Molded by Western Pa. roots, Curt Cignetti guides Indiana into national spotlight

In the 1970s, they were a couple of pre-teens running around Mountaineer Field on the campus of West Virginia University, sons of the head football coach. They mixed easily with players at practice and in the locker room but never took their proud eyes off their dad, Frank Cignetti Sr.

Football was their passion, and so it has been for the ensuing four decades.

The older of the two brothers, Indiana University coach Curt Cignetti, has grown this year into one of the elite men of his profession, leading one of three undefeated teams in major college football. The Hoosiers are 10-0 for the first time, 7-0 in the Big Ten.

Indiana was off last weekend, but Cignetti spent it preparing his team for a titanic showdown at No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday. He also signed an eight-year contract extension, written in such a way to pay him $8 million per year through 2032, according to ESPN.

“We’ve put ourselves in position right now to be talked about quite a bit. That’s nice,” Cignetti said at his weekly news conference Monday. “Doesn’t help us prepare. Doesn’t help us play any better. But we’ve got some great opportunities ahead of us. This is a team that’s capable. The only limitations on this football team would be those that we put on ourselves, between our ears. But this is a group of guys that do not think that way. We’re going to go into this next game confident, believing, and we’re going to go in there and play well.”

The younger of the two boys, Frank Cignetti Jr., knows how and why his older brother has risen to such heights.

“One, being a coach’s son really helped us understand the profession,” Cignetti Jr. said of his father, who got his start as an assistant coach at Leechburg in 1960, later leading the 10-0 Blue Devils to the WPIAL Class A championship in 1965 as head coach.

“Curt, just having the opportunity to grow up as a coach’s son, around the Bowdens (former WVU coach Bobby Bowden and sons), around my father, they weren’t only great coaches, but great people who had it in perspective,” added Cignetti Jr., who is taking a year away from a 34-year coaching career after spending the past two as Pitt’s offensive coordinator. “Being around the game at an early age gave us the desire and the want to be a football coach.”

“I knew in third grade I wanted to coach,” Curt Cignetti said at one of his first news conferences.

Said Frank Cignetti Jr.: “If you knew my father, football was a platform to help people. It was always faith, family and then football. At an early age, we got an opportunity to see our father be a great mentor and have this thing in perspective, which I know Curt does.”

At Big Ten Media Days, Curt Cignetti called his father, who was head coach at IUP for 20 years, the “greatest man I’ve ever known. Blessed to be able to call him my father.”

He also called his dad “my biggest critic,” but he joked he threw him off the field at IUP — the one named after him — “because he was being too critical.”

‘Google me’

To understand what’s behind the success Cignetti and Indiana have enjoyed in his first 12 months in Bloomington, you first must get to know the man. He’s self-assured without being cocky. Unafraid to set lofty goals without being unaware of what it takes to reach them.

Before the season, at Big Ten Media Days, he pretty much told Indiana fans what drives him and what to expect.

“Somebody asked me, ‘How do we define success at Indiana?’ ” he told reporters. “We want to be the best.

“You don’t bring your kids up, ‘Johnny, I want you to be fourth-best, I want you to be 10th-best.’ Bull (crap). We want to be the best. When I talk about no self-imposed limitations, that’s what I’m talking about.”

At one of his first news conferences after he was hired in December, he was asked how he plans to sell his vision.

“It’s pretty simple,” he said. “I win. Google me.”

Indiana was projected in the Big Ten preseason poll to finish 17th in the 18-team conference. “I get it,” he said.

But he also had a story to tell.

“Normally at these things, I stand up here and we’re picked to win the league,” he said of his success coaching James Madison in the Sun Belt Conference. “It’s just usually how it’s been. The two times we were picked next to last, in 2022 we won the conference championship and in 2017 (at Elon) we inherited an 8-45 team and won eight in a row and played JMU the last game of the year for the conference championship.

“Now, I’m not into making predictions. That’s just an historical fact.”

In 2023, Cignetti’s fifth season coaching James Madison, the Dukes were 11-1. He had an overall mark there of 52-9, including 19 victories in 23 games over 2022-23, JMU’s first two years as an FBS program.

Indiana was 3-9 in 2023, but lost four one-score games and was tied at Penn State with two minutes to go before losing 33-24. During Cignetti’s eight-game winning streak at Elon, each game was decided by eight points or fewer.

“Places I’ve coached … we’re pretty darn good at those one-score games,” he said.

“Just sayin’.”

He said one of the reasons he took the Indiana job is “I felt like I’ve done this before.”

“I’ve kind of had to speak a big game, taking over a job like this because we had to wake some people up and create some excitement. After all, this is the entertainment business, too.”

