Indiana is on the verge of hiring Curt Cignetti as its next head football coach, according to multiple reports.
Cignetti spent the last five seasons at James Madison and oversaw the program’s transition from the FCS level up to the FBS. Cignetti was named the Sun Belt’s Coach of the Year earlier Thursday after leading the Dukes to an 11-1 record this season. JMU is 19-4 in two seasons as a member of the Sun Belt with a 13-3 record in conference play.
Before the move up in levels, Cignetti led JMU to the FCS playoffs in three consecutive seasons, including a run all the way to the national championship game in 2019 where the Dukes lost to North Dakota State. The next two seasons, JMU lost in the FCS semifinals.
Overall, the 62-year-old Cignetti has a 52-9 record at James Madison. Before he landed at JMU, Cignetti spent two seasons as the head coach at Elon and six seasons as the head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a Division II program. At Elon, he had a 14-9 record with two trips to the FCS playoffs and at IUP he went 53-17 with three appearances in the Division II playoffs.
Cignetti also has experience at the Power Five level. He had stints as an assistant at Pitt, NC State and was a member of Nick Saban’s inaugural staff at Alabama, spending four seasons with the Crimson Tide as wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator.
At Indiana, Cignetti is set to replace Tom Allen, who was fired after seven seasons in Bloomington. ESPN first reported the news of Cignetti's impending hire at IU.
Allen led the Hoosiers to winning seasons in 2019 and 2020, but the program has struggled mightily over the past three years, going 9-27 (3-24 Big Ten) during that span. IU went 2-10 and did not win a Big Ten game in 2021 and then followed that up with a 4-8 (2-7 Big Ten) mark last fall and a 3-9 record this season.
Allen had a 33-49 record as Indiana’s head coach. The Hoosiers endured 11 consecutive losing seasons prior to 2019. Additionally, Indiana hadn’t had back-to-back winning seasons since 1993 and 1994 before doing so in 2019 and 2020.
