Inside Curt Cignetti's path to 10-0, a $72 million payday and a potential CFP spot

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — About two hours before kickoff against Michigan, Indiana fans lined The Walk, a path from Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall to Memorial Stadium that the team traverses before games. Two fans standing near the start of The Walk wore T-shirts that read “Google Me” on the front and “Football School” on the back.

The areas south of the stadium were filled and festive, which was nothing new. Indiana has had a good tailgating scene before games. Getting those fans inside the stadium, meanwhile, has often been a chore.

Curt Cignetti has changed that and just about everything at Indiana. He came in saying things that would make even the most ardent Indiana fans blush as crimson as their sweaters. But he has backed up the bluster, not just winning games at a historic rate, but changing how people feel about Indiana football, where confidence is at an all-time high entering this week’s clash at No. 2 Ohio State.

“This is going to sound so cheesy,” said Cignetti’s son, also named Curt, “but just to see the sentiment change on Twitter, how these fans have gone from being doom and gloom or doubting to, suddenly, they’re super confident we’re winning every game, it’s unbelievable.”

Curt Jr. stood outside of the stadium before the Michigan game, tailgating with his mother, Manette, sisters Carly and Natalie and other family and friends. Not since 1968 had Indiana, the team with the most losses in FBS history (713), been favored against Michigan, the team with the most wins (1,009). But Indiana opened as a two-touchdown favorite — befitting a team that had won its first nine games by 14 points or more and leading the FBS in scoring margin.

Late at night, Curt Jr., 33, who lives in Ohio, and Carly, 31, who lives in New Orleans, will occasionally search the family name on Twitter. The scrolling doesn’t come from vanity or a search for validation. They knew their father was a great coach long before he stepped foot on the Indiana campus 356 days ago and lit it ablaze.

Cignetti’s kids aren’t the only ones doing vibe checks.

“I know for a fact he does, too, not Googling himself, but the Indiana community,” Curt Jr. said of his dad. “He sends stuff to our group chat. He sees that it’s not just players that are buying in, but the community, and that’s been his goal the whole time.”

This fall, college football has discovered Cignetti, a 63-year-old lifer in the sport, who was at Elon six years ago, IU-Pennsylvania eight years ago, has never had a losing season and has Indiana at 10-0 for the first time and in the College Football Playoff hunt.

“I think he’s been a good coach for a long time,” former Alabama coach Nick Saban said on “The Pat McAfee Show” before IU played Washington. Cignetti was on Saban’s first staff from 2007 to 2010. “He just had success at programs that … people didn’t pay that much attention to. But if you evaluate his success rate, it was very, very good. Now he’s at someplace people notice.”

Cignetti’s results aren’t new, but two things are: The stage he occupies at IU and the soundtrack to his success, the viral quotes that have sent shock waves through Bloomington and beyond.

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“Hey, look, I’m super fired up about this opportunity. I’ve never taken a back seat to anybody and don’t plan on starting now. Purdue sucks! But so does Michigan and Ohio State! Go IU!” — Curt Cignetti, Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, Bloomington, Dec. 1, 2023

With 33 words in 25 seconds, interrupted by increasing bursts of roars, Cignetti changed the tenor at Indiana. Newly hired football coaches are often introduced at basketball games. They usually begin their remarks like Cignetti did that night. Sometimes they will poke at a rival.

But the pivot Cignetti made, not just to put down Purdue, which leads the all-time series with Indiana 77-42-6, but Big Ten heavies Ohio State and Michigan, which at the time were a combined 88-4-1 against the Hoosiers since 1968, was exceptionally bold.

“I was just shocked,” said Manette Cignetti, who joined her husband that night. “I did not expect anything like that. I just laughed. It was fun to be in the moment.”

Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson, a former student manager for Bob Knight’s basketball teams at the school, had heard a few spicy things said inside Assembly Hall through the years. Dolson had known Cignetti for only five days, connecting with him hours after announcing a coaching change.

During the interview and hiring process, Cignetti came across as “not arrogant, not cocky, but he’s extremely confident, he’s extremely authentic,” Dolson recalled. The declaration at center court didn’t directly connect with Cignetti’s personality, but it was done for a reason.

“Afterwards, he came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I got a little carried away, because I just wanted to see if our fans were asleep or were they dead,'” Dolson said. “And he said, ‘It’s good to see that they were just sleeping.’ From the start, he wanted to set a tone that it’s not the same doom and gloom. We can get this done.”

