It seems IU football coach Curt Cignetti is having a Field of Dreams effect on newly hired college football coaches.
If you make viral comments, the wins will come?
New Kentucky head coach Will Stein, the former offensive coordinator at Oregon, did just that at his SEC media day podium appearance this week.
Stein was asked why he thinks it’s possible to win at Kentucky, a program that has just three double-digit win seasons and two conference titles in its history.
Stein couldn’t respond “Google me” because he’s never been a head coach. So he just left out the Google part.
“I think because of me, to be honest,” Stein said in front of a packed room. “I think because of me. I know what it takes. I have seen it at the highest levels. I know what it takes to recruit at this level.”
Cignetti also generated considerable buzz very early in his tenure with fiery remarks at an IU basketball game. You know, when he said everybody sucks.
New UCLA coach Bob Chesney also used a basketball game appearance to energize the crowd, coincidentally when the Bruins were playing IU at Pauley Pavilion. Similar to Cignetti in a BTN interview during which he predicted Indiana would play in the Big Ten title game, Chesney made a bold prediction.
“I did not come here to be average,” Chesney told the UCLA crowd. “I want you to support this thing. Understand what we’re building: we’re about to win a Big Ten championship.”
Not all of the new coaches are making viral comments similar to Cignetti. Others are hearing the Cignetti comparisons before they even coach a game.
In the era of the transfer portal, and let’s face it, the era of Cignetti, the turnaround timeline in college football has never been shorter. And every new coach is facing an “if Indiana can do it why can’t you” reality.
Like Cignetti a couple years ago, new Auburn coach Alex Golesh brought several key members of his staff and several key players from his last stop at South Florida. That has prompted many to wonder if Auburn can be the next Indiana — including long time Cignetti detractor, ESPN’s Paul Finebaum.
“To compare it to coach Cignetti and what they did at Indiana, I would say probably, if that’s the expectation, awesome,” Golesh told Finebaum.
“What those guys did in that two-year run that they’ve had so far is unprecedented. This can be, and I’m okay if that’s the expectation, like you come to Auburn, you come to this conference because you want real expectations. So I’m okay with that.
Even programs with rich histories are using Indiana and Cignetti as a measuring stick.
Florida has an iconic brand and three national titles in the last 30 years. The architect of the first of those three crowns hopes the program’s new head coach Jon Sumrall can be Cignetti-like.
“This guy, he might be a little bit like Curt Cignetti,” Spurrier said on a podcast after Sumrall was hired. “I mean he is serious and guys are going to play hard, they’re going to play with effort. We’re not going to have 13 on the field, all the kind of stuff.”
Maybe Spurrier is right.
Perhaps one of these coaches will have a Cignetti effect on their programs.
But maybe Cignetti is just one of one, often imitated and compared, never duplicated.
For more on Cignetti’s influence on college football, GO HERE.
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