Urban Meyer has seen some incredible coaching jobs in his lifetime. He’s been part of them, competed against them, and now analyzes them from the Fox Sports desk. But when he sat down recently to talk about the best turnarounds in college football history, he didn’t mention his successor Ryan Day’s work at Ohio State.

Instead, Meyer went all-in on someone most people outside the Big Ten hadn’t heard of two years ago: Indiana’s Curt Cignetti. And Meyer’s praise was not a normal compliment. He compared him to Bill Snyder, the guy who turned Kansas State from a laughingstock into a perennial top-15 program. And said what Curt Cignetti’s doing might actually be greater.​

“When I first got hired at Bowling Green in ’01, I took over a program that had eight straight losing seasons. And the first guy I called was a guy named Bill Snyder,” Meyer explained, setting up his comparison. “He did the miraculous turnaround at Kansas State and made them a perennial top 15 job, which at that point was, I think, the best job in my history of the game, which was about 40 years.”

Then Meyer dropped the bombshell: “Now it’s only two years in. Bill Snyder did it for a length of time, but what Curt Cignetti has done is greater than what Bill Snyder did early in his career at Kansas State. I’m willing to say this is one of the great turnarounds in the game of football.” For anyone who knows college football history, that’s putting Cignetti in rarefied air alongside one of the most legendary rebuilds the sport has ever seen.​

Urban Meyer doubled down on his assessment later in the conversation, making it clear this wasn’t just an off-the-cuff analysis. “I think what Cignetti has done is Bill Snyder-ish. It’s one of the greatest coaching turnarounds I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” Meyer said. He even went deeper into the tape, praising how Curt Cignetti’s getting the results: “I watched the tape closely. They beat Oregon, and Oregon played, I mean, it was a war, physical, fast, hard. That is as well coached a team that exists in the United States of America right now, which is what Curt Cignetti and his staff have done.”

Coming from a guy who won three national championships and coached against the best programs in the country for decades, calling Indiana “as well coached as any team in America” is about as big an endorsement as you can get.​

What makes Urban Meyer’s comments so significant is who he’s not choosing to highlight. Ryan Day, Meyer’s handpicked successor at Ohio State, has won at a ridiculous clip since taking over in 2019. He’s got a winning percentage that rivals the best in the sport and has kept the Buckeyes in national championship contention nearly every season. But Meyer’s not calling Day’s work one of the greatest coaching jobs he’s ever seen; he’s reserving that distinction for Cignetti, a 63-year-old who spent years grinding in Division II and the FCS before finally getting his shot at a Power 4 program. 

And honestly, it makes sense. Day inherited a loaded roster, elite facilities, and a recruiting machine that basically runs itself at Ohio State. Cignetti inherited a dumpster fire and turned it into a national title contender in less than 24 months. That’s what Meyer’s calling “one of the great turnarounds in the game of football.” And coming from someone who literally called Bill Snyder for advice when he was starting his own career, that means everything.​

From basketball school to college football powerhouse

Indiana football was an absolute disaster before Curt Cignetti walked through the door in late November 2023. The Hoosiers had just wrapped up a brutal 3-9 season under Tom Allen. And when Allen got fired, ten of Indiana’s 2023 starters immediately hit the transfer portal.  Indiana had never won more than nine games in a single season, ever. Their last 8-0 start came in 1967, the same year they last beat a top-5 team. And they’d never beaten a top-5 opponent on the road in program history. This was a basketball school that happened to field a football team, and for decades, nobody expected anything different.​

Fast forward less than two years, and Indiana is ranked No. 3 in the country with a 6-0 record after beating No. 3 Oregon 30-20 at Autzen Stadium. This was the first time the Hoosiers had ever knocked off a top-5 team away from home. In Cignetti’s first season, he took Indiana to an 11-2 record, their first-ever College Football Playoff appearance, and wins over defending national champion Michigan. 

They started 10-0 for the first time in program history, and that 7.5-game improvement from the previous season was the fourth-best by a first-year coach since 1996. Indiana doubled Curt Cignetti’s salary to $8 million before his first season even ended, then gave him an eight-year, $72 million extension after he delivered the greatest season in school history. Now in year two, the Hoosiers are sitting at #3 in the AP Poll, the highest ranking in program history, and they’re legitimate College Football Playoff contenders again.​

So yeah, Urban Meyer calling this “one of the greatest coaching turnarounds” he’s ever seen in his lifetime isn’t hyperbole. It’s just facts.