When new Indiana University football coach Curt Cignetti takes walks from his new home in his Bloomington neighborhood those who recognize him greet him warmly.
Cignetti is in the savior stage of his relationship with Hoosier fans, viewed with good vibes and the faith that maybe he will become Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne and Bud Wilkinson combined, leading IU to unprecedented glory.
As Cignetti knows, as football season looms, and the Hoosiers have begun practice for their season-opening game at Memorial Stadium against Florida International Aug. 31, the backers have nothing to blame him for yet.
Freedman
This is that sweet honeymoon period, as the cliché goes, that Tom Allen, Kevin Wilson, Bill Lynch, Terry Hoeppner, and Gerry DiNardo experienced this century in Bloomington, meaning the fans have been in love before and been optimistic before.
Cignetti, 62, understands how the long-term disappointments of the football team have bruised psyches, but he is used to winning wherever he goes. At James Madison, which went 11-1 with him at the helm last season, Elon, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Cignetti’s teams won lots of games, even when practically no one expected it.
As an assistant coach, Cignetti, who played quarterback at West Virginia, where his father Frank coached, Cignetti was also part of an Alabama national championship club.
Everyone hopes this all translates into Cignetti being a winner in the Big Ten, too. Right away. As college football more and more becomes a sport of immediacy, not of building, Cignetti has a power unlike that invested in any of those recent head coach predecessors. The Name, Image and Likeness freedom of players to make money and the NCAA’s penalty-free transfer rules mean that rosters are rebuilt annually.
Cignetti – and IU – want to employ those administrative changes of the last couple of years to win now. Cignetti has added more than 35 new faces to the roster, many of them loyalists who accompanied him from James Madison, retained players from Allen’s team that he considered the best of the best, and basically told fans he doesn’t care what happened before, there is a new sheriff in town.
Famously, last winter, soon after he was hired, Cignetti was handed a microphone at an IU basketball game and introduced himself to sports fans by telling them rival Purdue sucked and so did all of those other so-called big-name programs in the Big Ten. He wasn’t scared of any of them.
At the recent Big Ten football media days at Lucas Oil Stadium, Cignetti somewhat sheepishly addressed his impromptu speech. He said he felt he had a captive audience of IU sports fans on his side, so he had to say something, to make a statement. Not that he was taking back that attempt at confidence-boosting. Truth-be-told, it was fairly humorous and if the schtick was a selling point, why not?
“We want to be so good, we want to be everyone’s rival,” Cignetti said more recently. “And we are in the entertainment business.”
Cignetti has checked up on his Indiana history, whether filled in by reading material, or being informed by IU administrators, but he walks into IU when the Big Ten is in flux, adding four teams from the splintered Pac 12. One of those is UCLA, on the Hoosier schedule for a road game Sept. 14.
For decades, the Big Ten champion has earned the right to play in the Rose Bowl, though things have changed somewhat with the advent of a college football playoff. The point in this case is that UCLA’s home stadium is the Rose Bowl and the last time Indiana qualified for the Rose Bowl game was 1967.
Ancient history, and something Cignetti views with a yeah, yeah, yeah shrug since none of his players were born then and he was 5 ½ years old. Still, it will be a league game on the schedule with a purpose.
“We’re just going to an old stadium and to kick someone’s a—,” Cignetti said. “We’re not going out there for a cruise.”
As the 2024 season approaches, Cignetti is sitting on a 119-35 lifetime head coaching record. Compared to his other stops as a head man, at the other Indiana, Elon, and James Madison, the Hoosiers and the Big Ten rate as the bigger time.
Cignetti exudes confidence, has a system down, and a track record that he believes will uplift IU in the eyes of fans and opponents.
“It’s time to quit talking and start doing,” Cignetti said. “I’m not going to tolerate not being successful.”
Of course, neither is Indiana, which has seen a lot of losing on the field over not only the last 25 years, but really, over the last century.
Right now, it’s good to be the savior with a 0-0 record.