BLOOMINGTON – In a sense, from the day Scott Dolson hired Curt Cignetti in December, Indiana’s athletic director has been working to expand his football coaching staff ever since.
Active? Maybe not, at least not until recent weeks, when the enormity of Cignetti’s success on the track came into sharp focus. But philosophically, Saturday was months in the making.
A shoo-in as it stands now, not only for the Big Ten, but also for national coach of the year. Cignetti has created a turnaround that few in the sport can compare to, taking a three-win program to 10-0 and on the brink of a berth. in this season’s College Football Playoff. His first Indiana team is still in the thick of the Big Ten title race with two games remaining: a huge showdown with Ohio State next weekend in Columbus and the visit of Purdue the following week for the Old Oaken Bucket game.
Two wins would secure the Hoosiers a berth in the following weekend’s Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis. But Dolson’s eagerness to sign Cignetti to a new contract less than 12 months after signing his first in Bloomington extends beyond this fall’s wins and losses.
Since his appointment, Cignetti has more than repaid the trust Dolson placed in him last December, when IU convinced Cignetti to leave James Madison for Bloomington.
At the time, Cignetti met all the standards Dolson wanted in a new head coach. His resume included several successful seasons running his own program. He had a strong background in coaching offense working with quarterbacks. He had been a recruiting coordinator during his time with Nick Saban at Alabama.
When Dolson Cignetti landed, it was seen as a moderate coup. His success in Harrisonburg meant Cignetti didn’t have to take the first available job. And his move signaled that Indiana could be more, perhaps much more, than its modest past in college football.
The work Cignetti did this offseason, from rebuilding the roster to personnel and player development, did nothing to dent Dolson’s confidence. Nor did it slow the excitement among a fanbase increasingly convinced that Cignetti could turn his perennial success into a winner.
Yet no one could have seen how quickly that was achieved. Cignetti’s Indiana is the talk of the university this month, and rightly so.
Dolson and IU President Pam Whitten have been working for several weeks to ensure they can build on the success Cignetti has had in Bloomington for 11 months. Saturday’s news of a new contract was a crucial step in improving that status quo, although not an isolated one. Dolson and Whitten have also been involved in recent weeks in planning and financing a substantial renovation of Memorial Stadium and the surrounding complex.
The message behind both moves is clear: Indiana University wants to take football seriously in a way it has rarely been able to in its history. No person or goal is more critical to that effort than the head coach who has so quickly brought both success and seriousness to his program.
That’s why Dolson’s vision has always included this important step. Maybe not materially until recently, but Indiana’s AD must have believed for some time what his fans, his players and now all of college football agree on: the longer IU keeps Curt Cignetti in town, the better it will be.
Listen to Mind Your Banners, our IU Athletics-centric podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
