By Mike London
Salisbury Post
SALISBURY — If you’ve been struggling to figure out who to cheer for in Monday night’s college football national championship game, there are a lot of reasons to choose Indiana.
Indiana has the local connections, at least three of them.
Indiana was a wild, feel-good story last year as the Hoosiers rose to prominence under head coach Curt Cignetti, who was guiding Division II IUP just 10 years ago. IUP was a springboard for the coach to Elon, and then an FCS national title at James Madison, and then Indiana, where he’s been doing things not many people believed were possible to do at Indiana.
The Hoosiers have been a totally dominant, undefeated team this year and have train-wrecked Alabama and Oregon in the playoffs. No one has gone 16-0 in a college football season since Yale did it in 1894, but Indiana has a chance to do that.
It’s hard to visualize Miami, once serious bullies in the college football world, as underdogs, but the Hurricanes (13-2) definitely are. They’re a 10-seed and they barely got into the playoff. Miami’s defensive coordinator is Corey Hetherman, a former coordinator for Cignetti at James Madison.
Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines is the brother of Catawba head coach Tyler Haines. They grew up bashing each other in the backyard in blue-collar Piqua, Ohio. Tyler was instrumental in helping his brother get into the coaching ranks after Bryant had a fine playing career at Ball State.
Bryant Haines has been the right-hand man for Cignetti for a while now, and was one of the six assistants who made the move with him from James Madison to Indiana.
Grant Cain played defensive back for the Indians during great seasons for Catawba in the David Bennett era. Cain was a team captain in 2001 when Catawba played in the national semifinals.
Cain launched a coaching career at Catawba as a defensive analyst for Chip Hester, who followed Bennett as head coach of the Indians. Cain moved on to coach at Coastal Carolina and Mercer before he was hired by Cignetti to join his staff at James Madison.
Cain is the tight ends coach for Indiana, but his biggest impact probably is as the Hoosiers’ special teams coach. Wherever Cain goes, his teams block an extraordinary number of kicks. If Indiana blocks a kick against Miami, Cain will have had a hand in it. It’s something to watch for.
Then there’s Elijah “Waffle House” Sarratt, Indiana’s big-time receiver. The 6-foot-2 star is the son of Donnie Sarratt, who came from West Charlotte to play football for Catawba in the early 1990s.
Sarratt had two touchdown catches in the Oregon game and has 62 catches for 802 yards and 15 touchdowns for the season. He leads the nation in touchdown catches.
Donnie Sarratt gave his son the “Waffle House” nickname because like the popular, no-frills restaurant, he’s always open.
Sarratt is a certain high draft pick this year, but he was a guy with no fanfare or acclaim coming out of high school in Virginia. He played his first college ball for St. Francis (Pa.)— yes, St Francis — before transferring to James Madison. Then he made the move to Indiana with Cignetti.
You can cheer for Haines, Cain and Waffle House on Monday at 7:30 p.m. The game will be played at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium and will be broadcast by ESPN.
