The wildest college football coaching cycle ever is about to enter a pivotal phase. After firings began at Power 4 programs in mid-September — and, at Stanford, way back in late March — the hirings are coming soon.
Programs will survey different candidate profiles, trying to identify the best available coach for their specific places. But there’s one hiring process, and one candidate profile, that merits closer examination from just about any program.
Everyone should be trying to find the next Coach Cig.
Indiana’s hiring of Curt Cignetti from James Madison on Nov. 30, 2023, didn’t seem seismic or unusual at the time. Other hires in the cycle generated more buzz, both within the Big Ten (Jonathan Smith at Michigan State) and beyond it (Mike Elko at Texas A&M). The January 2024 frenzy that included Kalen DeBoer leaving Washington to replace Nick Saban at Alabama and Michigan promoting Sherrone Moore to replace Jim Harbaugh blew up much more than Cignetti taking the IU job.
Cignetti was a respected coach but largely off the radar, having won at James Madison and two programs below the FBS. He hadn’t coached in the Power 4 since 2010. He was 62 years old. His hire received solid reviews but had a wait-and-see feel about it.
Two years later, everything has changed for Indiana football. The team won a record 11 games in 2024 and made its first College Football Playoff appearance. Indiana is currently ranked No. 2 in the CFP standings and bound for the Big Ten championship game and another playoff spot. Cignetti has already received two adjusted contracts and has risen to No. 3 in salary among coaches ($11.6 million). The losingest program in major college football is 21-2 under Cignetti.
What qualities did Indiana see in Cignetti that have allowed him to elevate the program to unthinkable heights? Perhaps more important, what elements about him were missed or overlooked, which likely delayed his return to the Power 4?
ESPN spoke with several people involved in the Cignetti hire to assess the ingredients — or Cig-redients — that have led to his success, what other schools should be seeking and also the candidates in the current cycle who check some of the same boxes.
“If you truly want to find that next guy, it’s not going to hit you in the face,” a source said. “It’s peeling the onion, it’s getting to that second or third layer.”
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Who could be the next Cignetti?
Penn State’s firing of James Franklin on Oct. 12 placed a different focus on the oft-debated topic of coaching success. What really matters when evaluating win-loss records? Franklin was fired for not beating enough top-10 opponents at PSU. When Nebraska’s Matt Rhule emerged as a possible replacement, his struggles against highly ranked teams were immediately cited.
But are enough schools evaluating coaches who have won at multiple levels and at multiple programs? DeBoer rose from Eastern Michigan offensive coordinator in 2016 to Alabama head coach in 2024, but he also went 67-3 with three NAIA national titles at Sioux Falls.
Cignetti, meanwhile, was not just an emerging coach at a Group of 5 school, going 52-9 at James Madison, when Indiana hired him. He also had two winning seasons and FCS playoff appearances at Elon, which had just one playoff appearance before he arrived. Cignetti also went 53-17 at Indiana-Pennsylvania, making three Division II playoff appearances.
He also had not only experienced success at lower-level programs. Cignetti was part of Nick Saban’s original staff at Alabama, and helped the Crimson Tide to a national title in 2009.
“We wanted someone who had won and consistently won,” an Indiana source said. “All those experiences made him way, way more prepared than if he’d just been the offensive coordinator at some point in Alabama and gotten a head- coaching job. We felt that looking at other programs, it does translate.”
First-time head coaches who jump from coordinator roles at top programs have had national-level success: Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham are all examples. Others parlayed instant success in their first head- coaching jobs into bigger opportunities, like such as Eliah Drinkwitz moving to Missouri after a single 12-1 season at Appalachian State.
But Cignetti has shown that breadth of success matters, especially at programs on different levels.
“When they’ve done it at multiple places, then it allows you to have a greater sense of comfort of: It’s not just a resource thing,” an industry source said.
Every college coach portrays himself as being directly involved in personnel. But the reality is with general managers, growing personnel departments and the payment of athletes through revenue sharing, some head coaches are more overseers and delegators in how their rosters are constructed.
Not Cignetti.
He served as Alabama’s recruiting coordinator during his time there with Saban, and has continued to closely evaluate every player he’s considering as a recruit or a transfer. As a head coach in Division II and the FCS, Cignetti maintained a hands-on philosophy. Even after taking over programs with greater resources, he didn’t step away one bit.
Unlike almost every program in the Power 4, Indiana does not have a general manager.