The Pitt connection

Curt Cignetti started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Pitt under Foge Fazio in 1983 and ’84. He returned to coach quarterbacks and tight ends under Johnny Majors and Walt Harris from 1993-99. His first head coaching job was at IUP from 2011-16.

Along the way, Cignetti ran into two Western Pennsylvania young men who had been friends and rivals since high school and were eager to begin their coaching careers. Quarterback Tino Sunseri (Central Catholic) and wide receiver Mike Shanahan (Norwin) formed a productive duo at Pitt, playing from 2009-12. Sunseri is fourth all-time in passing yards (8,590) and Shanahan eighth in receptions (159) and 10th in receiving yards (2,276).

Shanahan worked under Cignetti for nine seasons at IUP, Elon and James Madison. Cignetti coached with Sunseri’s dad, Sal, at Alabama and hired Tino at James Madison and Indiana. Shanahan is now Indiana’s offensive coordinator, designing and leading an offense that is second in the Big Ten in total yards per game (453.2, 9/10th of a yard behind Penn State).

Sunseri coaches quarterbacks and is co-offensive coordinator. At Pitt in 2012, he threw 276 consecutive passes without an interception. So, wouldn’t you know it? Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke has thrown only four in 238 attempts while leading the Big Ten in passing efficiency (182.7)

Shanahan, who was a graduate assistant for Pitt coaches Paul Chryst and Pat Narduzzi in 2014 and ’15, said he and Sunseri work well together, thanks to a relationship built upon longtime trust and respect.

“This is our fourth year working together (including three at JMU),” Shanahan said. “He has a lot of say in everything that we do. We’re on the same page with a lot of things, and if we’re not, we have a good enough relationship to talk about it and figure out what’s best for everybody moving forward.

“We were never roommates (at Pitt), but we were with each other so much (that) we can be on the same page without having to say it out loud.”

Indiana’s Pittsburgh connection also includes graduate assistant/wide receivers Reed Relosky, a Canonsburg native and Bishop Canevin and Washington & Jefferson graduate.

Frank Cignetti Jr. coached Shanahan at Pitt during his first term as offensive coordinator (2009-10), and he noticed a definite bud of a coaching career.

“His work habits were outstanding,” Cignetti said. “He had the mindset where he could stay even-keeled through the good and bad times, which coaches need to do. He was smart and he could process information.”

Transfers made a difference

How does it work so well at Indiana after Cignetti’s staff has been together there for less than one season?

“I don’t know,” Shanahan said. “If I could put my thumb on it, we would be able to recreate it every year, right?”

Yet there are reasons.

“First of all, we have an experienced team,” he said. “We’re playing with a lot of guys who have played a lot of football, whether it was at Indiana or somewhere else.”

Cignetti brought 13 players with him from James Madison among the 27 signed through the transfer portal. They include Rourke, a sixth-year senior from Ohio University.

“(Experience) plays a big part in it,” Shanahan said. “When we get in these tight games at times or we’re down or there’s some adversity, there’s no panic. It starts with the quarterback.”

Plus, Cignetti has been coaching long enough to know how to shut off the outside noise.

“Coach Cignetti has done a great job of just getting everybody in the building to focus on what’s important,” Shanahan said. “Eliminate all the stuff that you read about and see online and on TV and just keep it all about football and what’s important to win games.”

Challenging football’s throne at IU

With their first 10-victory season, the Hoosiers have created a football buzz on a campus where basketball has been the main attraction for decades.

“It’s the talk of the town and, arguably, the state, too,” said Jackson Yeary, assistant director of strategic communications at IU. He said the student crowd at Indiana’s basketball game Nov. 10 — the day after football defeated Michigan — was one of the smallest in recent years.

“I think everyone was out partying the night before,” he said.

Shanahan gets it

Shanahan, who holds a master’s degree in social studies education from Pitt, played for three head coaches there — Dave Wannstedt, Todd Graham and Chryst — and he said every experience helped him relate to his Indiana players.

“It wasn’t the easiest times for everybody with all the change,” he said. “I try to reflect back on that a little bit, even whenever I got here. Just having the empathy for those kids going through a change. It definitely helped me just from being in those shoes.”

The games get more important now, but Shanahan said he feels no pressure.

“I think we just trust our preparation,” he said. “I don’t want to sound cocky. But we were in the situation at JMU in 2019 playing in the FCS national championship game. We’ve gone through seasons like this. We try not to make any game any bigger than it should be or any smaller than it should be. That’s one of the best things (Cignetti) does as a head coach, just trust-the-process kind of attitude and things will take care of itself.

“Everybody, including myself, is excited about the chance to go to Ohio State, give it our best shot.”