60 Minutes - 08/09/2026: Generally Recognized As Safe, Growing Up Behind Walls, Hoosier Hysteria

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

As an increasing number of Americans across the political spectrum voice concerns about the health risks of ultra-processed foods, correspondent Bill Whitaker speaks with Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Dr. David Kessler. Whitaker reports on a decades-old government classification for substances in our food and why Kennedy and Kessler are calling for change. Sarah Koch is the producer.Sixteen years after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the government has all but collapsed and gangs battle for control of the capital Port-au-Prince. Correspondent Anderson Cooper visits an orphanage in the besieged city where children have been sheltered from the violence for more than four years. Run by bestselling author Mitch Albom, the organization Have Faith Haiti takes in vulnerable children and, with an emphasis on education and faith, gives them a chance at an extraordinary future. Denise Schrier Cetta is the producer.An unscripted underdog saga is unfolding in the most unlikely setting this college football season. Indiana University’s perennially overlooked and outmatched Hoosiers have transformed into the #1 ranked team in the country. Correspondent Jon Wertheim speaks with head coach Curt Cignetti and dives into how this remarkable turnaround took shape – as the undefeated Hoosiers contend for a national championship. David M. Levine is the producer.

There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe, if it is ultra-processed. It's hard to find two people who disagree more on health policy than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former FDA commissioner, David Kessler. But they have found common ground over a common culprit, ultra-processed food. How does this compare with tobacco? It's as large, if not large. It's rare you hear about something good happening in Haiti. But tonight we want to take you to a small oasis where children may be growing up behind walls,

but hope is very much alive. Do you get greeted like that every time you come? Pretty much. Yeah. It's an orphanage called Have Faith Haiti that's run by best-selling author Mitch Album and his wife, Janine. If you give them something beautiful and calm, they'll aspire to those things.

And that's what I think you see with our kids. Indiana entered last season as the losing his program in major college football history, more than 700 defeats. So imagine the astonishment when those hapless Hoosiers won the Big Ten, went undefeated, and then took the national title. How'd they do it? You got to adapt to just and improvise. Take what the defense gives you.

Attack at all times. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm John Worthheim. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Leslie Stahl. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Today, an increasing number of Americans across the political spectrum,

from Make America Healthy Again activists to everyday shoppers, are voicing concern about the health impact of ultra-processed foods, those boxed and wrapped in plastic ready-to-eat items lining grocery store shelves. Leading the charge are two men who disagree on pretty much everything else

about public health. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. David Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As we first reported in February, the two men have found common ground over a common culprit, a 67-year-old government classification for substances in our food. It's called grass, or generally recognized as safe. Kennedy and Kessler say it has allowed big food companies to use ingredients without a full government safety review and flood the market with ultra-processed foods that now make up 50% of our calories and 60% of our children's diets. Over the last 40 years, the United States has been exposed to something that our biology

was never intended to handle. Energy-dense, highly palatable, rapidly absorbable, ultra-processed foods that have altered our metabolism and have resulted in the greatest increase in chronic disease in our history. Type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, hypertension, abnormal lipids, fatty liver, heart attacks, stroke, heart failure, from our food.

From our food. David Kessler was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the 1990s when he helped expose how the tobacco companies manipulated nicotine levels to hook consumers. I am here to provide you with actual instances of nicotine control and manipulation in the tobacco industry. If you raise your right hand. He was a driving force in bringing tobacco executives before Congress and turning public attention to the industry. He's now aiming to do the same with the food industry.

In terms of a public health crisis, how does this compare with tobacco? It's as large, if not larger. It's that significant. The scale of this, this affects everybody. Understand not everybody smoked. Look at the number of people who consume ultra-processed food. It touches all of us.

70% of Americans are either obese or overweight, and it's not because they got indolent or because we became lazy or because we suddenly developed giant appetites. It's because we're being given food that is low in nutrition, and high in calories, and it's making, it's destroying our health. I see it when I go across the country.

