Curt Cignetti has been the head football coach at Indiana University for less than one month. That has not stopped him from being one of the boldest and most savage characters in the entire sport.
Cignetti, who took the job in Bloomington after six years at James Madison, arrived to campus and immediately took shots at Purdue, Michigan and Ohio State during his very first day on the job. He proceeded to predict a Big Ten Championship appearance in his first year less than a week later.
If that wasn’t bold enough, the 62-year-old dropped the best line of the Early Signing Period on Wednesday. It was ice cold.
There are still a few months to go before everything is finalized in February, but Indiana currently holds the No. 55-ranked recruiting class in the country for 2024. Cignetti was tasked with trying to retain as much talent as possible from the previous staff while also adding a few players of his own in less than three weeks.
When asked about how his approach to the recruiting process, he made his pitch very clear.
Here is the full exchange:
Cignetti is not wrong! Winning is what he does best.
He went 53-17 on the Division-II level with Indiana University of Pennsylvania and 14-9 at Elon. Each of those programs were largely irrelevant until Curt Cignetti arrived.
He then proceeded to win 52 of 61 games at James Madison
Indiana has never won 10 games. Not even one time in school history.
The Hoosiers’ 8-5 season in 2019 marked their highest single-season win total since 1993.
Cignetti has an uphill battle to rebuild a perennial Big Ten basement-dweller but this is nothing new. He has been involved in the rise of three college football programs that started with similar status upon his arrival. All three of them became legitimate contenders in their respective conferences within two years.
Just Google him!