The Indiana coach pointed to the SEC's 10 teams in the initial College Football Playoff rankings compared to six from the Big Ten.
Indiana is on a bye week, but Curt Cignetti found plenty to talk about anyway. On his weekly radio show at Yogi's in Bloomington alongside Voice of the Hoosiers Don Fischer, the coach went after ESPN over what he sees as blatant SEC bias in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season.
The numbers he's citing are real: the initial rankings included 10 SEC teams against just six from the Big Ten, even with Indiana itself sitting at No. 4. That ranking drew its own share of criticism from college football media, but Cignetti wasn't interested in defending his team's spot. He was interested in going after the people doing the ranking.
"Come on," Cignetti said, laughing. "These people, and there's a whole bunch of 'em, they march out of the tent and they're given instructions on what to say and they follow the company line, right? And I don't need to go any further." He added that the SEC "gets a lot of love from ESPN" and its writers.
Indiana, the defending champion, returns from its bye looking to keep building its case regardless of who's doing the counting.