Cignetti needed only a few hours on campus earlier that day to assess the “hopeless” mood at IU. He had taken over a struggling program before, at Elon, an FCS team that was 12-45 in the five years before he arrived in 2017 and then proceeded to record consecutive top-20 finishes. When he arrived with Saban at Alabama in 2007, the program was coming off of a 6-7 season, and would go 7-6 in Saban’s first year before beginning its historic run.

Indiana seemingly had a steeper climb, both in its performance and confidence levels.

“It created a lot of buzz in Hoosier Nation,” Cignetti said of his basketball court battle cry. “I’m sure some people didn’t like it, and I’m sure people in Big Ten country thought I was a nut. But I think there was an excitement level before the season started. They were starving for success.”

Indiana offensive lineman Mike Katic wasn’t at Assembly Hall for Cignetti’s introduction, but he and his teammates soon got word of what their new coach had said. Cignetti’s message was for the fans — “something to turn their heads,” Katic said — but he struck a similar tone inside a locker room that had gone 9-27 during the previous three seasons.

Seven or eight players didn’t show for his first team meeting. Many had or would soon enter the transfer portal.

“I told them, ‘We’re going to win. We’ve won everywhere we’ve been. There will be no self-imposed limitations on what we can accomplish,'” Cignetti said. “They were listening. They were kind of slouched down in their chairs. They were probably beaten down a little bit.”

Katic and his teammates soon learned Cignetti-isms, phrases like “fast, physical, relentless” and “every play has a life of its own,” which the coach would pepper them with during the offseason.

“He took Saban’s process and made it his own,” one former Cignetti assistant said. “It’s a lot of the same foundational principles that Saban had. He’s not going to worry about anybody’s feelings.”

Cignetti brought seven assistants from James Madison, including all of his coordinators, and would add several key JMU transfers, including defensive linemen James Carpenter and Mikail Kamara, linebackers Aiden Fisher and Jailin Walker, wide receiver Elijah Sarratt, cornerback D’Angelo Ponds and running back Ty Son Lawton.

The newcomers helped shift the mood, but it started at the top.

“He had this swagger and this moxie to him that I hadn’t seen from a head coach in my career,” Katic said. “He didn’t say a whole lot, but we knew there was going to be a standard here, that it’s not going to be the old Indiana. This is a new Indiana. This is a whole new recipe and a whole new mantra to Indiana football.”

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“It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.” — Cignetti, signing day news conference, Bloomington, Dec. 23, 2023

Cignetti’s most famous line at Indiana, delivered in response to a question about how he would compile his first roster with key holdovers and talented transfers, is also instructive in understanding his life and career.

His father, Frank Cignetti Sr., is a 2013 College Football Hall of Fame inductee who went 182-50-1 at IU-Pennsylvania, twice reaching the Division II national title game. Frank was a high school coach before serving as an assistant at Pitt, Princeton and West Virginia, where he worked under Bobby Bowden and then replaced Bowden as head coach. Saban served as Frank Cignetti’s defensive backs coach at WVU in 1978 and 1979.

“We loved going to practice, we loved the games, oh my God, we loved being on the sideline, being in the locker room, being in the office,” said Frank Cignetti Jr., Curt’s younger brother and a longtime college and NFL coach. “Think about the people we were around, Bobby Bowden and Bowdens, Tommy, Terry and those guys.”

The Cignetti home on Dogwood Avenue in Morgantown, West Virginia, was a hub for athletic activity and competition. Frank Sr. never pushed his sons toward football, but they rushed to the sport.

In late 1978, Curt’s senior year of high school, Frank was diagnosed with lymphoid granulomatosis, a rare form of cancer.

“He was given his last rites twice,” Curt recalled. “But he beat it and lived 43 more years.”

Frank was fired after the 1979 season, despite a strong finish. He stayed out of football for two years to secure life insurance, Curt said, before taking the job at IUP, his alma mater, in 2011. Frank taught Curt that preparation breeds confidence, while lack of preparation breeds doubt and anxiety. Curt is a football grinder, arriving at his office before dawn, and ending his days watching film and devising schemes in the 35-year-old, teal beaded recliner that he has brought to his different coaching stops.

Frank Cignetti Sr. also taught the importance of positive energy and hope, which helped him as a coach and during his illness.

“We grew up in a household where there wasn’t much doom and gloom,” Frank Jr. said. “We had great belief in each other and ourselves.”

Curt has taken the Cignetti philosophy to the extreme at Indiana.

