Curt Cignetti Won A National Title — And Broke The Coaching Carousel In The Process

By now, you’ve heard some variation of the story. Indiana athletics director Scott Dolson has told it countless times. It’s been printed in newspaper copy for months. It’s been chronicled in books about the remarkable rise of Hoosiers football. Nobody knew exactly who Indiana hired in Curt Cignetti in December 2024, but there was an idea, a feeling, an inkling about what he might represent and what the Indiana brass wanted. Dolson and his staff created a manifesto of sorts in the wake of the Tom Allen era. They circled traditional basketball powers like Kansas and North Carolina and how they held their own in football’s modern era. Indiana wanted that. It desired a sitting head coach to match those ambitions. That led to Cignetti. “There’s no perfect answer,” Dolson told me. “But, for us, where we were with the program, we felt like we needed someone who really just had a lot of experience as a head coach at managing the program, really had a blueprint.” Walt Disney might scoff at the underdog tale that has unfolded in Bloomington of late as almost too unbelievable, too cliché. But believe it. The national championship signage emblazoned on Memorial Stadium’s South End Zone is a reminder of what has transpired. A statue of the at-times grumpy, yet candid and viciously meticulous head coach that spearheaded this transformation is almost certain to be part of this permanence sooner than later. But as No. 5 Indiana approaches perhaps the most anticipated home game in program history on Saturday against No. 4 Ohio State, the impact of this tale and the thinking that brought Cignetti to Bloomington are having far-reaching ramifications. The Hoosiers have their unicorn. The rest of College Football Inc. is trying to find theirs. “There’s no magic bullet,” one industry source familiar with the coaching carousel told me. “I love the Indiana story and the Cignetti story, but that doesn’t mean that’s just going to happen every year.” Leaning Toward Experience Jamie Pollard has had brief moments of introspection in recent weeks. Retirement looms for the outgoing Iowa State athletics director. He’ll make it back to Ames for a handful of football games, but split time in Arizona, running or playing golf. During a reflective call in recent days, he thought back to pillar moments of his two-plus decades leading the department — efforts that made him among the longest-tenured administrators in the country — and the football hires that defined that period. “What I would tell you that I’ve observed is the two coordinators [I hired] spent their first several weeks, months, putting together their staff,” Pollard recounted. “Then that staff had to kind of figure out its culture, and, in some ways, we lost a year because it took a year for them to really get focused on what kind of players? What do we need? The whole operation. “And so when we hired Matt [Campbell] 10 years ago, I made the decision that we were going to hire a sitting head coach.” Talk to any administrator, search firm executive or coaching agent, and they’ll echo similar sentiments — there is no perfect way to hire a coach. But as Cignetti has torched college football’s best, the emphasis on head coaching experience and success at lower rungs of the sport has become prioritized in circles it was once more broadly ignored. Before replacing a legend at Alabama, Kalen DeBoer won three national titles at NAIA Sioux Falls. Before helping Houston into the Big 12 race, Willie Fritz won big at Blinn Junior College. Before stabilizing Kansas, Lance Leipold won six national championships at Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater. Before reigniting Florida, Jon Sumrall won conference titles at Troy and Tulane. “I’ve had an AD and president push back on a lower-level profile when a candidate came up,” a second industry source told me. “I’m like, ‘Well, where did Curt Cignetti come from?’ He was head coach at [IU-Pennsylvania].” “We looked at Lance Leipold, his success and how he really was able to do what he did at Kansas, and getting that program stabilized,” Dolson said. “… History is the greatest predictor of the future, right? We looked at that and, at the time, that felt like ‘Wow, that’s really a telling thing.’” During the interview process that would land him at Iowa State, Pollard’s eventual head coach asked if he could bring his assistant coaches from Toledo with him. The prevailing thought in college football circles had been that lower-level staffs need to be bolstered with Power Four experience. Pollard didn’t buy it. “If you don’t, I’m not hiring you,” he deadpanned. Campbell laughed. “Well, most Power Four jobs, the coaches are told, ‘You’re going to have to go get a big-name coordinator, or you’ve got to get this,’” he said at the time. “I kind of was of the understanding that I couldn’t bring them.” While Campbell’s hiring at Iowa State is a decade past, Cignetti has been among the harbingers of administrator and search firms’ more recent hiring inclinations. Arkansas State athletics director Chris Pezman, a former Houston linebacker who hired Fritz from Tulane, couldn’t shake the loss the Green Wave handed Pezman’s alma mater in 2022. Fritz — by then a more established commodity after successful runs at Blinn, Central Missouri and then-FCS Sam Houston State — downed Houston in overtime with a third-string quarterback. “I couldn’t get over it because this kid just found out on like Thursday he was starting and came in and beat us at our place,” Pezman told me. “His ability to get kids to play above themselves [stood out], and you saw that later on.” Pezman filed that sentiment away when searching for Dana Holgorsen’s replacement in 2023. Pollard, too, used similar priorities that brought Campbell to Ames when replacing him with ex-Washington State and South Dakota State head coach Jimmy Rogers this past offseason. “Five years ago, you’d hire the hot coordinator, and you’d help them figure it out, because most of the time, you’d be signing guys knowing they’re going to get to Year 4 or 5 in the contract,” Pezman continued. “Now, with the way the industry’s gone, pressures that are on everybody financially, you get maybe two, three years to figure out if they’re the guy. … That’s where the premium [on head coaching experience] is, because they can come in and know what they need.” Is it a touch too early to call the bend toward head coaching experience a full-blown trend? Perhaps. But it’s not nothing. Last year’s coaching cycle saw a historic 17 Power Four jobs change hands. Of those, 10 went to sitting head coaches, while ex-Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald also landed at Michigan State. Two were internal promotions — Morgan Scalley (Utah) and Pete Golding (Ole Miss). One — Tavita Pritchard (Stanford) — came by way of the NFL. Only three went to coordinators — Will Stein (Kentucky), Collin Klein (Kansas State) and Tosh Lupoi (Cal). Even at the Group of Six level, nine head coaches — like Missouri State’s Ryan Beard (Coastal Carolina), Jim Mora Jr. (Colorado State), Jason Candle (UConn), Mike Jacobs (Toledo) and Will Hall (Tulane) — were sitting head coaches or had been head coaches over the last three years. Now, whether any of that equates to a title-level turn is a stiffer test. “If you learn how to win, learn how to build a program, it takes a little bit of the risk away from having a first-time guy in somebody that’s done it at multiple levels and figured out ways to do it at multiple levels,” a third industry source told me. “Years ago, people would be hesitant to hire somebody coming from the FCS, but now I do think, man, if you’ve had success at multiple levels, Curt Cignetti has opened up that door. “Man, like, winners win.” The Exception, Not The Rule Georgia head coach Kirby Smart glanced down at the sheets resting on the podium before perking up and flashing a mild grin. “I’m still waiting on the first ‘Cignetti effect’ in the SEC,” he said through his deep drawl during his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “It’s tough, tough, tough sledding week in, week out.” Smart isn’t wrong. Cignetti is the exception to the rule. But as the cost of competing at the highest levels of college football rises month after month, administrators and boosters alike expect a return on investment, and that expectation has ramped up first-year pressure. The Athletic reported in September that 15 programs were spending in a range that may reach $40 million or more this fall. Another 13 programs saw the top end of their prospective ranges north of $30 million. That kind of commitment demands results — and breeds consternation when the on-field product doesn’t match. LSU head coach Lane Kiffin has slogged to a 1-2 start in SEC play after the school committed somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million between buying out Brian Kelly’s staff, bringing in Kiffin and flipping the Tigers’ roster. Florida’s Jon Sumrall, two weeks after being anointed the second-coming of Steve Spurrier, hit the skids in