarterback Oliver Luck; he stayed with the program even after the school fired his father.

"That had to be hard," Luck said. "I do remember him taking a lot of grief from other players, which I think gave him a pretty hard shell."

Luck, who later became West Virginia's athletic director, has tracked his former teammate and what he's done (and how) with the Hoosiers. "He had a little bit of bravado to him back then too. He's got a strong personality, like virtually every other successful coach. He's also got a little bit of a sense of humor too."

"It's messaging. It's brainwashing, and it's important," said one of his assistants at Indiana. "He doesn't let s -- slide. I think a lot of coaches let players slide all over the place or sweep things under the rug. He doesn't.

"Cocky? Yeah, definitely. And he is confident. All these coaches are. Some are just afraid to express themselves. ... He's not worried about what people think about him. He doesn't care how people perceive him. Curt just does his thing."