BLOOMINGTON, IN – Frank Cignetti Sr. retired where he finished coaching, Indiana, Pennsylvania. He made a home just as he’d made a hall-of-fame career there, eventually watching his son, Curt, follow in his footsteps coaching the Crimson Hawks.
One day near Christmas, in 2016, Curt appeared at his door. Life was good for the younger Cignetti, who’d just finished 10-2 with a
And yet, Curt had dropped by to tell his father he wouldn’t be staying. Elon, a then-Colonial Athletic Association school in North Carolina with a moribund football program, had moved quickly in offering its head job, and Curt accepted.
It was an unconventional move. After six years, 53 wins and three playoff berths, the son of a program legend seemed well-positioned to wait for the right next job. Surely that wasn’t a small private school in a football-mad league with just six conference wins in its previous five years.
Frank Cignetti Sr. asked his son what anyone would have: “You sure you want to do that?” Curt’s reply reflected the same blunt confidence that’s since become recognizable as his custom.
“‘Dad,’” Curt Cignetti said, recalling the conversation in an interview earlier this year, “‘We’re going to go down there, and we’re gonna kick some ass.’
“And he said, ‘I haven’t seen you this excited in a long time.’”
College football has come to know Cignetti’s assured, unapologetic style through his latest successes, at James Madison and then Indiana.
Love him or hate him, there’s no doubting Cignetti’s confidence — or his results. Both have defined his approach to the job far longer than you’ve known his name.
“I always felt,” Cignetti said, “I’d be a good head coach.”
Curt Cignetti making people care about Indiana football
Cignetti’s reputation has risen with his success. From transitioning James Madison from a Championship Subdivision power into the Sun Belt to turning another perennial cellar dweller, Indiana, into a College Football Playoff team in 12 months, he has become one of the most recognizable faces — and quotes — in college football.
Depending largely upon your geographic persuasion, he’s been either a breath of fresh air invigorating a modern-day Big Ten success story, or a try-hard coach from a try-hard conference taking shots at the SEC for attention.
Even that surely qualifies as remarkable. When was the last time Paul Finebaum cared so much about Indiana?
Cignetti’s coaching story is as distinctive as his personality. He came to head jobs late, and despite an impressive Power Four lineage, he went to the foot of the pyramid before working his way up.
But he didn’t appear out of thin air at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, anymore than he did Indiana University. Cignetti has known virtually his entire life he wanted this, and it’s not much less time than that he’s known he can do it this well.
“Probably third or fourth grade, when we went to West Virginia,” Cignetti said, tracing his coaching ambition as far back as he could.
Frank Cignetti Sr. made that move with his family to Morgantown to join Bobby Bowden’s staff ahead of the 1970 season. Curt would watch from the sideline, and occasionally sneak into the locker room.
The more he watched his father, the further in love with the sport Curt fell. He credits hard work for overcoming “average” athleticism, allowing him to play quarterback at West Virginia. But he always saw his future with a headset on.
“With dad, you’re living it,” Curt Cignetti said. “As competitive guy growing up, it really appealed to me.”
Curt Cignetti following his own blueprint for success
That explains the why. Cignetti tweeted a picture of the how in the late hours of Dec. 18, 2023, just days after taking the Indiana job.
The tweet was captioned “Not done yet!” It featured a picture of Cignetti’s desk in his new office overlooking the Memorial Stadium field, an office that’s not altogether less spartan now than it was then.
Situated prominently was a book titled “James Madison Coaches Manual.” It set off a tempest on James Madison Twitter, the suggestion being Cignetti had walked out the door with trade secrets.
But the manual — far from being JMU property — reflected a lifetime spent in coaching, and a process refined across decades into what Cignetti now consistently refers to as his “blueprint” for success.
“He had it here. It was probably half of what it is now,” said IUP coach Paul Tortorella, Cignetti’s defensive coordinator and eventual successor. “We didn’t stray from it.”
Cignetti’s teams evolved with the game.
When he left his assistant job with Nick Saban’s Alabama after the 2010 season, the first teams Cignetti built at IUP rushed the ball roughly 2½ times more often than they passed it. In 2023, James Madison finished second in the Sun Belt in passing yards per game.
Cignetti never chained himself to a scheme. Just an attitude.
“His system works,” said Jamree Kromah, a standout for Cignetti at James Madison who is now with the Chicago Bears. “He’s a guy that’s all about winning and competing, all at the same time.”
What didn’t change was Cignetti’s approach — organization, discipline and clear-eyed focus happening nothing but the task immediately at hand. All of it brewing a confidence that often preceded even on-field results.