We met with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in January after he issued new dietary guidelines that for the first time advise against highly processed foods. You have said that these ultra-processed foods are poisoning us. I think many Americans would be surprised to hear that. And we're seeing in our population

people who are obscenely obese and at the same time malnourished. Who wants us? Kennedy says that's largely because we don't know the health consequences of what we're eating. Thanks to the grass exemption

enacted by Congress in 1958 that allows food companies to independently verify the safety of their ingredients with no government oversight if they are generally recognized. by experts as safe. Pending White House approval,

he intends to close that back door. That loophole was hijacked by the industry, and it was used to add thousands upon thousands of new ingredients into our food supply. In Europe, there's only 400 legal ingredients. This agency does not know how many ingredients there are in American food. We do not know. They do not know.

The estimates are between 4,000 and 10,000. We have no idea what they are. How do we know what is safe to eat? There is no way for any American to know if a product is safe, if it is ultra-processed. For his part, David Kessler is petitioning Kennedy to go further and outright revoked the grass status for dozens of processed refined carbohydrates,

sweeteners and starches, such as corn syrup and maltodextrin, unless the companies can prove they are safe and not fueling obesity. They took starch, right? Those cheap, easy calories, and they converted those into a whole panoply of ingredients, that it was able to reassemble.

And those products are so rapidly absorbed in our system that it caused metabolic havoc. They target the brain reward circuits to keep us coming back for more. They trigger overeating. They deprive us of any sense of fullness. What we all call empty calories. Those calories are not just empty.

They're ending up in your liver. And that fat in your liver is going to migrate into other organs, and it's the cause of cardiometabolic disease. Kessler, a pediatrician, filed his petition with the FDA after zeroing in on grass ingredients listed in plain sight on the backs of packaged foods. Pick up any one of these products. You ever look at the ingredient label? A lot of them are things I can't even pronounce.

Right. Is that food? Corn syrup, corn solids, maltodextran, dextrose, xylose, high fructose corn syrup. And then these ingredients were subjected to industrial processing so that our system can't handle it. We will act on David Kessler's petition, and the questions that he's asking are questions that FDA should have been asking a long, long time ago. Kennedy told us he will use gold standard science to review grass ingredients,

but his credibility on that score has been widely called into question because of his history of vaccine skepticism and his agency's revision of the childhood vaccine schedule. Are you concerned at all that you are you concerned at all that you're, Your stance on vaccines might make people reluctant to support you on ultra-processed foods. I stance on vaccines are the same. People should have good science and they should have choice. Some doctors worry that the new immunization schedule so is confusion and will lead some Americans not to vaccinate their children. People who want to get those vaccines can get them and they can get them fully insured.

Secretary and I, you know, we disagree on a number of issues. I mean, in the strongest possible terms, when it comes to vaccines, I disagree. But if he's willing to take action on these ultra-processed foods, I will be the first to applaud that. If you don't trust him on vaccines, why trust him when it comes to ultra-processed? foods. I don't think it's a question of trust, Bill. I mean, this country is ill. I'm a doc. I care about the public health of this country, and if we can make progress on that, let's do that. The impact on children has been particularly alarming. In December, San Francisco City Attorney David Chu filed a landmark lawsuit against 10 manufacturers of ultra-processed foods, alleging that, like

the tobacco companies, they knowingly engineered and marketed addictive, dangerous products while hiding the risks and causing a public health crisis. The Consumer Brands Association, one of the largest trade groups representing the food industry, declined to respond to us about the lawsuit, but in a statement to 60 Minutes said, there's no agreed upon scientific definition of ultra-processed foods, and companies adhere to the rigorous evidence-based safety standards and nutrition policy established by the FDA to deliver safe, affordable, and convenient products that consumers depend on every day.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Oreos. We met with food author Michael Pollan, who for decades has been warning about inexpensive factory processed food. Granola bars, those look very healthy. All of these would qualify as ultra-processed foods,

even though they're very different. You know, we have a snack food, a couple snack food. Nature Valley? I would argue because of the number of ingredients in it. So there's a lot of sugar in here. But this is sold as healthy food. Pollan commends Kennedy for shining a light on ultra-processed foods. He ties their ubiquity to long-standing federal farm subsidies.

We subsidize, as taxpayers, through the farm bill, the least healthy calories in the diet, most of which goes to people farming corn, and soybeans. What's wrong with corn and soybeans? When you hear corn and soy, you think food. This is not corn on the cob. This is commodity corn.

