By Steve Sturm - IlliniGuys Football Analyst

January 19, 2026

(Cover photo courtesy Briana Pace/The Indiana Daily Student)

Welcome to part 1 of 3 of the Cignetti Recipe. College Football's wunderkind has been so popular in the media that I've seen dozens of theories about what has allowed his instant success at a moribund program, so I decided to take a deep dive myself. In the first part, I'm going to look at Cignetti himself and his Indiana coaching staff.

First, Prepare yourselves for a wave of coincidences. This story starts not with Curt Cignetti, but with his father Frank Cignetti, Sr. Frank earned a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame after putting together 20 years of excellence at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. Frank Cignetti took over the IUP program after failing as the head coach of West Virginia. He had been Bobby Bowden's top assistant at West Virginia and took over the program after Bowden left for Florida State. However, things didn't work out there and Frank was persuaded to come back to IUP, his alma mater, to take over the entire athletic department. Frank Cignetti's first move was to hire George Chaump, who turned the program around before moving up to Division 1 Marshall. Frank Cignetti had gotten the coaching itch back, so he cast aside his athletic director duties and hired himself as head coach. He went on to post a 182-50-1 record as head coach over 20 years, never winning the Division II championship, but regularly heading deep into the playoffs. However, Frank, Sr. was 65 years old and decided to hang it up after leading the River Hawks to one of their worst seasons, a 5-5 result in 2005. He turned to a slightly younger candidate, Lou Tepper. After dropping out of Division I, Tepper took over as head coach at Division II Edinboro in the same conference, and Frank Cignetti Sr. hired him away. However, while Tepper started out strong, he suffered some diminishing results as he too reached the age of 65, and IUP decided to move to a familiar name. With Frank Cignetti Jr. having already passed that rung on the coaching ladder (he was then the OC at North Carolina), Curt Cignetti decided that it was time for him to run a program and jumped at the chance. (After a long career Frank Cignetti Sr., has completed the Cignetti-IUP circle by taking over the OC job at IUP in 2025.

As for Curt Cignetti himself, he finished a non-descript playing career at West Virginia and immediately joined the family business by becoming a grad assistant at Pitt. After two years Curt earned his first full time job as QB/ WR coach at Davidson College. The same school that produced yours truly. Curt worked under Vic Gatto, who recruited me to Davidson but did nothing else that was positive and was fired/ resigned during my freshman year. Ironically, just like with Frank Sr., Davidson brought in a legendary former coach to help choose the new coach, and he chose himself. Dave Fagg was an outstanding human being who also saved the football program from elimination, but I digress.* After moving up from Davidson to Rice and then Temple, Curt got his first big break with a promotion to a high major as Pittsburgh's QB coach. Pitt's offenses weren't particularly good during that time, with John Ryan and Pete Gonzalez primarily the guys under center, but Cignetti survived. Cignetti came to Pitt when Johnny Majors returned for a second go-around and survived the transition into the Walt Harris era at Pitt, but with Pitt struggling again I couldn't blame him for moving to NC State in 2000 when Chuck Amato was building his first staff. He was also lucky enough to inherit one future hall of famer (Phillip Rivers) while recruiting another future hall of famer (Russell Wilson). Cignetti was the recruiting coordinator for NC State, and he managed to move up to Wide Receivers coach and recruiting coordinator with Alabama when Amato was fired from NC State in 2006. That was a big jump for a guy who was looking for a job, and Cignetti owes that break to Joe Pendry, who was the Assistant Head Coach and offensive line coach at the time and had ties to Frank Sr. when they were at West Virginia together. Cignetti often cites the four years he spent at Alabama as putting him on another level as a coach, but he didn't get offers for promotion, and at age 49 the opportunities for him to run his own program were diminishing. So, when Tepper's squad started putting up some mediocre performances at IUP, Cignetti took a shot at being a head coach at the one place he could get an offer.

The IUP program had become a little moribund in Tepper's last two years, but Cignetti turned it right around. He went 53-17 in his six years there and despite a lack of D II playoff success, Cignetti earned a step up- though only to tiny Elon University just up the road from Davidson. He turned a terrible Elon program right around and won more games there in his two seasons (14) than Elon had won in its previous five years combined (12). Those two seasons were good enough to earn him a move up to James Madison, which was already an FCS power under Mike Houston. Houston moved up to East Carolina, where he recruited new Illini quarterback Katin Houser after Houser left Michigan State. So, while Cignetti doesn't get full credit for his 33-5 record in his first three years using Houston's players, you have to be impressed with his 19-5 record after James Madison moved into the Sun Belt at the FBS level. Indiana had seen enough at that point and pulled the trigger. You know the rest.

So, why didn't Cignetti get a better chance when he decided to leave Alabama? Or even a better chance when he succeeded at IUP or Elon? Well, have you seen an interview with the guy? He's not exactly warm or personable. As I've done a deeper dive into Cignetti's rise, you see the same thing again and again. He's an admitted nerd, but he's also pretty arrogant about himself and his abilities. So, while casual Alabama fans muse about hiring Cignetti now, or lament that they didn't hire him previously, its a "mistake" that is entirely predictable. While its easy to wonder how Curt Cignetti can get away with his "cocky nerd" persona in a business where you need to relate to 18 year old kids, you have to keep in mind that he has also served as a recruiting coordinator at Pitt, NC State and Alabama. Even though he probably couldn't tell you where the "6-7" craze came from, he can lead a group of teenagers to tremendous success just by being no-nonsense and practicing what he preaches. Cignetti isn't just an x's and o's genius either. That's not even his forte. Instead, he's developed a plan for building an organization that focuses on accountability and consistency rather than athletic ability. Cignetti recruited a lot of athletic flakes at Alabama and decided that once he had his own program, he would fill it with guys like him, meaning players who would do their jobs the right way every time. He created an archetype at IUP that he still carries through today. If a player looks selfish, unreliable or inconsistent, they can look for another program. As I've read about him more and more, the term "production over potential" comes up again and again. Curt Cignetti doesn't care if you run a 40 in a certain time, he cares if you do it with the correct and consistent form, and whether you've been able to be effective against good competition. Even in the portal era, Curt Cignetti is still the final arbiter of which players Indiana offers. And now that he has a big NIL number behind him, he gets every one of the guys he wants. This year's Heisman Trophy winner was the 7th rated QB in the transfer portal last year. But, Curt Cignetti decided he was the guy he wanted, and Indiana made sure they got him. The smart money is one successes like that to continue.

Next we'll move to Part 2: The Staff.

*After I graduated from Davidson under Coach Fagg, I wrote a letter to future IUP coach Lou Tepper and he offered me a chance to walk on at Illinois for my last year of eligibility. My body was already battered and breaking so I declined.