As the Indiana Hoosiers were close to completing their meteor-like rise to the NCAA football National Championship, coach Curt Cignetti responded to a reporter’s question, answering, “This would make a good movie!”
While that could indeed become a reality, trying to sell such an outlandish movie script to Hollywood before Cignetti’s arrival in Bloomington two years ago would have met with instant rejection. Labeling such as a fictitious fairy tale could have been a selling point, but few would have thought such a storyline would ever be believable!
In case you’ve been in a Rip Van Winkle state or have no interest in college football, in a short two-year span, Cignetti’s magic on the Indiana campus has transformed the school with the most losses in major college football history into an undefeated 16-0 National Champion with storybook speed and efficiency.
The record book will show that Indiana completed the first 16-0 championship season since the Yale Bulldogs accomplished the feat in ’94 — as in 1894! In winning the school’s first national title, the Hoosiers completed a 3-0 playoff run, never trailing for even a second along the route in wins over Alabama, Oregon, and Miami, 27-21, to hoist the trophy. The three victories came after Indiana had defeated the defending national champs, Ohio State, in the Big Ten title game.
During my professional career, I spent a lot of time in Indiana. Despite not having a Major League Baseball or Hockey franchise, its sports appetite for basketball is infectious, with IU hoops and high school basketball hysteria being well known. The recent arrival of Caitlin Clark and the NBA Pacers reaching the championship final last year has only heightened interest in the state.
The well-known 1986 movie Hoosiers, telling the story of the fictitious small-school Hickory Huskers winning the state championship against overwhelming odds, still lives on as one of the best sports movies ever filmed. It also has many movie lines still quoted today, including Coach Norman Dale telling his team before the final game, “Let’s win this one for all the small schools that never had the chance to get here.”
With 48,626 students on its main Bloomington campus and 805,000 living alumni spread out across the country, the largest alumni community in the country, IU is by no means a small school. But before Cignetti’s arrival, they existed as a barren land on the college football landscape. But, what a difference two years make!
As his inaugural press conference upon taking the job, Cignetti was asked what it would take to get players to come to Indiana. His response stunned many: “I win. Google me.”
Boxer Muhammad Ali once was quoted as saying, “It’s not bragging if I can back it up.” Ditto Cignetti.
With Pennsylvania roots (born in Pittsburgh, PA), Cignetti’s father, Frank Sr., is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He played quarterback at West Virginia before launching his coaching career in 1983 as a graduate assistant at Pitt. Along the way, his coaching stops were varied, until joining Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator from 2007 to 2010. While there, the Crimson Tide enjoyed two undefeated seasons, won 29 consecutive games, and won the national championship in 2009.
In 2011, he left Alabama to become the head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, whose program was coming off a 4-10 conference record the previous two seasons. In his second season, IUP advanced to the NCAA Regional Finals, followed by playoff appearances in both 2015 and 2016. In six years at the helm, his teams compiled a 53-17 record, with three NCAA appearances and two conference championships.
Cignetti coached at Elon College (2017-2018). He took a team with a 4-20 conference record and six losing seasons to an NCAA playoff berth in his first year. In 2018, Elon scored a historic win over James Madison 27-24, snapping JMU’s 22-game NCAA winning streak.
JMU immediately hired Cignetti as its coach in 2019, and he guided the Dukes to a 14-2 record. His five years at the school included an appearance in the FCS National Championship game and a move from the Colonial Athletic Association to the Sun Belt Conference, earning a share of the Sun Belt’s East Division title.
In two seasons leading Indiana the Hoosiers have compiled a 27-2 record (.931 winning percentage- best in the nation), won three bowl games (team was 3-11 in bowl games in school history), overcame 100-1 odds to win championship, garnered its first Heisman Trophy winner (QB Fernando Mendoza) and became the only NCAA school to win undefeated national championships in men’s basketball (1976 Bobby Knight led team) and football.
Cignetti’s rapid revival of the Indiana football program may be the best turnaround in college football history, and his quote, “I win. Google me,” is truly prophetic.
