- - Why wasn't Curt Cignetti hired by a blue blood? 'Biggest f-up ever'

Dan Wolken January 16, 2026 at 9:44 PM

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It was New Year’s Day, early evening, and most of college athletics was watching the Rose Bowl with a sense of awe and admiration.

Here was Indiana, a program most athletic directors would never have imagined winning a national championship in football, just destroying Alabama on their way to the College Football Playoff semifinals. Though there was already a consensus that Curt Cignetti had pulled off the greatest turnaround in college football history, turning a perennial loser into the nation’s No. 1 team in just two years, something about that win over Alabama triggered different conversations.

Naturally for some administrators whose programs had long been more successful than Indiana, minds wandered to an inevitable question: If they had been smart enough to lure Cignetti out of James Madison, would their team be playing Miami on Monday for the national championship instead of the Hoosiers?

“Biggest f- up ever,” said one athletic director who was evaluating coaching candidates a few years ago and ultimately did not hire Cignetti.

But was it really a (mess) up?

As this season progressed, it was stunning how often people in everyday life would ask me why the 64-year-old Cignetti was coaching in obscurity until a few years ago. It’s simply mind-boggling for a lot of fans that someone who is this good at the job didn’t get his shot until arguably the worst power conference program of all time came calling.

It’s true, Cignetti was a winner at every level: 53-17 at D-II Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 14-9 at Elon and 52-9 at James Madison. And over the last decade, athletic directors and search firms have gotten better at considering candidates with small college backgrounds like Kalen DeBoer or Willie Fritz whose track records suggested they could really, really coach.

Curt Cignetti is 145-37 as a college football head coach with stops at IUP, Elon, James Madison and Indiana. (Davis Long/Yahoo Sports)

But while it’s easy with the benefit of hindsight to say programs like Boston College, Michigan State and Syracuse should have hired Cignetti when they were doing coaching searches concurrent with Indiana, there are legitimate reasons why it didn’t seem so clear at the time.

“You know how hiring is,” said one industry source who is typically involved in multiple searches. “There are no guarantees. I mean, kudos to Indiana for taking a chance on the guy, but nobody knew it would be this wildly successful.”

In fact, if you rewind back to 2023 as James Madison reached 10-0 in mid-November, Cignetti was not one of the hot names on the coaching carousel.

It wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of his Birmingham-based agency, which got some traction on jobs — but not necessarily the ones Cignetti would have been willing to take.

At that moment in history, the coaching carousel was tilting against coaches at Group of Five programs. With the true impact of NIL and the transfer portal just beginning to sink in, it was a coaching cycle rife with skepticism that success at James Madison would translate from a roster-management standpoint.

And the truth is, Cignetti had never chased opportunities or money his entire tenure at James Madison. He made it clear he’d rather stay and continue to win than take a small step up the ladder or get stuck in a dead-end job.

Though it seems discordant to have that mindset before going to Indiana – a program that hadn’t been within miles of championships in its entire history – something important happened in the summer of 2022. That’s when the Big Ten announced its new round of media deals that projected to pay schools $70 million per year.

Cignetti noticed. Or maybe he saw the future.

According to a source familiar with his thinking at the time, Cignetti recognized that even a lower-tier Big Ten program having such a financial advantage over the rest of college sports opened possibilities that were previously out of reach. When Cignetti was presented with Indiana as a potential suitor, he felt he’d have a shot if the school was willing to be a middle-of-the-pack spender right away in the Big Ten. He also studied the schedule and felt there were enough wins available to get the program going.

On the other side of that equation, the Hoosiers had nothing to lose. If Cignetti flamed out, he’d be just like every coach Indiana’s ever had.

Not every athletic director has that kind of freedom, and Cignetti didn’t seem like a sure bet for two reasons.

First, while his won-loss record garnered respect, it was only a two-year simple size at the FBS level. Second, James Madison is one of those programs that’s been so successful for so many years, it’s sometimes hard to know how much credit to give the coach. It didn’t help Cignetti’s marketability that his predecessor at James Madison, Mike Houston, had coached himself onto the hot seat at East Carolina that year.

There’s also the matter of Cignetti’s personality. While he’s now America’s most beloved curmudgeon, he was not known to be particularly dynamic in an interview setting. Even his “Google me” bravado came off as awkward, according to one administrator who encountered Cignetti earlier in his career.

“Now everybody thinks it’s kind of a cute schtick, but interviewing him, he comes across kind of like a serial killer,” the administrator said. “I don’t think you sit with him and you’re like, ‘Man, our fans are going to love this guy.’”

It just goes to show how difficult this business can be. Whether athletic directors are good or bad in any other aspect of their job, it often feels like their fate is tied to the record of the football coach they hired. Nobody wants to make a mistake, so administrators often gravitate toward whatever they perceive to be safety.

It seems ridiculous now, but in that moment a 62-year-old who was a dozen years removed from power conference recruiting did not feel particularly safe when football success is mandatory.

In the end, Cignetti and Indiana were perfect for each other.

They’re in the national championship game. Everyone who didn't hire him? They can play the worst what-if game of all time.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Sports”