It's not the sweet corn we eat in the summer? You can't eat it, in fact. It's all starch, big cobs. You'd break your teeth on it. And then soy, which is not in the form we grow it as a commodity, is not etymami. You can't eat it. These are raw ingredients for processed foods and animal feed.

So the government is subsidizing crops that are making us unhealthy. Yes, yeah. But in one way to look at it is we are supporting both sides in the war on type 2 diabetes. We are subsidizing the high fructose corn syrup that's contributing to causing it, and then we're paying for the health care costs. I mean, it makes no sense at all. In a statement, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest general farm organization in the U.S.

told us a healthy diet relies on a variety of nutrient-dense foods and a balance of healthy fats, carbohydrates, protein, and fiber, some of which can come from shelf-stable foods. Why are there not subsidies to produce more of the healthy foods? Cheap food is the goal of all governments. If you were to remove these corn subsidies, there's concern that the price of corn, would raise, and that would be a problem for the whole food industry, which of course is a very

powerful lobby, and would be a problem for the consumer conceivably. When you're taking on ultra-processed foods, you're also taking on powerful industries, big ag, big food. What makes you believe you will prevail? My belief that I will prevail is because we have the president behind us. But the president has shown himself to be pretty much against regulations. So why would he support regulating ultra-processed foods? Well, I'm not saying that we're going to regulate ultra-processed food. Our job is to make sure that everybody understands what they're getting to have an informed public.

There are Americans who live in so-called food deserts with little access to whole foods. And these are foods that many of them can't afford anyway. So how do you speak to that American? laser focus on making all of these foods affordable and accessible to every American. The Consumer Brands Association told us the grass process enables companies to innovate, to meet consumer demand, and that food companies adhere to FDA's science and risk-based evaluation of ingredients before and after they are in the marketplace. David Kessler says that's not enough.

We change how this country views tobacco. We need to change how this country views these ultra-processed foods. Would you like to see the CEOs of big food companies come before Congress and raise their hand and be questioned like the tobacco industry was? I'd like them to understand the consequences of what they are doing and to do something about it. It's rare you hear about something good happening in Haiti. Sixteen years after the devastating earthquake, which kills some 200,000 people and left more than a million homeless, the government has all but collapsed,

and gangs battle for control of the capital Port of Prince. But tonight we want to take you to a small oasis in that besieged city, whereas we first reported it in March, children may be growing up behind walls, but hope is very much alive. It's an orphanage called Have Faith Haiti that's run by best-selling author Mitch Album and his wife, Janine. Since the earthquake, they've been taking in the most at-risk kids, abandoned infants, toddlers with disabilities, children begging in the streets. It hasn't been easy, but with love, faith, and a focus on an education, the results have been extraordinary.

It's too dangerous for international flights to land in Haiti's capital, so every month Mitch Album flies. the two hours from Florida to the northern city of Capatian. That's where we met him and boarded a helicopter to reach Porter Prince. From the air, much of Haiti is a maze of dry riverbeds and rugged mountains stripped of trees. Then appears Porter Prince, a dense sprawl of chaotic streets and dilapidated buildings. Once on the ground, heavily armed guards drive album to the orphanage in a convoy of bulletproof vehicles. It's kind of crazy just what it takes for you to get in and out of here, and you do this every month. Yeah.

Back before the gangs were an issue, we had two security guards. Now we have 24. Wow. From the outside, it looks like a prison. The concrete walls are 30 feet tall with barbed wire and guard towers. To enter, you have to pass through a series of locked gates. But once inside, it feels like another world. Mr. Mitch, they're chanting.

Mr. Mitch, Mr. Mitch! Oh my goodness, hello. So nice to see you guys. Hi. Hello. Do you get greeted like that every time you come? Pretty much. Yeah, yeah.

