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How Curt Cignetti turned Indiana football into a winner so quickly

Posted on by Kennedy
How Curt Cignetti turned Indiana football into a winner so quickly

On Saturday, IU will host a Big Ten ranking game in front of fans for the first time since 1993, pitting No. 18 Indiana against No. 25 Nebraska.

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BLOOMINGTON – Scott Dolson felt the wind before anyone else.

After spending the Sunday he fired Tom Allen briefing players, sitting with team executives and taking phone calls, Indiana's athletic director sat on a Zoom with James Madison's head coach the next morning. Curt Cignetti had been running his own programs for 13 years – his process was so refined that he could more or less write it down as a manual – and for 13 years he had done nothing but win.

Dolson tried to turn around a frustrated loser, a program that had struggled for relevance in the second half of the 2010s only to watch it wither in a NIL-driven post-COVID world. The heady days of Michael Penix's battle for the pylon against Penn State seemed long gone when Dolson sat down in front of his computer and started talking to Cignetti.

As soon as the call ended, Dolson, full of renewed energy, jumped out of his chair and down the hallway to Deputy AD Mattie White's office.

“This guy is different,” Dolson told White. “I think he can win here.”

So far, Cignetti has done nothing else.

“That’s where brilliance happens.” Curt Cignetti and the 35-year-old recliner can't let him go.

On Saturday, Memorial Stadium (Indiana) will host a Big Ten ranking game in front of fans for the first time since 1993, pitting No. 18 IU against No. 25 Nebraska. Aside from the COVID-closed season, Bill Mallory was coaching against George Perles the last time the Hoosiers took the field in a conference game at home.

Fox's Big Noon Kickoff will be broadcast live from outside the South End Zone on Saturday morning. A national audience will be treated to perhaps the more important Big Ten games this season. And until then, anyone who hasn't witnessed Cignetti's remarkable turnaround will be looking for an answer to some version of the basic question:

How did all this happen?

Experienced veteran

Cignetti generally begins with his players providing their own answers to variations on this question. But the roster itself reflects decisions he made early in his tenure — decisions based on years of experience as a head coach — that are critical to Indiana's success today.

Among them, Cignetti relied primarily on veterans.

In his first days in office, he was faced with massive roster changes (he likes to list ten offensive starters and half a defense as a starting point in the portal), and instead of looking at malleable young talent, he and his staff targeted old hands.

“I'm more concerned with performance than potential,” Cignetti told reporters in December, just before he set about cashing that particular check with a series of Group of Five transfers that would add key position groups, especially on offense. should be rebuilt.

That meant sacrificing long-term stability for short-term stability. IU accepted transfers with just one year of eligibility remaining (barring possible medical exemptions) at positions such as quarterback, wide receiver, running back, offensive line, defensive line and elsewhere. This means that there will be a lot of work for Cignetti and his employees in the transfer portal this winter.

But the turnaround was there for all to see – Indiana is an experienced team that plays like this in crucial moments, be it third downs, red zone situations or close games. The poise and composure that served IU so well in the season's most important moments might have been learned elsewhere, but they were hard-won nonetheless.

Secret to IU's 6-0 start? The best red zone offense in the country.

“It just gives the team confidence,” said Wake Forest transfer wide receiver Ke'Shawn Williams, Indiana's all-time leader with four receiving touchdowns, after the win at Northwestern earlier this month. “We have a lot of guys who are older, come from winning cultures and understand what it takes to be a good team. And it clearly translates.”

Since preseason, Cignetti has based much of his public belief in his team on these qualities.

It wasn't a coincidence that he rebuilt his squad, he rebuilt it that way. So perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising that he had so much confidence in the group he and his staff put together last winter with significantly increased NIL resources.

Statistically, IU's top passer, its four leading rushers, five of its top six receivers, its top four tacklers and all four players with at least 1.5 sacks so far this season are transfers. Kurtis Rourke (Ohio), Elijah Sarratt (James Madison), Mikail Kamara (James Madison) and Aiden Fisher (James Madison) all currently rank in the top five or better in the Big Ten in passing yards and touchdowns, receiving yards, Sacks and tackles for loss and total tackles.

