Indiana beat Oregon once. How hard is it to beat a college football team twice?

As Indiana began focusing on Oregon and Friday night’s College Football Playoff semifinal, Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti brought up a coaching adage to explain the challenge of repeating a 30-20 regular-season win over the Ducks.

“It’s hard to beat a great team twice,” Cignetti said.

Is it, though?

To find out whether the college football truism is actually true, The Athletic examined the history, trends and betting lines of rematches. We also called up the only two coaches to face Cignetti twice in the same season (one of them lost the first game but won the second) and a player from one of the biggest sequels in college football history.

Here’s why there’s probably something to the adage (but maybe not as much as you’d think) and how it might affect the Peach Bowl, where Oregon is trying to flip what happened last year when it beat Ohio State in the regular season but lost to the Buckeyes in the Playoff.

Theories behind the adage

The premise begins with an obvious scheduling reality: Because almost every rematch happens in a conference championship, bowl or playoff game, any team in Oregon’s position must be good.

“If you’re playing them a second time,” Furman head coach Clay Hendrix said, “it’s for a reason.”

Like in 2017, when Hendrix’s Paladins faced Cignetti-led Elon in the regular season and again in the first round of the FCS playoffs, Cignetti’s squad kicked a field goal with 5 seconds left to win the first meeting 34-31. Furman blocked the final extra point to upset Elon 28-27 in the second.

Those outcomes show one of the three main theories supporting the truism: It’s hard to get the ball to bounce your way twice in a row because a comparable team on the other sideline can make winning plays, too.

Cignetti mentioned a second idea Saturday during a Peach Bowl news conference. The regular-season loser might have a “psychological edge” in the rematch. Hendrix saw that when the bracket unveiled Elon as Furman’s Round 1 opponent, his players immediately started thinking about getting revenge.

“I think our kids were thrilled to play somebody who beat them,” Hendrix said.

The opposite was true at Florida State in 1996. After the Seminoles beat Florida to end the regular season, James Colzie III thought it was over. The idea of having to beat the Gators again in another top-three showdown, this time at the Sugar Bowl, was not well-received in Tallahassee.

“I can tell you right now, we were hoping not to have to play those suckers again,” said Colzie, a senior defensive back on that FSU team.

A psychological edge doesn’t solely explain why the Gators won the sequel 52-20 to earn their first national championship, but a final theory might: schematics.

After Florida State’s defense sacked Gators quarterback Danny Wuerffel six times in the first game, Florida coach Steve Spurrier knew he had to change something.

He moved Wuerffel from under center to shotgun to give him more time to throw. The Heisman Trophy winner responded with 306 passing yards and three touchdowns in the Sugar Bowl. The team that won the first game can adjust its game plan, too, but Colzie said it’s usually easier for losing players to accept adjustments after a defeat.

Supporting evidence

Over the past 30 years, there have been seven rematches in Playoff games or a national championship (including the Florida-FSU sequel). The team that won the first game is 1-6 in the second. Alabama rallied from a home loss to Oklahoma with a road, first-round triumph over the Sooners last month, and Ole Miss avenged its only loss by knocking off Georgia in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal.

The lone sweep was Ole Miss beating Tulane in September and in the CFP’s first round, but that comes with a caveat: Both times, the Rebels were double-digit favorites playing at home. Indiana and Oregon are more evenly matched. Indiana is only a 3 ½-point favorite, according to BetMGM, playing at a neutral site.

The history of top 10 rematches in power-conference championship games also supports the adage. The Game 1 winner is only 8-7 in the sequel. The final score was closer in four of those eight wins, suggesting it’s harder to win a second time, even for teams that get it done.

Betting odds similarly show a regression to the mean.

In those 22 games — 15 power conference championships plus CFP/title games — the first winner was an astounding 21-0-1 against the spread. In the second game? Only 7-15.

One more betting stat: The first victor was favored in 10 of the sequels. It was upset in four of them.

Finally, this season has had 10 rematches across all bowls and conference title games. The team that won the first game is 4-6 in the second. Among the notable reversals: Georgia thumping Alabama in the SEC championship despite dropping the first matchup in Athens, and Duke losing by 17 at home to Virginia before shocking the Cavaliers to win the ACC.

Why the adage might be overblown

Although recent results support the coaching cliché, the broader lens isn’t as clear.

Indiana-Oregon will be the 99th all-time FBS rematch in a conference championship, bowl or CFP game. The team that won the first game is 59-39 in the sequel. That breaks down to 40-30 in conference title games and 19-9 in bowl/Playoff games. If teams in Indiana’s Playoff position beat another good team 67.8 percent of the time, is it that much of a disadvantage?

Even if the revenge factor for the losing team — or the victors’ subconscious overconfidence or complacency — plays a role during preparation, the inherent big game nature of rematches means it disappears by kickoff.

“Motivation is always gonna be there for both teams,” said Gary Dunn, the head coach at Division II California (Pa.).

Instead, Dunn said winning a rematch — as he did by sweeping Cignetti’s Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) team in 2016 — comes down to something much more boring.

Simple execution.

In the first game against Cignetti, Dunn’s Vulcans hit the go-ahead field goal in the final 2 minutes and got a late stop to hold on for a 31-28 rivalry win. The second time, the Vulcans blocked a punt, field goal and extra point while Cignetti’s IUP team had a pair of onside kick recoveries nullified by penalties.

Dunn has been on the opposite side, too. He edged Frostburg State in November but dropped the rematch in the second round of the playoffs as his team missed two field goals and lost the turnover battle.

“Was it because you beat them the first time? No,” Dunn said. “We just didn’t execute in the red zone well enough to win the game.”

The schematic advantage might also be overrated. Both teams have shown a lot on film in do-or-die games and probably won’t stray too far from their identities. Colzie experienced that when he coached Saint Mary’s University in Canada from 2016 to 2021. His schedule was the same four opponents every season, once at home and once on the road.

“We knew who they were; they knew who we were,” Colzie said. “It came down to fundamentals and execution at that point.”

What it all means

The numbers are compelling enough to suggest there’s some truth to the adage, but there are too many other factors at play to accept it as an absolute. Did the first meeting happen early in the season (when teams are still figuring themselves out) or in November (when identities are already established)? Oregon-Indiana was in mid-October, which allows time for growth on both sides.

Injuries also play an unquantifiable role. The Ducks’ Kenyon Sadiq told reporters this week he was “very limited” in the first meeting. Because outcomes hinge on individual matchups, having the Big Ten’s tight end of the year in better health will probably help Oregon as much as any schematic tweak Dan Lanning could have made since the Orange Bowl.

The head coaching results of Cignetti and Lanning won’t help us make a prediction or draw a conclusion. Both have been in two rematches, once after winning the first game and once after losing it. They’re 0-4 in Round 2.

One final thought: If rematches come down to simple execution, watch Oregon in the red zone. The Ducks had their worst performance of the season against Indiana (three possessions, zero touchdowns, two field goals and one missed field goal), while the Hoosiers were 5 for 5 (three touchdowns, two field goals).

If IU can force Oregon to repeat that performance, the result will probably be the same, too.