Indiana Hoosiers defending national champion head coach Curt Cignetti has never been afraid to put a strong take out there, and he did it again after the release of the first edition of the College Football Playoff rankings.

Despite his team being controversially ranked No. 4 – even with an extremely unimpressive resume – Cignetti is not happy with how many SEC teams are ranked highly over teams in the Big 10. He even went as far as to imply there may be some collusion going on with ESPN, who of course, owns the SEC broadcast rights as well as the CFP, and putting up SEC teams higher because of it.

NEW: Indiana's Curt Cignetti on the College Football Playoff rankings:

"SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN, you know, and all their writers that they don’t technically pay, but march to their drum. So, and that’s why you see all these SEC teams up there, you know, and some good… https://t.co/KhBzACvz8t pic.twitter.com/HqOohtctaW

— On3 (@On3) November 5, 2026

Curt Cignetti just COOKED ESPN pic.twitter.com/Yyec3rPo7G

— Kirkwood & Dunn (@KirkwoodandDunn) November 5, 2026

“SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN, you know, and all their writers that they don’t technically pay, but march to their drum,” Cignetti said during his coaches show. “So, and that’s why you see all these SEC teams up there, you know, and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten, not quite as high. But like I said, it’s all going to be it’s all going to be played out on the field.”

Alabama, in particular, shocked a whole lot of folks by being ranked in the top-five despite their ugly loss to Tennessee. But teams like Texas, Ole Miss, Kentucky, Tennessee and LSU all being ranked in the top-15 while teams like Iowa, USC and Oregon sit lower clearly rubbed Cignetti the wrong way.

He is not wrong though and things will certainly all play out on the field, but it remains to be seen which conference will reign supreme this year.