Indiana head football coach Curt Cignetti was named the Home Depot National Coach of the Year on Thursday evening during the Home Depot College Football Awards Show broadcast on ESPN.
After orchestrating one of the biggest turnarounds in FBS history, he is the fourth Indiana head coach to win a national coach of the year award .
Cignetti joins the likes of Bo McMillin (1945; AFCA), John Pont (1967; AFCA, FWAA, The Sporting News, Walter Camp Foundation) and Tom Allen (2020; AFCA) to win national coach of the year. He is also a finalist for the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year and a part of the Paul “Bear” Bryant Coach of the Year Award watch list.
The national coach of the year honor earns him a $100,000 bonus under the terms of his contract. Cignetti has now earned over $1.5 million in bonuses this year.
He was named the Hayes-Schembechler Big Ten Coach of the Year from the conference coaches and the Dave McClain Coach of the Year from the media that covers the Big Ten earlier this month.
The honors from the Big Ten mark the fourth time in his career that he earned coach of the year accolades from a conference office, doing so once at each of his previous stops. He was the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Coach of the Year in 2012, the Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year in 2017 and Sun Belt Coach of the Year in 2023.
Cignetti has engineered an eight-game improvement from Indiana’s 2023 to 2024 seasons. That number currently sits tied for the second-best improvement by a first-year head coach since at least 1996. He was the first-ever Division I head coach to start 8-0 or better in consecutive seasons at different institutions. He led James Madison to a 10-0 mark to start the 2023 season and pushed Indiana to an identical mark to begin the 2024 slate.
The 11 victories in 2024 are the most in IU program history and mark the first double-digit win season in Hoosier history. Likewise, the eight wins in Big Ten play are the most by an IU team since joining the conference in 1900. He is the only Indiana head coach to start a season at least 4-0 and joined the select group of Big Ten coaches that started their Big Ten tenures with 10-0 overall records in the AP Poll Era (since 1936): Ryan Day (Ohio State, 2018-19), Urban Meyer (Ohio State, 2012), Earle Bruce (Ohio State, 1979), Bennie Oosterbaan (Michigan, 1948-49) and Carroll Widdoes (Ohio State, 1944-45).
Indiana has reached the College Football Playoff for the first time in program history and reaches the postseason for the 13th time. The Hoosiers will take on Notre Dame in the CFP First Round on Friday (Dec. 20) night inside Notre Dame Stadium at 8 p.m. ET. The game will air on ABC/ESPN with a special Friday night College GameDay on site in South Bend starting at 3:30 p.m. and leading up to kickoff.
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