There are 63 children living here and more than 50 teachers and staff. The kids range from infants and toddlers cared for by nannies to teenagers living in dorms. Most haven't left this seven-acre compound in more than four years. They play here, do chores, go to church, and eight hours a day go to school. How did it enslave Africans? They're taught in both French and English and prepared to go on to college. All children deserve to feel like they have a future and the future. as possible. And there are a lot of children right on the other side of that gate and their

their bellies are swollen and they're not eating. And that's not fair. And if my wife and I can do anything to change that, even if it's a drop in the bucket, that'll be our drop. You're not doing analysis of a two or three year old and seeing what their cognition is and what they're capable of. You are just picking kids in the most difficult circumstances. Love, food, prayer. works miracles. We don't give aptitude tests to get in here. Most of the kids that come to us aren't even speaking yet. But if you put them in the right environment

and you surround them with other kids who are aspiring to do certain things, they'll grow. Not all the kids are orphans. Many were brought here by a desperate parent or family member who couldn't afford to feed them. Album has to choose who gets in. We try to set the conditions because otherwise it's hundreds and hundreds of children. So we say only if there's one parent, not two, only if there's no home, no actual structure home, you know,

or if there's a case of a sickness or something like that. What are those interviews like? I don't have any food to give my baby. The parents died. I don't know who this child is. We found this child under a tree. He was six weeks old and he was starving. So those stories, those interviews, they broke.

me in half, but they also cemented me to Haiti and cemented me to this operation, which I will do for the rest of my life. Mitch Album is the author of 19 books, including Tuesdays with Mori and his most recent bestseller, twice. He first came to Haiti in 2010 after the earthquake. That's when Album, who's Jewish, began fixing up a Christian orphanage run by an elderly pastor. The pastor basically said, I don't have any money to run this place, and I'm 84 years old, and I kind of blurted out, well, I could probably run it. How hard could it be? And he said, here you go. Betany was brought here around that time. A year and a half old, her father died in the earthquake, and her mother was desperate. Lorvins was malnourished when he came at three, and Gino was left here by her father at five. She now wants to be alive. lawyer. I felt abandoned, I could say. I was a little bit scared because there were a lot of new faces and just a lot of people staring and smiling. Smiling felt weird. Yeah. It was my first time seeing an American, Mr. Mitch. What did you think? I was like, he's so white.

Were you angry at all when you learned your story? Honestly, not really, because I I know my mom is human, and I don't think it was a really bad choice for her to bring me here because she was looking at my future. Lorvins happened for you? You'd said that there was a sense of betrayal for you early on. Because I feel like why would, like, your own family leave you in a place and stuff, where you don't know anybody? Follow Miss Nadia.

That feeling of abandonment is something Yonnell, the Haitian director of Half-Faith Haiti, knows well. He was left at the old orphanage 36 years ago. when he was five. Do you remember coming? Oh, yes, I remember coming. It was the worst day of my life, honestly. I did not like it. Yenelle's father had three other children and couldn't afford another.

I thought that they hate me back then because they just, you know, keep me out. And they didn't even tell me why. But later on one, I would understand why they did that. That's why I forgive him, you know, because I think they do it out of love. When we share and when we give, it reminds us of what God did for us. Amen? Almost all the kids, when they come, they all call me father. They need that, you know, connection.

So I put myself there for them. The kids, they view each other as brothers and sisters. I don't know how to put this, honestly. That's all we got. You know, growing up, we have to rely on each other, you know, to survive. That's all these kids have as each other. Yeah, that's all we have. Keeping the kids safe is one of Yonnell's biggest challenges.

Outside the walls of the orphanage, the danger is very real. As much as 90% of the Port-of-Prince metropolitan area is now controlled by armed gangs. Rapes, robberies, and murders are common. The UN estimates more than a million people have been displaced from their homes by violence. And in just the last 24 hours, in this one area, there have been three shootouts between police and gang members. In case gunmen ever break into the compound, Yenelle regularly, Yenelle regularly conducts surprise emergency drills. The kids grab go bags and rushed to a concrete bunker with steel doors.

It's got its own generator, a month's supply of food and water, and cameras to monitor outside. Yenelle wasn't happy with the results of this drill. Talia, where is she? One of the babies was left napping in the nursery. Not good. Not good. You can't leave no one behind.

So what's it like trying to keep this going? Have Faith Haiti's budget is paid for, mostly by Mitch Album and his wife, Janine, along with help from public and private donors. And we try to give them a childhood, which is stolen from so many of people. There's not a lot of kids in Haiti who get a childhood. No. It's very hard to fundraise for Haiti. People think, oh, the money always disappears or the government takes it.

I hear that a lot. These children, they don't deserve to be. because Haiti has a checkered history. After security and fuel, education is the biggest expense. The classes are small, and if a child struggles, they're given a customized lesson plan. You don't see kids on phones or kids... We don't allow that.

