New Curt Cignetti contract sends clear signal: Indiana University is serious about football.

Posted by Admin November 16, 2024 Football

BLOOMINGTON – There is an extent to which, from the day Scott Dolson hired Curt Cignetti in December, Indiana’s athletic director has been working to extend his football coach ever since.

Actively? Maybe not, at least not until the past several weeks, when the sheer scope of Cignetti’s success in the job came into sharp focus. But at least philosophically, Saturday was months in the making.

A shoo-in as things stand for not just Big Ten but also national coach of the year, Cignetti has authored a turnaround few in the sport can find comparisons for, taking a three-win program to 10-0 and the brink of a berth in this season’s College Football Playoff. His first Indiana team remains in the thick of the Big Ten title race with two games left: a mammoth showdown with Ohio State next weekend in Columbus and the following week’s visit from Purdue for the Old Oaken Bucket game.

Two wins would assure the Hoosiers a place in the following weekend’s Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis. But Dolson’s eagerness to tie down Cignetti to a fresh contract less than 12 months after signing his first in Bloomington extends beyond this fall’s wins and losses.

Since his hiring, Cignetti has more than repaid the faith Dolson placed in him last December, when IU convinced Cignetti to leave James Madison for Bloomington.

At the time, Cignetti ticked every box Dolson wanted in a new head coach. His resume included several successful seasons running his own program. He had a strong background coaching offense and working with quarterbacks. He’d been a recruiting coordinator during his time with Nick Saban at Alabama.

When Dolson landed Cignetti, it was seen as a moderate coup. His success in Harrisonburg meant Cignetti didn’t have to jump at the first job available. And his move signaled a belief Indiana could be more, perhaps much more, than its modest past in college football.

The work Cignetti managed through the offseason, from roster rebuilding to staffing to player development, did nothing to dampen Dolson’s confidence. Nor did it slow the building excitement within a fan base increasingly convinced Cignetti could turn its perennial also-ran into a winner.

Yet no one could have seen just how quickly that was achieved. Cignetti’s Indiana is the talk of college football this month, and rightfully so.

Dolson and IU President Pam Whitten have been working for some weeks now to ensure they build upon the success already achieved during Cignetti’s 11 months in charge in Bloomington. Saturday’s news of a new contract was a crucial step in improving that status quo, though it was not achieved in isolation. Dolson and Whitten have also in recent weeks been engaged in the process of both planning and funding a substantial renovation of Memorial Stadium and its surrounding complex.

The message behind both moves is clear: Indiana University wants to be serious about football in a way it has rarely managed in its history. No one person or goal is so crucial to that effort as the head coach who has brought both success and seriousness so rapidly to his program.

Which is why Dolson’s vision has always included this important step. Perhaps not materially until recently, but Indiana’s AD will have believed for some time what his fans, his players and now all college football can agree upon — the longer IU keeps Curt Cignetti in town, the better off it will be.

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