Curt Cignetti doesn’t have to leave Indiana to reach college football’s top tier — he’s already there

Every big-time school with a football opening is going to be interested in Curt Cignetti.

Indiana made the best coaching hire this decade when it plucked a 62-year-old out of James Madison. The son of a coach, Cignetti took the long, hard path to coaching stardom. To casual fans, he might seem like an overnight sensation, but he grinded his way up the ladder to now leading the No. 3 team in the country. He’s the best story in college football. 

Predictably, his name has already been prominently mentioned with the Penn State opening. If other big jobs like Florida, Auburn and Wisconsin open up, he’ll get mentioned for those, too. 

It seems to be as much about Cignetti’s ability as the notion that, of course, a football blue blood would be able to coach steal from Indiana. That outdated thinking would be ignoring what Indiana has done to give Cignetti the necessary resources to maintain a sustainable winner. 

What Cignetti decides to do with the attractive options that will come in spades at the end of the season is up to him, but Indiana has smartly done everything it could in less than two years to show he doesn’t have to leave to win big. 

Let’s start with the fact Cignetti already makes $8.3 million annually before bonuses, will receive a $1 million retention bonus in November and will surely get another raise in the coming months. This after the school already doubled his salary in less than a year on the job. Indiana is committed to making sure Cignetti is very, very well compensated to be its football coach. 

It doesn’t stop at just the head coach level, either. 

Indiana stepped up to keep defensive coordinator Bryant Haines and strength and conditioning coach Derek Owings, fending off top Big Ten programs to hold on to both. In his recent contract, Indiana gave Cignetti $11 million for his assistant coach and support staff salary pool, one of the top in the country and nearly double what he got when he started in Bloomington. 

“We were committed to provide the resources to keep the coaches that we can intact and make sure we have that continuity,” Indiana AD Scott Dolson told CBS Sports before the season. “It’s really, really important to the future for that consistent success to keep the staff intact and keep executing the plan the best we can.”

Keeping Owings, Haines and others has certainly paid off so far. The Hoosiers are rolling at 6-0 and coming off a top-five road win over then-No. 3 Oregon, their first in program history. If Indiana can continue to hold on to top lieutenants plus attract high-quality talent like quarterback Fernando Mendoza, why does Cignetti have to leave?

He’s already proven he can take Indiana to the College Football Playoff as he did a year ago. The Hoosiers are well on their way to repeating that feat this season and could even get a first-round bye or, at least, a home playoff game at this pace. Cignetti has invigorated a traditional basketball school to care about football, and his stunning results have elicited more donations, ticket sales and support that make it all feel like much more than a flash in the pan.

Even billionaire Mark Cuban is getting involved now. 

“I gave some to sports this year for the first time ever,” Cuban told CBS Sports’ Richard Johnson last week. “Typically, I was the exact opposite. I’m not a fan of anything that I believe raises tuition in the least bit. But after getting to talk to Cig and seeing what was going on, they kinda talked me into it.”

Cuban, an Indiana alumnus, wouldn’t say the exact amount he gave but admitted it was a “big number.” Pulling in wealthy benefactors like Cuban is how you keep the momentum rolling. 

Cignetti, now 64, is starting to enter the legacy phase of his career. If he stays at Indiana, he has a chance to be the kind of transformational leader you build a statue for once it’s all over. What he’s done in less than two years at Indiana is nothing short of remarkable and makes it easy to see why so many other programs would be interested in him. 

Could he crush it at Penn State or Florida? Absolutely, either of those schools would be lucky to have him. There’s something about Cignetti’s chip-on-the-shoulder, hard work wins out mentality that just feels right at a place like Indiana.  

This is a guy who took a pay cut to leave a burgeoning Alabama dynasty as a Nick Saban assistant to take over Division-II Indiana University of Pennsylvania. A guy who worked his way from IUP to Elon to James Madison before finally getting his first Power Four job opportunity in his 60s. He’s not driven by fame or prestige, he just wants to win. You don’t have to Google him to know that anymore. 

“Beyond the money part of it, which is obviously a major factor, I think he really is a perfect fit here,” Dolson told CBS Sports. “I think he’s a perfect fit for us, but I think at the same time, we’re a perfect fit for him. Those are his words, not mine. But he talks a lot about our alignment, he’s extremely close with our president Pam Whitten. She understands and supports the entire department, but understands and supports football which is massive.”

There almost certainly will be other university presidents and athletic directors promising the world to Cignetti in the coming months. And, certainly, some of those programs can sell a more storied program history and more fertile recruiting base than what Cignetti has in Bloomington. 

But when Cignetti agreed to an eight-year contract extension last year, he explained why he didn’t care about what other jobs might open up in the coaching cycle. 

“We’re the emerging superpower of college football,” Cignetti said. “Why would I leave?”

That statement is even more true a year later. 

With the transfer portal, NIL and now revenue sharing, there is more parity in college football than ever before. It has allowed schools like Indiana to rise up behind the right coach and right group of players to a level that would have seemed incomprehensible even a decade ago. As long as Indiana can keep up from an NIL and rev-share standpoint, we’ve seen what Cignetti and his elite staff can do in developing and coaching them into winners. 

Cignetti doesn’t have to leave Indiana to reach the elite level of college football. He’s already there now.