Indiana coach Curt Cignetti’s guide to building a winner in college football

The first thing you should know about first-year Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti is that he didn’t find this job daunting. Never mind that Indiana hadn’t put together a winning season since 2020. Or that the Hoosiers hadn’t won more than nine games in a regular season — ever.

“My first day on the job, we got 10 starters in the transfer portal and half the defense,” Cignetti told FOX Sports in an exclusive interview.

And yet, it didn’t matter. Cignetti took the majority of his staff from his previous job at James Madison and immediately got to work, not just sifting through the transfer portal, but sifting and then interviewing players with a purpose. He brought in 22 transfers to Bloomington, and more important than the number of incoming transfers was the background they possessed. The incoming transfer group was loaded with individuals who had played a lot of football and were the best players on their previous teams.

“A lot of them were G5 guys,” Cignetti said.

Some came from Texas Tech, like Myles Price, some from Wisconsin, like offensive lineman Trey Wedig, and some from Wake Forest, like running back Justice Ellison.

“They were all high-character guys that had been productive over two and three years — consistent production,” Cignetti said. “And I really felt in my heart like, you know, we’d flip the roster by the end of the [transfer portal] period.”

Talk it. Then walk it.

After he flipped the roster, knowing in his heart that he had the personnel he needed to win, Cignetti began performing the second and perhaps most difficult part of his job: He proselytized.

By now, it has become legend what Cignetti said on Dec. 22, 2023, at his introductory press conference.

The question was: “How do you sell your vision of your culture?”

Cignetti’s answer: “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.”

But before he uttered those words into a microphone, Cignetti first needed to convince his wife. “My rationale with my wife was, look, I’ve done this turnaround three or four times already. This is just a little bigger stage.”

He was right.

In his first season as a head coach at IUP in 2011, Cignetti finished 7-3 after winning six of the last seven games he coached. After taking over the head coaching role at Elon, a program that had gone 2-9 the previous year and 12-45 in the previous five years before he arrived in 2016, the Phoenix went 8-4 in Cignetti’s first year, peaking at No. 7 in the FCS rankings and making the FCS playoffs for the first time since 2009. In his first season at James Madison, Cignetti went 14-2 and led the team to a spot in the national championship game.

“I obviously went out on a limb with some of my comments, which I haven’t done in the past,” said Cignetti, whose No. 5-ranked Indiana team gets set to travel to Columbus, Ohio, to battle No. 2 Ohio State (Noon ET Saturday on FOX and the FOX Sports App). “Honestly, it was like a clashing of two worlds when I first got here. You know we [he and his former teams] were used to winning championships year in and year out, and a lot of people thought this was sort of a hopeless situation here. And I wasn’t going to lower my standards and expectations.”

Heading into this week’s massive Big Ten showdown with the Buckeyes, Cignetti’s team sits at 10-0, marking the first time Indiana has won 10 games in program history. The Hoosiers are also in position to be selected into the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff in part due to Cignetti’s belief, instilling that belief into the folks in Bloomington and relying on a recipe that has cooked well for him.

Yes, Cignetti was a recruiting coordinator on Nick Saban’s inaugural staff at Alabama. But he is also the son of Hall of Fame coach Frank Cignetti, Sr., who led IUP to Division II national titles in 1990 and 1993. And let’s not forget that Cignetti has been coaching for 42 years, longer than Power 4 coaches Dan Lanning (38), Marcus Freeman (38) and Lincoln Riley (41) have been on this Earth.

Along the way, he’s clung to a core set of beliefs. When asked what his “non-negotiables” were, the Hoosiers’ head coach did not hesitate to rattle off the list.

“Have high standards and high expectations,” Cignetti said. “You can’t ever compromise your standards.  How you do anything is how you do everything. There’s got to be accountability throughout the entire program for coaches and players. The only thing we really ask of the players to do every day is be focused, do your best, be early, and rub off on others positively. If you do that, you’re going to improve, and if you improve every day, really, anything’s possible.”

If anything is possible, that must include Indiana winning a national championship this season, right?

“Well, you know that you guys get paid to do that kind of stuff,” Cignetti answered. “You know, get people to follow you and watch your stuff. You know, write articles, whatever. You know, I don’t think in that world. My world is all about having the best day-to-day, best meeting, best practice, best preparation, stacking day’s moments, eliminating the noise and clutter. Being where your feet are leading up to Saturday, to give yourself the best chance to be successful.”

But?

“I hear some things made of our schedule occasionally. I mean, we never trailed until two weeks ago. And then when we trailed 10-0, we rattled off 47 points in a row on the road in the Big Ten. And then, you know, we had a close game against Michigan. All the other games were pretty decisive victories.

“Every P4 team we played had a winning record when we played them except two, who were .500. Nebraska was 5-1 when we played them. So a lot of the team’s records aren’t as good anymore because we played them.”

See? Proselytizing. It works.

What also works is having a plan and sticking to your core belief of non-negotiable, high-achieving standards – not working from fear, but from earned confidence.

This is Curt Cignetti’s guide to building a winner. Don’t mess with his recipe. Just cook.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast “The Number One College Football Show.” Follow him at @RJ_Young.

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