losses to Missouri and South Carolina that have spiked anxiety levels in Gainesville. Even Campbell, who was hired at Penn State after a topsy-turvy search that has fans sideways with administration in Happy Valley, is struggling to get the Nittany Lions off the ground after blowing a 17-0 lead to Wisconsin and falling to a susceptible USC squad the last two weeks. “There’s going to be a paradigm shift and a mindset change of educating people that, like the NFL, you know you’re going to lose games, but it’s all about, ‘Can we win nine or 10, get to the playoffs and make a run?’” said a fourth industry source. “… That should be the mentality, but everybody still has the mentality of ‘Well, we’re paying $30-40 million for a roster, we should win every game.’ It’s just not going to happen.” Cignetti is at least partially to blame for the insatiable craving for instant success. After all, Indiana won a national championship. In football. But for each slow start, there are those doing more with less that are expected to be hot commodities come carousel season, given their Cignetti-esque résumés and an ability to overachieve with less than ideal resources. UCLA’s Bob Chesney has been a revelation in Westwood, guiding the previously downtrodden Bruins to a 5-0 start with a road win over Oregon last week despite athletics director Martin Jarmond being fired and Chesney’s predecessor, DeShaun Foster, not lasting two seasons. Fritz, armed with one of the lowest roster budgets in the Power Four, has Houston humming heading into a crucial matchup with No. 18 Oklahoma State on Saturday. Wake Forest’s Jake Dickert is in the midst of a 5-1 start despite a budget reportedly in the range of $16-20 million, per The Athletic. Sources suggest the former Washington State head coach will be among the most sought-after names on the carousel this fall. Whether he’ll listen is another story. “None of these jobs are easy. None of them. Even Alabama, Texas. Those aren’t easy jobs either,” Wake Forest athletics director John Currie told me. “They all have dynamics, and so you can have experienced something hard as an assistant, but if you’ve experienced it as a head coach and you still have the energy to do it again, I think that’s really important. “… Personally, I think there’s only so many of those packets of energy a person can deploy over their career. That’s one of the reasons that you see some head coaches transition from one place to another, and they don’t do as well. It’s just really hard to understand the level of energy that is required for that and that is a finite thing in most leagues.” Cignetti, for his efforts, shows no signs of slowing down. The 65-year-old one-time Nick Saban assistant is among the highest-paid coaches in the sport. That’s been matched with a budget that’s believed to be in the upper quartile of the Big Ten, per The Athletic. Indiana has also rewarded Cignetti’s assistants handsomely. Defensive coordinator Bryant Haines — a popular assistant name for the coming cycle — is among the highest-paid assistants in the country. Offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, too, is being paid more than $2.4 million annually. Such is the cost of success. And maintaining it. Dolson almost perked up watching Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz and the upstart Hawkeyes upset Michigan in Ann Arbor three weeks ago. The blueprint he saw in Ferentz’s squad was familiar, almost predictable. The former Bob Knight manager, who saw the rough and rugged nature of the Hoosiers’ basketball program up close during its heyday, wants the same characterization for his football program. “Iowa’s teams, to me … look the same,” Dolson said. “Like, you can go back 50 years, the players in the uniforms change, but they look the same. And they’ve been able to recruit to that. They’ve developed their players. They’ve shown really better than anyone how you can have consistent results by really having that continuity and that blueprint. “That’s what we’re trying to do is emulate other programs that have been able to sustain continued success.” Saturday is a chance for further proof of concept, that the money Indiana has sunk into its program is well-spent. But even if the Hoosiers can’t outlast Ryan Day’s Buckeyes, Cignetti and IU are already college football’s modern iconoclast. “People still have the mindset that if one guy can do it, why can’t everybody else?” said the fourth industry source. “And it’s really the exception, not the rule.” Everybody wants their own Curt Cignetti. Good luck finding it.