BLOOMINGTON — Listen to new Indiana head football coach Curt Cignetti speak for just a few moments, and it doesn’t take long to feel the confidence oozing from his voice.
The 17,222 fans in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall Friday evening witnessed it firsthand during the first half of IU men’s basketball’s win over Maryland. It takes a certain level of bravado to get on a microphone in front of a big arena full of people and say “Purdue sucks. So do Michigan and Ohio State,” the way Cignetti did.
That moment went viral — an Indiana football coach talking like that is sure to make waves. But hours before, he spoke with the same self-assertiveness for nearly 25 minutes during his introductory press conference across the street at Memorial Stadium.
Cignetti wasn’t directly calling out IU’s rivals at the podium like he did on the court, but he exuded the same confidence.
“There is no reason why we can’t be successful, pack the stadium, and be a source of pride to the entire university, town of Bloomington, and state of Indiana,” Cignetti said. “We’re going to change the culture, the mindset, the expectation level, and improve the brand of Indiana Hoosier football. There will be no self-imposed limitations on what we can accomplish.”
Cignetti, 62, isn’t the first football coach to start at IU confident in his ability to make the program consistently successful, and he won’t be the last. But not many have the track record to back it up that Cignetti has.
He’s coached football for more than 40 years, starting right after he graduated from West Virginia. He began his head coaching journey in 2011, and at Division II school Indiana University of Pennsylvania, FCS program Elon, and FCS-turned-FBS team James Madison, he won. A lot. The numbers speak for themselves, and Cignetti referenced them multiple times on Friday.
53-17 at IUP. 14-9 at Elon — a record he called “not very good.” And 52-9 at JMU, including a 19-4 mark after the Dukes moved up to FBS.
The former quarterback became adept at both coaching them and recruiting them as he developed as a coach. As quarterbacks coach at NC State, he helped Philip Rivers become an ACC Player of the Year and eight-time Pro Bowler. He also served as recruiting coordinator for the Wolfpack, and he brought Russell Wilson to Raleigh. before joining Alabama as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. Cignetti coached future Hall of Famer Julio Jones in Tuscaloosa, and recruited Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram II to the Crimson Tide.
The time Cignetti spent on Nick Saban’s original coaching staff at Alabama greatly influenced him as a coach.
“When I went with coach (Saban), I’d been coaching about 28 years at that point. Learned more from him in year one about how to lead and run a program than the previous 27,” Cignetti said. “Just everything from A to Z: Monthly calendar, how to lead and manage people, how to avoid complacency — which he was so good at on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute, second-to-second count. How to practice, how to play the game, plan for winning the game, how to recruit, how to evaluate, how to staff or restaff every year.”
But it wasn’t only those things he said he learned from working with Saban that show that impact. The tone Cignetti spoke in throughout the press conference, and his confident demeanor without being over-the-top about it, echoed his former boss.
Cignetti’s experience and success working with quarterbacks was important for IU vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics Scott Dolson, as was his recruiting acumen.
“We really wanted a high level recruiter. We wanted someone who was a proven evaluator and developer of talent. And we really wanted someone also who had worked with quarterbacks,” Dolson said. “Quarterbacks was really important to us.”
Cignetti says all the right things about his process. His arrival doesn’t instantly change everything about the program, and it takes buy-in from the players. He prefers production over potential when evaluating recruits. He sees the modern-era facets of the sport — transfer portal and NIL — as easily navigable, even while knowing some other schools will be richer in resources. And he’s certainly not fazed by competing with the Big Ten powers.
Cignetti comes across like a man who is fully aware of what he’s getting himself into. He talks as if the challenges faced by previous IU head coaches were only challenges because he wasn’t the one attacking them.
But within the college football landscape, this is a marriage between the unstoppable force and the immovable object.
Indiana football has lost more games than any program in the sport’s history, and the Hoosiers play in a Big Ten that’s only getting tougher with UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington joining next season. Cignetti turned around an Elon program that struggled before his arrival, but Indiana’s history may be on another level.
Winning in Bloomington is a code few have been able to crack. Tom Allen was on that track in 2019-20, and then it fell apart quickly.
Cignetti has immediately won everywhere he’s gone as a head coach. IU’s history and circumstances may not make that impossible, but it could take time to get there. How will Cignetti adapt if things don’t go according to plan from day one? That could be the real test of how he’ll do in this job.
The attitude Cignetti is bringing into the job will lead to one of two outcomes. Either he’ll be right about his ability, get IU to a place of being consistently competitive and playing in bowl games regularly, and instantly become one of the best coaches in program history; or he’ll have greatly underestimated the challenge of actually winning at Indiana.
Only time will tell which path Curt Cignetti — and the Hoosiers — are headed for.
The Daily Hoosier –“Where Indiana fans assemble when they’re not at Assembly”
- Find us on Facebook: thedailyhoosier
- You can follow us on Twitter: @daily_hoosier
- Seven ways to support completely free IU coverage at no cost to you.