“If he was alive last year when I took this job, he’d have called me up [and said], ‘What are you doing?'” Curt said of Frank Sr., who died in 2022. “But my dad was a confident guy, hard worker, high character guy, would say what was on his mind. He’d think I’m half-crazy with some of the things I’ve said. I’d have been scolded. But it probably comes from him.”

After playing quarterback at West Virginia, Curt began his coaching career, making stops at Pitt, Davidson, Rice, Temple, Pitt again and NC State before joining Saban’s first Alabama staff in 2007 as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. He had jobs that he chose to pass up and was passed over for others.

As he approached his 50th birthday, he knew he didn’t want to be a career assistant, even for someone like Saban. The first opportunity to lead was a familiar one, IU-Pennsylvania, where his dad was a legend, his brother had played and where his wife had grown up. But there were risks.

“We had two kids that were in college, and it was a 60 percent [pay cut],” Manette Cignetti said. “It’s not about the money with me, but it’s: How do I make what [the kids] want to do happen?”

She told Curt: “You can’t take that job.'”

Saban had a similar reaction. You can get lost down there, he warned. But Cignetti had absorbed enough from the great coaches — Saban, Johnny Majors at Pitt, Frank Sr. — to know he was ready to be one. The pull eventually brought him back to IUP.

“You don’t see that move in this business,” he said. “I took a chance on me, and I woke up many mornings wondering what I’d done. But I was going to make it work.”

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“Normally at these things, I stand up here and we’re picked to win the league. It’s just usually how it’s been. I have been picked next-to-last twice. We’re picked 17th out of an 18-team league, and I get it. The two times we were picked next-to-last, in 2022, we won the conference championship, and in 2017, we inherited an 8-45 team and … played for the conference championship. Now, I’m not into making predictions. That’s just a historical fact.” — Cignetti, July 25, Big Ten media days, Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis

Curt Cignetti didn’t always exude so much confidence. When he first got to IUP, he would come home after games and ask his family about players, playcalling and in-game strategy.

“I used to love that as a kid,” Natalie Cignetti, 28, said. “I feel like over time, he asked us less questions, because he gets it now and he doesn’t need anyone else’s opinion.”

Cignetti took over an IUP program that had slipped a bit, but quickly started winning. He won 12 games and reached the Division II quarterfinal in his second season and then won nine or more games in three of his final four seasons before leaving for Elon.

His next stop brought him to James Madison, a top FCS program. Percy Agyei-Obese, a James Madison running back for Cignetti from 2019 to 2022, remembered Cignetti saying how he had beaten JMU while at Elon, which had never defeated a top-5 team at the Division I level. Cignetti then led James Madison to the national final in his first season and then made the semifinals in consecutive years.

“Every year, he had the mindset of, ‘We’re going to win it all,'” Agyei-Obese said. “Whoever’s in front of us, we’re going to beat them, every single game. Even when we moved up to the FBS, it’s just like any team, we will beat them. He was not afraid, and that’s how my mindset was. Just him saying that game after game, that ‘We will beat this team, we’re going to win it all. They can put whoever they want. They can put Alabama in front of us. We will get the job done.'”

Former James Madison quarterback Cole Johnson said the Indiana version of Cignetti is the same guy who won big at JMU. The difference: Cignetti “wasn’t so outwardly confident” before.

“So much of that was kind of kept within the program,” Johnson said. “To see some of the stuff, ‘I win. Google me,’ I don’t think it’s him being cocky. It’s just the type of person he is.”

In 2022, James Madison transitioned to the FBS and the Sun Belt, and was picked to finish sixth in the seven-team East Division. The Dukes went 6-2 in league games, winning four by 22 points or more, and tying for first place.

Jeff Bourne, the longtime James Madison athletic director who hired Cignetti, recalled a decisive road victory in a game where the Dukes entered as a significant underdog. Before the bus ride home, Bourne approached Cignetti.

“We gave each other a big hug, and it’s like, ‘Can you believe that?'” Bourne said. “People didn’t give us a lot of credit that we could play at that level, and to dominate the way that we did was amazing.”

Bourne describes Cignetti as disciplined and organized, a “lifelong learner.” Cignetti didn’t hassle Bourne or complain about what JMU lacked, but spoke up about the things he really needed.

“He was never arrogant about it,” Bourne said. “It was just, ‘We need to be prepared in order to win.’ I just don’t think they come along often like him. He’s a really good leader, and good leaders can make some really special things happen.”