Playing video games. No kids have any computers for personal use. There are no cell phones here. There's no television. And consequently, we get to see childhood in a much purer phone than I think you get to see it in the States. So their attention span is remarkably long relative to American kids. 17 kids have graduated from high school at Have Faith Haiti in the last eight years,

and all of them have gotten scholarships to American colleges and universities. But they won't be staying in the U.S. All of our kids agree before they leave here that they are coming back after they finish their studies and they're going to work at our orphanage for two years for free. to give back to the community. So they're not going to America to take jobs. They're not going to America to do anything but appreciate it and then come back and make their country a better place.

You know, I hope our kids can stabilize this country, and that's part of what we're trying to raise them to do. We are really, really proud of you. In December, when we visited Mitch Album's home outside Detroit, all the Haitian college students were staying there on their winter breaks. We sat down with four of them, Whidley, Bianca, JJ, and J.U. What's it like living in the U.S.?

Like what stands out to you? For me, it's like opportunities. Like there's lots of opportunities here. Just being able to see the ends and out of how an actual government works. I'd say like it was like a relief, a relief from all like the violence. All of them said they're determined to help turn Haiti around.

Education is one of the things I would really want to take back in. I will take back in Haiti because you need a better education and to lead the government and to get a good job. Eventually, I'd like to become an ambassador for my country someday. The end goes to be a senator in my country one day. It doesn't scare you off to get involved in politics? I mean, there is a little bit. Honestly, I mean, our last president got assassinated.

We have to take that into account. It seems like all of you want your future is to be with Haiti. Like, to me, Haiti isn't just my country. It's like my home where I was raised, and I have a deep connection to Haiti. So, yeah, my future is with Haiti. Haiti's future, however, is uncertain. To combat the gangs in September,

the United Nations with U.S. backing, authorized a force of 5,500 multinational troops to help the overwhelmed Haitian police. But so far, about 1,000 have been deployed, and the U.S. has slashed its financial obligations to the country by nearly 50%. Another six students at the orphanage graduated this past spring. They'll volunteer for a year of service in Haiti

before applying for scholarships to study in the U.S. Even if they get them, however, it's no longer clear if they'll be granted visas. Is there a difference between you and kids outside these walls who are working in the streets in terms of their potential? No, because it could have... been vice versa and we could have been in the streets and they could have been here. So I think everybody has potential. They just have to be given the chance and the opportunity to explore

that. Every child has that potential inside no matter what circumstance they come from. If you give them something beautiful and calm and hopeful, they'll aspire to those things. And that's what I think you see with our kids. Anderson Cooper's personal connection to Haiti. Somebody I knew so well, my math teacher assassinated. That was shocking. At 60 Minutes Overtime.com. Indiana is the setting for three all-time great sports movies, Hoosiers, Rudy, and Breaking

Away. Now comes another cinematic underdog story set in the state, except this one is unscripted. Over the past century, defeat has been the near constant companion of Indiana University football, but then arrived a new coach who'd never gotten a shot at the big time. and Indiana became the unlikely darling of college football. We first brought you this story in December as the Hoosiers closed out an undefeated regular season. They went on to win three more games than the first national championship in school history, just as the credits rolled.

They come from the cities and they come from the smaller towns. More than 55,000 fans converging on Bloomington to watch the Indiana Hoosiers. Built from Limestone and, extracted from local quarries, Memorial Stadium is 65 years old. But this is a completely new look. Home to a football dynamo. Indiana had always been a basketball school. No longer. This season, the Hoosiers have won at home and on the road. Rose to the corner. Touchdown. Surrett. They've won in blowouts and won with their season on the brink. In trouble! It's out!

Touchdown! This game-winning touchdown against Penn State stands as the play of the year in college football, and they're hardly doing it with prized recruits. I think a lot of people on our team, whether it's coaches, players, or staff have all been overlooked. You say outcasts and transfers and rejects, you guys are doing pretty well. Well, I wouldn't say we're like, for sure, outcasts and rejects. I think we're all still really, really good football players here. That's Fernando Mendoza, Indiana Star.

quarterback. He's come to embody the team. A few years ago, he was a middling Miami high school player. Recently, he won the Heisman trophy and then became the NFL's top draft pick. Can you pause for a second and admire this story? Human nature is like, wow, like, how did I get here? And there's a little bit of an imposter syndrome from that point. Whoa, am I supposed to be here? I was a two-star recruit. I wasn't a five-star who's supposed to be in this position, who's supposed to be on the number one team of the nation. Talk about your imposter syndrome. God. Does the program still have imposter syndrome? I think that we believe. We believe.