Even before a ball was snapped, thrown or kicked this season, Cignetti anchored his trust in his team in the qualities they were now displaying – and the Hoosiers let him look forward.

“We have a lot of experienced players. We have an experienced quarterback. And I think we have a chance to be a good offense, defense and special teams,” Cignetti said in a press conference ahead of the Week 1 opener against Florida International. “I feel good about the pieces we have.”

The JMU pipeline

It's hard not to notice how many of those players who were added last winter – players who are now critical to Indiana's success – had the same experience in his last stint under Cignetti.

A total of 13 players followed Cignetti and the six assistants he brought with him from James Madison to Bloomington. That includes starters at seven positions, eight when factoring in Solomon Vanhorse's role as a kickoff return specialist. And that doesn't take into account the likelihood that Nick Kidwell would have started at one of Indiana's two offensive guard spots had he not suffered a season-ending injury in fall camp.

These players have spoken since the start of the offseason about the responsibility they feel leading, even as new faces. On both sides of the ball, the JMU transfers made a point of reinforcing their coaches' messages and methods, vouched for the results and then accomplished much themselves.

And when Indiana needed to set the tone – when the program needed confidence, a cool head or anything else – the former Dukes didn't shy away from those moments, either.

“That’s not the goal,” Kamara said after Northwestern’s win two weeks ago secured bowl eligibility. “This is fantastic, but this isn’t the end.”

When Cignetti spoke at the Big Ten media days in July of “a lot of players who have played successful football and have good career numbers,” he may have been thinking primarily about the talent he brought with him from Harrisonburg.

“They believe they're going to win,” Cignetti said, referencing the various JMU transfers Indiana announced during the December signing period. “They think like champions. They believe in the coaches. They believe in the program. They believe they will come on (campus) and make a difference.

“Guess what? I think so too.”

Google him

The biggest key, according to almost everyone involved, was Cignetti himself.

Starting with the Zoom call with Dolson in November, the momentum has been steadily building behind the man who has never truly tasted defeat as a head coach.

For a long time — until the games began — Cignetti presented a great academic exercise for the Big Ten. Here was a coach with unwavering confidence, a man who boiled his recruiting pitch down to “I win.” Google me,” who succeeded everywhere and overcame the myriad challenges that came his way as he tried to turn around the worst-losing program in the conference’s long history.

The unstoppable force has so far moved the immovable object. The trainer, who estimates that the average day begins before sunrise and ends after sunset, who has a projector pointed at a blank white wall in his office and who uses it to watch movies in virtually his free time, was the impetus for the setup on a day like this, the most competent, efficient and ruthless teams anyone can remember in IU football in years.

When asked to explain, virtually everyone involved starts with Cignetti himself.

“It starts with his confidence,” Fisher said. “He conveys that to his players, just by the way he carries himself, the way he prepares, and you see how it affects his players every game. “We know that “We’re better prepared than the other team and we’ll just use that into the game.”

In the last 10 months, Curt Cignetti has explained himself a lot.

How he recruits. How he plays offense and defense. How he attacks the portal. How he builds a winner. How he plans to revitalize the once-stagnant IU football program that is suddenly in full swing.

In many ways, Cignetti was asked to detail the process he used to lead Indiana — which has won just nine times in the last three years — to 6-0 in his first season in Bloomington. All the more fascinating was the question Cignetti asked in his weekly press conference on Monday:

What have you learned in the last few months?

“What I've learned so far,” Cignetti said after a moment's pause for thought, “is that we have unlimited potential as an institution and a football program.” If you put in the effort every day and do the things you need to do to be successful, there is there are no imposed limitations on what you can achieve.”

Since his first day on the job, Cignetti has given his fans permission to dream. So far, those dreams have continued to become a reality, and the IU coach shows no intention of putting any limits on his ambitions now.

Listen to Mind Your Banners, our IU athletics podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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