Indiana’s Curt Cignetti Makes History with Back-to-Back Coach of the Year Honors
If you had walked into a bar in Bloomington three years ago and told the patrons that Indiana—yes, the basketball school—would be the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff by 2025, you would have been laughed out of the room. You might have even been asked to check your temperature.
But here we are. The world has officially turned upside down, and Curt Cignetti is the one spinning the globe.
In a season that can only be described as a fever dream for Hoosier Nation, Cignetti has done the impossible. He hasn’t just made Indiana football respectable; he’s turned them into a juggernaut. And now, he’s got the hardware to prove it, becoming the first head coach since 1998 to win the Associated Press Coach of the Year award in back-to-back seasons.
A Trophy Case Bursting at the Seams
Let’s be honest: Cignetti is going to need a contractor to expand his mantle. On top of the AP honor, he also snagged the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Coach of the Year award on Monday—also for the second consecutive year.
To put this in perspective, winning these awards back-to-back puts Cignetti in a VIP club so exclusive it usually requires a secret handshake. He joins legends like Nick Saban, Gary Patterson, and Brian Kelly as the only coaches to pull off the AP double. However, here is the kicker: he did it by taking the reins of the historically “losingest” program in the FBS and turning them into a 13-0 buzzsaw.
The voting wasn’t even close. It was a landslide. Cignetti grabbed 47 of the 52 first-place votes from the media panel. When you take a team that was once the punching bag of the Big Ten and turn them into the conference champions, the writers tend to notice.
From the Big Ten Basement to the Penthouse
To understand the gravity of what Cignetti has achieved, you have to look at the ghosts of Indiana’s past. Before Cignetti rolled into town with his swagger and his blueprint, the Hoosiers were sitting on a mountain of 714 all-time losses. They were the first program to hit the 700-loss mark. It was a place where coaching careers usually went to die.
Fast forward to today. In just two seasons, Cignetti has posted a 24-2 record.
This year, the script flipped entirely. Indiana didn’t just win; they dominated. They captured the Big Ten Championship for the first time since 1967—a time when gas was 33 cents a gallon and The Beatles were still together. They secured the program’s first-ever No. 1 ranking in the AP poll. It’s the kind of turnaround you usually only see in sports movies, right before the credits roll.
Slaying the Giants in Indianapolis
The crowning moment of this Cinderella run came in the Big Ten Championship game. Cignetti had been telling anyone who would listen that his program was coming for the top dogs. He said he was chasing Ohio State.
Last week, he caught them.
The gritty 13-10 victory over the Buckeyes wasn’t just a win; it was an exorcism. It validated everything Cignetti preached from day one. After the game, amidst the confetti and the shockwaves reverberating through college football, Cignetti kept it grounded.
“It’s another step we need to take as a program,” he said, cool as the other side of the pillow. “When you get the right people and you have a plan and they love one another and play for one another and they commit, anything’s possible.”
The Quarterback Connection
Of course, a coach is only as good as the guy under center, and Cignetti has a rockstar in Fernando Mendoza. The redshirt junior quarterback became the first player in Indiana history to hoist the Heisman Trophy.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. Mendoza executes the vision, and Cignetti provides the architecture. Together, they’ve created an offense that is as efficient as it is explosive, helping Mendoza earn the AP Player of the Year nod to go along with his Heisman hardware.
Rose Bowl Bound and Number One with a Bullet
So, what’s next for the coach who has everything? The College Football Playoff.
Indiana enters the postseason as the top seed, a sentence that still feels surreal to type. They are headed to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl on January 1st, where they will face the winner of Oklahoma vs. Alabama.
For a fanbase that is used to looking forward to basketball season by mid-October, this is uncharted territory. But for Curt Cignetti, it’s just another day at the office. He expected this. He told us he was going to win. We just took a little while to believe him.
As the Hoosiers prep for Pasadena, one thing is abundantly clear: The “basketball school” narrative is dead. This is Cignetti’s world now; we’re just living in it.