The belief has been hard won. Indiana entered this season as the losingest program in major college football history, more than 700 defeats. So imagine the astonishment when Indiana took down the then-defending national champion undefeated Ohio State to win the Big Ten title. The previous time Indiana was conference champion, 1967. Paint the picture of IU football the first 50 years you've been doing this job. I'd say up and down, except that most of it's been down. Don Fisher has been the voice of Indiana football since 1973. This is the greatest turnaround, and I hate that word,

because I don't think it expresses really what these last two seasons have been like here in Indiana. Turnaround doesn't do it. enough lifting. It's even bigger than that. No, it's not a good enough term. So I'm thinking Peyton Manning wins a Super Bowl, like an hour up the road. You've got Notre Dame. Football is not an alien sport to Indiana. Why did it seem so hard to unlock it here? A big problem for Indiana was we could not recruit offensive and defensive linemen. Big boys. The big guys. We just didn't have very many of them. And football here was not a big sport. It just hadn't clicked as a football place.

One low moment, oh, I don't know if there was one. Here's one, it's Indiana legend, but the charismatic coach at the time, Lee Corso, confirms it to us. In a 1976 game, Loli, Indiana took an early 7-6 lead over Mighty Ohio State. So unexpected that Corso burned a timeout for the purpose of commemorative photos. When the game ended, Indiana still had seven points. Ohio State had 47. One diehard fan in attendance that afternoon, John Mellencamp, Bard of Indiana, who's been going to Hoosier Games ever since his father took him as a kid.

In the 90s, he funded this indoor practice facility, in hopes it would lure recruits. You've been a fan for like 50 years. You're not a bandwagon guy. No. No, I've been around thick and thin. How thin did it get? Pretty thin. Indiana, Hoosier.

He says that for years, the tailgates drew more interest than the actual games. You're going to these football games and the stadium's half full and fans are leaving it at halftime. They're not even half full. Less than half full. Yeah, less than half full. I mean, you know, like, if this is the stadium, there's just like a few people up here. In 2023, yet another dismal season, the team finished three and nine. And the athletic director, Scott Dolson, set out in search of answers.

What was the hole you had to fill? I think certainly the right coach is the biggest hole to fill. As he scoured for candidates, he had some non-negotiables. We wanted an existing head coach. We wanted a coach who was offensive-minded, who had developed quarterbacks. So the slick offensive coordinator at the big school, that's not who you wanted? No, we really felt having that head coach experience was really important. Dolson went off the board and settled on a little-known lifer,

who'd won relentlessly, but also been overlooked relentlessly. So two years ago when Kurt Signetti's name surfaces as a candidate, what did you know about him? Anything? Nothing. You've been covering college football for more than 50 years, and you'd never heard his name before. He never heard his name. And when he became the hire, I was surprised by it,

but then I looked him up a little bit. I googled it. I googled him. Yes, I did. That was a direct order from the new coach. How do you sell your vision of your culture? Mere weeks on the job, tired of the Who Are You Questions, Kurt Signetti dropped his usual modesty and said this. It's pretty simple. I win. Google me.

Here's what Googling would have revealed. Signetti pinballed around the country's sidelines. Once an assistant for Nick Sabin and Alabama, he left the big time to take head coaching jobs at smaller schools like Elon University and James Madison. When Indiana called, Signetti was well beyond the usual sell-by date for a maiden job at this level. You've had terrific success wherever you've been, but at age 62, this was your first power-for big-time job. Did you come in here with a bit of a chip on your shoulder? The chip probably came from when I got here right away. I detected an atmosphere that you can't get it done here.

You sense that. Oh, absolutely. As soon as I walked in the building. facilities that had been neglected, the stadium banners that looked old, the offices that looked like they were from 1980, and then, you know, just the general attitude of the people I met, the lack of excitement. Coming from a winning program, he was, well... I was furious, pretty much, because all we did was win conference championships year and year out of this. That's your old school.

