Here was Indiana, a program most athletic directors would never have imagined winning a national football championship, simply destroying Alabama on its way to the College Football Playoff semifinals. Although there was already a consensus that Curt Cignetti had achieved the greatest turnaround in the history of college football, turning a perennial loser into the number one team in the country in just two years, something about that victory over Alabama sparked different conversations.
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Naturally, for some administrators whose programs had been more successful than Indiana’s, minds turned to an inevitable question: If they had been smart enough to pry Cignetti out of James Madison, would their team play Miami on Monday for the national championship instead of the Hoosiers?
“Biggest mistake of all time,” said one athletic director who was evaluating coaching candidates a few years ago and ultimately didn’t hire Cignetti.
But was it really a (disorder)?
As the season progressed, it was surprising how often people in everyday life asked me why Cignetti, 64, trained in the dark until a few years ago. It’s just mind-boggling to many fans that someone who is so good at the job didn’t get his chance until the worst power conference show of all time.
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It’s true, Cignetti was a winner at every level: 53-17 at D-II Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 14-9 at Elon and 52-9 at James Madison. And over the past decade, athletic directors and search firms have gotten better at considering candidates with little college training like Kalen DeBoer or Willie Fritz, whose backgrounds suggested they could actually coach.
But while it’s easy in retrospect to say that programs like Boston College, Michigan State and Syracuse should have hired Cignetti when they were conducting coaching searches at the same time as Indiana, there are legitimate reasons why it didn’t seem so clear at the time.
“You know what hiring is like,” said one industry source who typically participates in multiple searches. “There are no guarantees. I mean, kudos to Indiana for taking a chance on this guy, but no one knew he would be this successful.”
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In fact, if we go back to 2023, when James Madison went 10-0 in mid-November, Cignetti was not one of the hot names on the coaching carousel.
It was not for lack of trying on the part of his Birmingham-based agency, which got some traction on jobs, but not necessarily ones Cignetti would have been willing to take.
At that point in history, the coaching carousel was tilted against coaches at Group of Five programs. With the true impact of NIL and the transfer portal just beginning to sink in, it was a training cycle riddled with skepticism that success at James Madison would translate from a roster management standpoint.
And the truth is, Cignetti had never looked for opportunity or money during his entire tenure at James Madison. He made it clear that he would rather stay and continue earning than take a small step up or be stuck in a dead-end job.
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Although it seems jarring to have that mentality before going to Indiana, a program that had not been miles away from championships in its entire history, something important happened in the summer of 2022. That’s when the Big Ten announced its new round of media deals that projected paying schools $70 million per year.
Cignetti noticed. Or maybe he saw the future.
According to a source familiar with his thinking at the time, Cignetti recognized that even a lower-tier Big Ten program having such a financial advantage over the rest of college sports opened up possibilities that were previously out of reach. When Cignetti was approached about Indiana as a potential suitor, he felt he would have a chance if the school was willing to spend immediately in the middle of the Big Ten pack. He also studied the schedule and felt there were enough wins available to get the program off the ground.
On the other side of that equation, the Hoosiers had nothing to lose. If Cignetti were to fail, he would be like every coach Indiana has ever had.
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Not all athletic directors have that kind of freedom and Cignetti didn’t seem like a safe bet for two reasons.
First, while his win-loss record earned respect, it was only a mere two-year size at the FBS level. Second, James Madison is one of those programs that has been so successful for so many years that sometimes it’s hard to know how much credit to give the coach. It didn’t help Cignetti’s marketability that his predecessor at James Madison, Mike Houston, had coached himself to the bench at East Carolina that year.
There is also the question of Cignetti’s personality. Although he is now America’s most beloved curmudgeon, he was not known for being particularly dynamic in an interview. Even his “Google me” bravado was awkward, according to a manager who knew Cignetti early in his career.
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“Now everyone thinks it’s some kind of cute trick, but when interviewed, he comes across as a serial killer,” the manager said. “I don’t think you’re going to sit him down and say, ‘Man, our fans are going to love this guy.'”
It just goes to show how difficult this business can be. Whether athletic directors are good or bad at any other aspect of their job, it often seems like their fate is tied to the track record of the football coach they hired. No one wants to make a mistake, so managers often gravitate toward what they perceive as security.
It seems ridiculous now, but at the time a 62-year-old man a dozen years removed from power conference recruiting didn’t feel particularly confident when success in football is mandatory.
In the end, Cignetti and Indiana were perfect for each other.
They’re in the national championship game. Everyone who didn’t hire him? They can play the worst hypothesis game ever.