“We sat through so many dreadful Saturdays,” Benner said. “Tom Allen had one good year, and then the COVID year, and then it turned again. A year ago, we were playing Rutgers on a beautiful homecoming Saturday, good crowd, and then we got crunched [31-14], and all the students left at halftime.

“Was it ever going to change?”

Benner had the task of accompanying Cignetti at Big Ten football media days in late July in Indianapolis. “He had more swagger and moxie than anyone I’ve met, and that covers a lot of sports people,” Benner said.

Then came the second game vs. Western Illinois: “It was 42-3, something like that, and there were a couple of plays Cignetti didn’t like, and he called a timeout and just chewed them out big time.”

High standards … even in mismatches (77-3 was the final).

“Bill Mallory was here for 13 seasons; hard-nosed guy, good coach,” Fischer said. “His last winning season was 1994, and then he was fired a couple years later. And from ‘95 to 2006, we didn’t have a winning season.