By the time Cignetti’s teams got to prove themselves in games, they’d already proved themselves to themselves.
“He brought it day one,” said Elon coach Troy Trisciani. “I remember our very first meeting, him talking to the staff, and then to the team, about how it’s all about our mindset. Playing fast, physical, relentless, and that there will be no self-imposed limitations.”
Success comes with putting the focus on today
Former Cignetti assistants and players will smile at the second part of that quote.
Trisciani, who followed Tortorella’s path as Cignetti’s defensive coordinator for two years at Elon before taking over for him as head coach, is repeating one of Cignetti’s favorite phrases.
“We play every play one play at a time, six seconds a play. Every play’s got a life of its own. Fast, physical, relentless. Smart, disciplined, poised. Not affected by success and failure. Never satisfied until the end of the game.”
Spend more than a few minutes around Cignetti, or ask him anything at all about his philosophy, and he’s bound to repeat it, verbatim.
“There’s even more of them,” Tortorella said, “but that’s one of the main ones.”
Seeking meaning in mottos can be dangerous. But it surely reflects something fundamental in Cignetti that his mission statement has been so deeply ingrained into his working process that his coaches and players know it word for word.
And they see it in the way he works, the success he has, and the things he leaves behind.
James Madison was the first of his head jobs not to be handed off to one of Cignetti’s assistants. To this day, Tortorella said IUP still structures its practices and meetings with the same efficiency Cignetti always preaches.
“Everything was today. Not yesterday, and not tomorrow,” Tortorella said. “We do a lot of the same things now that we did when he was here.”
He can be a tireless worker, often arriving to his office before sun-up. On the morning of his first signing day with the Hoosiers, in December 2023, Cignetti was operating on so little rest he clipped a curb on his way into the team facility because he’d fallen asleep at the wheel.
“My car dealer,” he deadpanned, “is not going to be real happy with me.”
But attend a Cignetti-led practice and you’re bound to leave early. There is little wasted effort. And while he’ll keep both hands on the important tasks — Cignetti still manages Indiana’s revenue-share payroll personally, for example — he knows when to delegate, and what to leave alone.
All of it reflective of that process, one Cignetti turned into serious winning almost from the start.
“He doesn’t waste a lot of time,” Tortorella said, “on things that really don’t have anything to do with winning or losing.”
Historic matchup when Indiana hosts Illinois
But if you want him to pin it down, exactly when he knew that blueprint was laid out correctly, Cignetti will rewind to Alamance County, North Carolina.
Elon was, in Cignetti’s words, “in worse shape from a competitive standpoint than Indiana” when he took the job. Yet behind true freshman quarterback Davis Cheek, after losing Week 1 at Toledo, the Phoenix tore off a run of eight consecutive wins, none of them by more than a possession.
Eventually, that season ran aground with successive losses to three ranked teams. Furman eliminated Elon in the first round of the FCS playoffs. But Cignetti had manifested that confidence he had felt that day at his father’s house. It validated his approach like nothing had before.
“That first year at Elon, I felt like I kind of had it down,” Cignetti said. “It just reinforced what I believe.”
So has virtually everything since, up to and including Indiana’s historic turnaround last fall. But if that reinforced what Cignetti believes about his process, it did not necessarily convince a wider sport still doubting the Hoosiers today.
Saturday night will mark Indiana’s first ranked-vs-ranked game at home since 1987. A win against No. 8 Illinois would be the Hoosiers’ first against a top-10 team at Memorial Stadium in front of fans in 58 years. Yet more of the doubts surrounding Indiana’s fitness for any College Football Playoff discussion tend to remain rooted in the now, in a team rebuilt (again) through the portal and in a — to put it generously — soft-touch nonconference schedule the Hoosiers strolled through.
Despite last season’s success, for example, the Fighting Illini remains nine spots ahead of Indiana in the polls. And though this is the only matchup of two ranked teams on the docket for this weekend, ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ heads to No. 6 Miami, which hosts a 1-2 Florida team closer to firing its coach than making a CFP run.
Cignetti came to head coaching late but supremely prepared. And an old backup quarterback knows nothing breeds confidence like preparation.
“You don’t take that kind of chance that I took,” Cignetti said, “leaving Alabama (to be) a DII head coach, and dropped that kind of pay cut — with your kids, one in college, two in high school, wanting to be doctors — without believing in yourself.”
Cignetti turned up at his father’s that day in December 2016 so excited for the same reason he left Alabama for IUP.
The same reason he left James Madison for Indiana.
The same reason he’s put a historical cellar dweller in the playoff conversation for the second year in a row.
He knows his process works. Hand him the chance, and Curt Cignetti will go out and kick some ass.