Curt Cignetti is on a roll. In fact, he’s been on one ever since he became the Hoosiers’ head coach. Now in his 2 season with Indiana, fans are confident that the program is not a one-hit wonder. The head coach saw some high praise come his way from an NFL star, who compared him to one of the most prolific coaches in the pros.

Indiana stunned everyone last year by booking a playoff spot for the first time in program history. That trajectory has continued so far this season. Cignetti is at a 16-2 record at Bloomington and enters the Oregon game unbeaten. Bryant McFadden couldn’t help but rave about the HC’s contributions to the program, likening him to his own NFL coach.  “I call Curt the Mike Tomlin of college football,” he said in a recent appearance on CBS Sports.

“He’s never had a losing season. He’s done nothing but win, doing more with less. And that’s what he’s doing now with the Hoosier football program,” McFadden added in his praise for Cignetti. Indiana’s head coach has a staggering record so far (135-37) and has made numerous trips to conference title games in the FCS and Div-II levels. Mike Tomlin, in his 18 years with Pittsburgh, has never recorded a losing season. He’s also the youngest coach to lead a franchise to a Super Bowl win. Before that, he’d been part of the 2002 Buccaneers squad that won the Super Bowl.

Tomlin’s 18 winning seasons have helped Pittsburgh establish dominance in the NFL. Cignetti hasn’t been with a program that long in his career. But except for Elon, everywhere else he’s coached has seen a huge gap between the number of wins and losses. At James Madison, Cignetti had a 52-9 record. It shows that there’s not a lot that can stop him from racking up wins. In Indiana, he’s changed things around fully within just a year. Fans were waiting for this season to begin if 2024 was all he had to give to the program. But after seeing how Indiana is barreling through the calendar, their hopes will be soaring.

“If you have a soft head coach, you’re going to have a soft football team. If you have a head coach that believes in who he is as a coach, the players will have the same mindset,” McFadden said, likening Cignetti to the latter type. The Indiana HC isn’t afraid of risks, and neither does he want to wait around. In the span of nearly 2 years, Curt Cignetti has thrown Indiana into national attention overnight. Now, people care about Indiana.

Curt Cignetti is bringing in star power to Indiana athletics

Curt Cignetti has changed the faces of nearly every program he’s coached. He went to IUP and turned it into a winning program and has made this practice into a signature. Cignetti is also helping the school to rope in some big money-makers. He went for the biggest fish in the sea: Mark Cuban, a 1981 Indiana graduate. Cuban has funded projects for the university but stayed away from helping out the athletics. But it was Curt Cignetti and his fire for Indiana football that brought Cuban on board.

“The fact that Cig has said ‘I win everywhere I go,’ I didn’t believe him, but he showed it against all odds, he proved that he was a true Yinzer,” Cuban told USA Today. The investor was already friends with AD Scott Dolson, but he still refrained from putting money into Indiana athletics. It was ultimately his connection with Curt Cignetti that has now pushed him to take that leap of faith. Under the HC, Indiana doesn’t have to wait for eons for success. He’ll get it done within a few years.

Curt Cignetti, at 5-0, is still a contender for the playoffs. In fact, he’s among those who are making a return trip to that exclusive club. After defeating Illinois, the Hoosiers are no longer an underdog program in college football. The longer Cignetti stays with the program, the better it gets for the future of the program.