Yeah, and, I mean, we win. And so it was a clashing of two worlds, and I wasn't going to lower my standards. It erupted when Signetti was first introduced to fans at an Indiana basketball game. Where it is? As the kids say, shots fired. I had to see if the fans were dead or just on life support. I had to wake them up and said an expectation and create some buzz and excitement. I think they woke up?

A little bit. Get locked in, good warm up. The irony, Signetti is. skeptical of anything resembling, look at me. He may be from Pennsylvania, but his temperament is pitch perfect for Southern Indiana. He's measured. He commands respect. His fallback language is coach speak. Coaches aren't in the habit of sharing the playbook, but what is the magic here? There's no magic here. It's fundamentals. You know, I would like to think the leader,

which is me, knows what he's doing and has a blueprint in the plan. Create the intangibles on your football team, the culture, the mindset, a philosophy, or how you want to play. Under Signetti, the program is unrecognizable. The last two seasons, Indiana's gone 24 and 2 without losing a home game. That's the what. The how is more complicated. It starts with a coach, not just his eye for recruiting talent, but his ability to develop it once it arrives.

Based on what he's seen from his perch, a shack atop the stadium press box, where he can smoke, John Mellencamp has his own explanation for Signetti's success. He does not show emotion. He's not emotional. Not outwardly. John, I've made my worst decisions being emotional. I bet you have to. The poise of Signetti, and the turnaround he's orchestrated, it makes for a hell of a Cinderella story. But this is also a story about contemporary college sports. Indiana's rise has been helped by new rules. Athletes are now able to enter the so-called transfer portal and switch schools at will. Signetti fortified the roster by bringing 13 players with him from James Madison.

Fernando Mendoza played at Cal Berkeley last season. Then there's the money. College players now can be paid for the licensing of their name, image, and likeness, and starting this year, they can get a cut of team revenue. Mendoza is reported to be making $2 million this season. I wrote a paper in high school saying why NCAA athletes should not be able to get paid. Should not be. It should not be.

And then now I'm contradicting myself as I'm getting paid now. There's so many different dynamics that were never there in college football. And I think that's why you see so many teams either rising or fizzling just because of the new structure. Whether it's people talking about compensation in the locker room, which is either uniting or dividing the locker room. whether it's people going to not only one or two schools, like myself, going to four schools. I mean, you see coaches leaving mid-season. It is chaos.

In 2024, thanks partially to donors, including IU alum, our Cuban, Indiana spent more than $60 million on football alone. This, as the school is cutting academic jobs and programs. There are people who will say, wait a second, these are tough times for colleges and universities, and you've got $50, $60 million being spent on one sport. That doesn't make sense. So certainly the market is what the market is, and it costs a lot of money. But we earn that money.

We make it through our revenue streams. And at the same time, people understand, if we can get football going, the impact and the consequences for the rest of the university are significant. You can have all the marketing meetings you want and changing logos and uniforms, but winning games is what's going to do.

do it. Absolutely. And I've joked before, if I'd have known that winning consistently would have that impact, we should have tried that a long time ago. Big Ten champion, Indiana Hoosiers. The Hoosiers headed in to the college football playoffs as the number one seed. But at Indiana, the joy is tempered by a fear this all could vanish as quickly as it emerged. The school vows to keep spending on football, far more than on basketball, and in hopes the coach doesn't transfer out, Indiana recently gave Signetti an eight-year $90 million contract, more than 15 times his compensation at his last job. Been around this sport a long time.

It's a lot different now than it was when you started. Do you embrace that? Oh, you have to embrace that. If not, you have no chance of being successful. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, those are the rules of the road? You've got to adapt, adjust, and improvise. Take what the defense gives you. Attack at all times.

Colin from Accounts returns for a brand new season. You proposed to me drunk out of nowhere at my best friend's wedding. I was being spontaneous. You didn't have a ring. It was just, it was embarrassing. All episodes streaming September 10th. Still will they, won't they? Who cares?

But what is it? We're friends. We have together Lee. We're friendly together. With a dog. Colin from Accounts, new season streaming September 10th, only on Paramount Plus.