Breaking news: The Indiana head coach has landed QB 5-star defensive player from Florida state due to…
Davion Chandler has lived in Indianapolis his entire life and has played football since he was 5 years old.
But it wasn’t until just a few years ago that the three-star wide receiver in the Class of 2025 learned a fun fact about his home state’s largest university.
“This might sound crazy,” Chandler, 17, said, “but this really puts it into perspective … I didn’t know IU had a football team until my freshman year of high schoo
Then when I found out), that was probably one of the first places I knew, ‘Yeah, I’m not going there.’ That was the crazy thing about it.”
For most of Chandler’s life — and decades prior — the Hoosiers have been largely irrelevant, with only three winning seasons since 2000 and only one season with more than eight wins since 1945.
But Chandler became intrigued when Indiana hired Curt Cignetti away from James Madison following the 2023 season and started to research the brash coach who all but guaranteed that he’d win big in Bloomington. In February, Chandler visited IU for the first time and in June, he flipped his commitment from Illinois to Indiana.
“When I saw Coach Cig’s resume, it really made me think, ‘Oh this guy’s for real,’” Chandler said. “I knew things could change. And then when I just got up there and met Coach Cig and just saw how confident he was in what he was going to do, it really was a no-brainer.”
Now, he and his fellow IU commits are basking in the fun of watching Cignetti’s vision come to life with No. 8 Indiana sitting at 9-0 for the first time in program history as this year’s college football darling.
Cignetti and his staff have 20 commitments in a class that ranks No. 53 nationally — and all 20 jumped on board before the start of the 2024 season. The ranking might not equate with a team enjoying so much success on the field, but a program typically starts making inroads in recruiting in the cycle following its breakthrough.
Still, this class’ average player rating of 86.38 is on pace to be the program’s highest since the 2022 cycle. And that average will get a nice bump if the Hoosiers can flip five-star USC quarterback commit Julian Lewis, who is visiting Bloomington this weekend, according to On3’s Steve Wiltfong.
“I’m definitely bought into him coming here,” three-star cornerback Jaylen Bell said. “So we’ll definitely see about that in the
near future.”
