It’s Week 5 of the college football season, and the Hoosiers are gearing up for their first road test of 2025: a trip to Iowa City. Fresh off their rout of Illinois, Indiana now has to reset quickly and brace for a hostile environment in their second conference game of the season. Kinnick Stadium is notorious for its volume, and this weekend the crowd will be determined to throw Indiana’s offense off balance. That’s where offensive lineman Pat Coogan says preparation becomes non-negotiable.
“It’s a challenge for sure—there’s no doubt about it,” Coogan said Tuesday. “But you got to prepare for it. You got to prepare for it every single day leading up to it. You can’t just turn it on and on Friday expect to be good. You got to prepare for it, and you got to make sure everyone’s tuned into the cadences and all the little things that sometimes you can gloss over when you’re [playing] at home. But now it’s going to be a bigger challenge. So, you got to prepare for it and make sure everyone’s on the same page.”
The have already learned how damaging a hostile crowd can be. Against reigning national champion Ohio State in 2024, Indiana held firm early, but once mistakes started piling up, the noise grew deafening, and the offense never recovered. A similar story played out in South Bend during the College Football Playoff opener. Even though head coach Curt Cignetti downplayed Notre Dame’s crowd earlier this week, the Hoosiers still struggled to find rhythm.
Determined to avoid a repeat, Indiana has been cranking fake crowd noise at practice, forcing the offense to communicate under constant pressure.
“It’s loud. It’s loud and obnoxious and it rings your ears,” Coogan said of the artificial crowd noise. “We had it on for the whole two hours or however long we were out there today. There’re no breaks or anything because there’s not going to be any breaks on Saturday. So, it’s good preparation for us.”
Annoying or not, the constant noise should help sharpen Indiana’s focus—especially for younger players or transfers still adjusting to high-pressure atmospheres. For Coogan, though, this isn’t new territory.
Before joining Indiana, he played in 30 games with 26 career starts at Notre Dame, giving him plenty of experience in intimidating environments. As a freshman, he ran onto the field against Virginia Tech with “Enter Sandman” shaking the stadium. He’s lined up in Top-15 showdowns, like Duke in 2023, and battled through the Fighting Irish’s playoff run that included a national championship appearance. Coogan has seen—and heard—it all. For him, it comes down to mental preparation.
“It’s more of a mental expectation, you really have to get yourself ready for it,” Coogan explained. “You have to know what to listen to and what not to listen to. It’s reps, you got to just put yourself in that environment and practice and go through all the mechanics and all the reps of it, it’s not going to get easier, per se, but you put yourself in that mental state, with anything you prepare for, as you go through the reps, it helps.”
Indiana is fortunate to have Coogan anchoring Curt Cignetti’s offensive line. His toughness, experience, and poise under pressure make him an ideal leader in the trenches. As the Hoosiers prepare for one of their toughest road schedules in recent memory, their center’s discipline and edge will be crucial.