Cignetti thought he could keep winning at JMU and retire there. But when conversions accelerated at Indiana, including with Dolson and university president Pamela Whitten, he sensed the school wanted to change its trajectory.

The Big Ten’s media rights deal had caught his eye, and he believed that the mix of Indiana’s resources and his method and résumé would guarantee success. Indiana’s alumni network, one of the world’s largest, also got Cignetti’s attention.

“He said, ‘Scott, if I just have average resources, I will win,'” Dolson said.

There was another draw, too.

“People were like, ‘Don’t touch that job, you can’t win there,’ and that lit a fire in him,” Manette Cignetti said. “He was like, ‘Why can’t you win there? It doesn’t make any sense.’ He had a really good record, he likes his record, so that’s motivation to win, too.”

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“I figured I had to make this trip up here, since we’ll be playing in this game next year.” — Cignetti, Dec. 1, Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, to Big Ten Network ahead of the 2023 league championship game

When the Hoosiers took the field against Michigan, a sellout crowd waved towels with Cignetti’s motto: “Fast, physical, relentless.” Many wore T-shirts and hoodies with “CIGNETTI,” modeled with the Marlboro cigarette logo and font, which are flying off the shelves at apparel stores near campus.

The scene looked different for Cignetti’s IU debut on Aug. 31. Indiana drew 44,150 for its opener but many left after the Hoosiers built a big halftime lead, leading Cignetti to wonder, “What’s going on here?”

The crowd actually dipped below 40,000 the following week but has swelled during Big Ten play. Indiana’s past three home games have been sellouts. The Michigan game drew 53,082 people.

“It just continues to grow and build,” Cignetti said. “It’s way over the top. It’s like a movement.”

Several hours later, Indiana clung to a 20-15 lead over Michigan, facing its first nail-biter of the season. Dolson and Whitten stood together on the Hoosiers sideline, watching nervously as fans roared and whipped their Cignetti-themed towels. The game carried extra tension for Cignetti and his family. Natalie’s boyfriend, Trent VanHorn, planned to propose to her on the field, ideally after a win. Curt learned of the plan the night before and, according to Manette, knew the pressure was on.

The Hoosiers prevailed, Natalie said yes and Curt tweeted a picture of the videoboard, which read: “Natalie, every day with you is 10-0. Will you marry me?” The good news continued during Indiana’s open week, as Cignetti agreed to a new eight-year, $72 million contract that more than doubled his annual salary.

Great way to cap off a gritty win!#GOIU pic.twitter.com/8xyr9Yov6H

— Curt Cignetti (@CCignettiIU) November 10, 2024

The coach reacted to the contract with another gem, telling Fox, “We’re the emerging superpower in college football. Why would I leave?”

Cignetti’s zingers are intertwined with his Indiana tenure, but, according to his family, also a bit misleading.

“You read people on the internet and they’re like, ‘I can’t stand Curt Cignetti. What an egomaniac,'” Carly Cignetti said. “That is like the complete opposite. But I get that it’s their impression of him if they’ve only seen the viral clips.”

Curt Jr. puts it this way: “When he got here, he just realized that everybody had this disproportionately negative view of what was possible. I honestly think it pissed him off. He’s very aware of: You need to change how people think. That’s why he did what he did.”

Curt Sr. also continues to be proven right. His proclamation with the Big Ten Network crew in December 2023 was greeted with chuckles and a clarification from host Dave Revsine, who asked Cignetti, “Are you willing to go on record with that prediction?”

“I am on record!” Cignetti replied.

No one is laughing now about Indiana getting to Indianapolis. The Hoosiers can essentially punch their title game ticket Saturday. Ohio State has won 29 straight against Indiana, the longest streak by a Big Ten team against a conference opponent. The Hoosiers are 12.5-point underdogs.

A win will all but guarantee Indiana’s first College Football Playoff berth. Even a competitive loss would make it tough for the selection committee to keep Cignetti’s crew out. Cignetti should sweep the national coaching awards.

The night before the Michigan game, Natalie Cignetti found her dad in his room, unplugging for a few minutes to eat dinner and watch TV. She asked him if he started to get excited about the playoff possibility. In typical coach fashion, Curt replied that he was only focused on the Michigan game.

If Indiana makes the CFP, though, Curt Cignetti won’t be surprised. He expected it and predicted it, and Hoosiers everywhere have listened.

“I’ve been around here a long time, and we’ve had some unbelievable moments,” Dolson said. “But relative to football, this is different. And it’s different because people’s confidence is different.”