What took Curt Cignetti so long to find a premium college football job?

Curt Cignetti has become college football’s biggest revelation over the past two years. From his bold ‘Google Me’ quotes to his no-nonsense personality and his ability to flat-out beat teams, Cignetti has almost instantly become a national treasure. There has even been conversation around why he wasn’t considered to be Nick Saban’s successor at Alabama. 

While the success at Indiana has come almost overnight after a big transformation of the program, Cignetti’s path to greatness was far more clouded than that, starting as a quality assistant who chose to bet on himself in a move that has certainly paid off since.

What took Cignetti so long to cement himself as a top head coach in college football?

It all started back in 1983, as Cignetti joined the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant at Pitt following a four-year playing career at West Virginia as a quarterback. He moved around to Davidson, Rice and Temple before ending back at his alma mater, Pitt, earning a quarterback coach job at all of those destinations.

After six seasons at Pitt, Cignetti caught his first big break, joining Chuck Amato’s inaugural staff at North Carolina State, where he and the team saw significant success. As the quarterbacks coach at NC State, Cignetti coached star quarterback Phillip Rivers in 2003 and even recruited Russell Wilson to NC State in 2006, as the Wolfpack made a bowl game in five of their first six years there.

After a poor 2006 season where NC State went 3-9, Amato and his staff were let go, and Cignetti found a role on Nick Saban’s inaugural Alabama staff as the recruiting coordinator. There, he started to excel again as his eye for talent really started to stand out. Cignetti recruited standout players Julio Jones, Mark Ingram and Dont’a Hightower, among other talented players. But Cignetti believed he was ready for a head-coaching job after four seasons at Alabama, the program he credits for getting him prepared to be a head coach.

However, his path to being a head coach wasn’t a traditional one. Cignetti had never been an offensive coordinator or a play-caller at any of his previous stops. Plus, he was 47 years old at the time, which is why he needed to make a bold bet on himself if he truly wanted to be a head coach.

That’s exactly what happened when Cignetti took a chance on himself and became the head coach at D-II Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which had gone 6-5 the season before. Cignetti came from a football family, and his father, Frank Cignetti Sr., was the longtime head coach at IUP from 1986 to 2005 before retiring.

During Frank Cignetti’s time there, IUP went 182-50-1, reaching the D-II playoffs 14 times. In between the two Cignettis, Lou Tepper was the head coach at IUP and went 35-18 in five seasons, but struggled in his final two years, going 4-10 in conference play, leading to a change.

Insert Curt Cignetti, who had won a National Championship at Alabama, but was ready to be the guy in charge and do things his way.

“Curt was ready to be a head coach. He had burned his spurs and worked really hard,” then-IUP Athletic Director Frank Condino said about Cignetti, via ESPN’s Jake Trotter. “I’m not sure why he couldn’t catch a break at the Division I level. But for us, it was a no-brainer to hire somebody of his caliber, especially with all the family ties at IUP.”

That move panned out quickly for Cignetti, as IUP went 7-3 in its first year under its new head coach in 2011, and proceeded to go 46-14 over the next four years, which included a D-II National Championship.

After building out a strong program at IUP, Cignetti parlayed his success there into his first D-I head coaching job, which came at FCS Elon. Similar to IUP, Elon was undergoing a rebuilding phase, going 9-37 in its previous four seasons, but Cignetti was up for the chance.

In his first season there in 2008, Cignetti gave the school its best season since 2019, going 8-4 and leading Elon to the FCS Playoffs, for which he earned the CAA Coach of the Year Award. In 2009, Cignetti achieved a tough feat, upsetting James Madison, which had been on a 22-game CAA winning streak and a 19-game win streak at home. The victory marked Elon’s first win over a top-five opponent.

Cignetti helped Elon reach the playoffs there once again, and opportunities continued to come for the then-58-year-old.

Finally, Cignetti got his big break, as the school he just upset the previous year, James Madison, wanted him to be its next head coach. In his first season there, Cignetti led the Dukes to a 14-2 record, reaching the FCS National Championship Game. That success didn’t stop as JMU made the playoffs in each of its next two seasons, going a combined 19-3 before successfully moving up to the FBS ranks in the Sun Belt.

In Cignetti’s first year at the FBS level, James Madison went 8-3 and won a share of the Sun Belt conference championship in 2022 before going 11-1 and winning the conference in 2023, being ranked as a top-25 team.

Finally, after over 40 years in college football, Cignetti got the call for his first Power 4 head coaching job. But even then, it wasn’t a coveted role. He was tasked with taking over an Indiana team that had gone 9-27 over its past three years in one of the toughest conferences in college football.

But at 63 years old, Cignetti did what he does best: Rebuild a program instantly. With his coaching staff and a flurry of transfers coming over, Cignetti led the Hoosiers to an 11-2 record in his first year at the helm, helping Indiana make the College Football Playoff in what seemed like an impossible feat.

That was only topped by what he’s done so far this year, leading the Hoosiers to a perfect 15-0 so far, with a chance to get Indiana its first National Championship in history.

In what’s been an incredible story, we’re back to one question: Why did it take so long for Cignetti to reach these ranks?

Perhaps it was his lack of coordinator experience that kept him away from the spotlight in his early years as an assistant. Maybe it was the fact that he didn’t take a traditional route to being a head coach like other Saban assistants, starting at the D-II ranks. Perhaps it was his age, as hiring a 60+ year old head coach may not be the most appealing to many programs.

Whatever it was, Cignetti has quickly cemented himself as one of the best coaches in the nation, and he’s not looking back.

Remember what he told us? Google him, he wins. Now, one of his toughest tests is ahead, a national championship game over Miami in its home stadium.