In a shocking development, the SEC hype machine churned out some new noise this week.
And this new noise sounds a lot like all of the other bluster from the South.
Fresh off a win at Alabama, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was asked how Curt Cignetti’s run at Indiana has changed the expectations placed on first-year head coaches.
The questioner wondered if there’s a Cignetti Effect where the expectations are too high too soon.
Smart and Cignetti were on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama for four years from 2007-10. They know each other well. That’s why it was a little surprising to hear Smart publicly imply Cignetti couldn’t repeat what he has accomplished the last two-plus years if he were coaching in the SEC.
“I’m still waiting for the first ‘Curt Cignetti effect’ in the SEC,” Smart said. “It’s tough, tough, tough sledding, week-in and week-out. Maybe it can happen with the right guy bringing the right players with him, but it’s tough.”
Smart’s comments seem to ignore that Indiana defeated Ohio State, the SEC’s Alabama (38-3), Oregon and Miami in succession to win the national championship Cignetti has also won at some of the nation’s toughest road venues, including Penn State, Oregon, Iowa and Nebraska in just over the last 12 months.
To be fair, Cignetti has publicly blasted the SEC on multiple occasions. So he has some of this coming.
Last year he said he was following an SEC model for soft nonconference scheduling, and this year he mocked the excuses that steadily flow from the South — including comments like Smart’s — while the Big Ten has won three straight national titles.
“We don’t run a hype machine up here in the Midwest,” Cignetti said this summer. “We believe everything is earned, not given. When we fall short, we say we fall short. When we don’t win, we don’t cry a river. We don’t whine and complain. That’s why we’re the best.”
Perhaps recognizing he had ignited another round of fire in the SEC-Big Ten cold war, Smart did pay Cignetti a compliment as he continued his response.
“The key to all that is the quarterback, and Coach Cignetti’s done a tremendous job developing or bringing or getting quarterbacks,” Smart said. “That’s a big part to every offense or team’s success.”
But even the suggestion Cignetti could just be “bringing” or “getting” quarterbacks made that comment also feel a bit backhanded.
After all, it’s well documented quarterbacks have dramatically improved under Cignetti. It’s another aspect of, well, you know, the Cignetti Effect.
And it’s why IU Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza was willing to take less money and pick Indiana over Smart’s Georgia.
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