Curt Cignetti

Hopefully, fans of struggling NFL teams aren’t banking on Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti making the jump to the NFL coaching ranks. While it would make a ton of sense to expect Cignetti to get NFL offers after his recent meteoric success in the NCAA, the Hoosiers are making it harder each year to buy the man out of his current commitment.

It took a while for Cignetti to gain recognition for his accomplishments, but his notorious confidence is well-warranted, as a simple Google search confirms that he does, in fact, win. After 28 years filling assistant coaching roles at Davidson, Rice, Temple, Pittsburgh, NC State, and Alabama, Cignetti got his first head coaching opportunity in 2011 at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Aside from a single 6-5 campaign, Cignetti never lost more than three games with the Crimson Hawks, going 53-17 in six years with the team. He then moved on to Elon, where he went 14-9 in two seasons before getting hired at James Madison.

Cignetti immediately made himself known with the Dukes, going 14-2 in his first year at the school en route to an FCS championship game appearance. Over three years in the FCS, Cignetti’s team went 33-5, and they kept to their winning ways when they made the FBS jump to the Sun Belt Conference, finishing 8-3 in 2022 and 11-1 in 2023. It was at this point that Cignetti was hired at Indiana, which at that point in time was the losingest program in NCAA history (most all-time losses).

In Year 1 with the Hoosiers, Cignetti and Co. went 11-2, making the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff but getting eliminated in their first game. It was the school’s first double-digit win season in its 127-year history (granted that in 61 of those seasons they did not play double-digit games). Indiana rewarded him with an eight-year, $93MM extension a month into Year 2 with the team. It hasn’t stopped there, though. Year 2 saw Cignetti’s Hoosiers become the NCAA’s first-ever team to go 16-0 en route to a national championship victory.

Apparently, Indiana didn’t believe the $11.63MM per year that they were paying him over the next several years was adequate compensation, because, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Cignetti and the team have agreed to a new deal that will increase the annual average value of his salary to $13.2MM. He is under contract with the Hoosiers through the 2033 season.

Given Cignetti’s tremendous success, an eventual jump to the NFL felt like a no brainer. Instead, the school and coach have worked hard to solidify his future at Indiana for years to come. Perhaps some downtrodden NFL franchise will at some point inquire what it would take to lure him away from Indiana, but at the moment the Hoosiers are diligently building a wall around their leader and filling that four-walled room chock-full of money.

It doesn’t appear Curt Cignetti will become the next college head coach to try his hand in the NFL. The Indiana head coach shot down any potential interest in the pros on Saturday, per Brett McMurphy of On3.

“I’m not an NFL guy,” Cignetti said. “I made that decision a long time ago. I’ve always been a college football guy.”

Cignetti and his No. 1-ranked Hoosiers are gearing up for Monday’s national championship game against No. 10 Miami. A win would clinch a perfect 16-0 season for Indiana and the first national title in football for the school. While Indiana has long been known more for its success in basketball, Cignetti has drastically turned around its football program since arriving in November 2023.

Indiana entered last season fresh off a 3-9 campaign, its third straight sub-.500 effort, but has done a 180 under Cignetti. Before taking the Indiana job, the former West Virginia quarterback worked as the head coach at IUP (2011-16), Elon (2017-18) and James Madison (2019-23). Cignetti has been resoundingly successful at every stop, evidenced by his 145-37 record. He led JMU through a smooth transition from the FCS level to FBS in his last two years with the Dukes, and 13 of their players followed him to Indiana.

The Hoosiers went 11-2 and earned a College Football Playoff berth in 2024, the beginning of what has been an incredible two-year run. They’ve gone 26-2 under Cignetti, who inked an eight-year, $93MM extension in October. The 64-year-old has since earned AP Coach of the Year and Big Ten Coach of the Year honors for the second straight season.

Kurtis Rourke, now with the 49ers, quarterbacked the Hoosiers in Cignetti’s first season. Cignetti persuaded current starter Fernando Mendoza to transfer from California in December 2024.

In what will likely go down as his only year with the Hoosiers, Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy. If Mendoza enters the 2026 NFL Draft, odds are the Raiders will take him with the first overall pick. In the meantime, he and Cignetti have one more hurdle to clear together on Monday.