The temptation is always to point to the figure on the podium.
Indiana’s surge into the national spotlight has been framed as the culmination of coach Curt Cignetti’s long climb, a testament to a coach who carried his confidence and brazen swagger from Division II to the sport’s grandest stages. When Indiana takes the field Saturday in its first Big Ten Championship appearance — a No. 1 vs. No. 2 collision with Ohio State — the narrative will naturally lean toward him.
But to understand why Indiana vaulted from irrelevance to college football power, it takes more than looking at the man out front. The real pulse of Indiana football runs quieter, behind adjoining office doors, where the lights stay on late and a decade’s worth of trust is stacked floor to ceiling.
The secret sauce isn’t Cignetti alone. It is the assistants he assembled and the staff he put together the moment he stepped onto campus.
College football history is dotted with towering head coaches who never would have reached their legendary stature without the right lieutenants. Nick Saban, one of Cignetti’s mentors at Alabama, saw defensive coordinator Kirby Smart shape his dynasties long before Smart launched his own. At Iowa, defensive coordinator Phil Parker has been Kirk Ferentz’s defensive compass for more than a decade. The list goes on.
The schemes may vary, but the throughline is unmistakable: alignment matters. Cignetti has insisted on it since the day he arrived.
“I think staff continuity has been a big part of our success through the years,” Cignetti said last summer at Big Ten media day. “I get questions, how are you going to sustain it? We’re not looking to sustain it. We’re looking to improve it. And the way you do that is by having the right people on the bus, upstairs in the coaches’ offices.”
Before he ever called his first practice as Indiana’s head coach, Cignetti went to work reconstructing his staff. In his world, the staff is the foundation — the frame on which everything else hangs.
He knew what Indiana had lacked in the final years of Tom Allen — the constant churn, rolling uncertainty — and responded by assembling not just a staff, but an ecosystem. Six of the 10 assistants he hired were his former colleagues at James Madison.
“I borrowed a good nucleus from JMU,” Cignetti said on national signing in December of 2023. “I’ve got guys on my staff that I hired for $6,000 ten years ago, and now they’re coordinators at the [Power 4] level. They know how I am, how I run the program.”
Two of those long-trusted voices now occupy some of the most influential seats in the building. Defensive coordinator Bryant Haines has been at Cignetti’s side, with only a single-year detour, since 2014. Offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan has been with him since 2016.
“I really enjoy working with [Cignetti] and for him,” Shanahan said a year ago. “He is a guy who I have learned a lot from since 2016.”
Around them is a lattice of trusted position coaches: running backs coach John Miller (six years with Cignetti), defensive tackles coach Pat Kuntz (four), tight ends coach and special teams coordinators Grant Cain (seven). Strength coach Derek Owings, who is as crucial as any position coach, also followed Cignetti from Harrisonburg to Bloomington.
“They’ve been with me for a long time,” Cignetti said back in the summer. “They’re hard to replace. And when you do replace them, there’s a blip. So, it’s important.”
Even the new blood has been transformative. Justice Ellison, who led Indiana in rushing in 2024, traded his helmet and pads for a whistle and a sweatsuit this year as a graduate assistant. It didn’t take long for Ellison to make his impact felt on the coaching staff.
“He comes into work every day and he’s ready to teach us new things,” running back Roman Hemby said in the fall. “If we need him, he’s in there for extra hours making sure we get everything done so we can be at our best.”
Quarterback Fernando Mendoza — the current Heisman Trophy favorite — has raved not only about Cignetti but also first-year quarterbacks coach Chandler Whitmer.
“[It’s] such a blessing, and honestly one of the huge reasons that I’ve been having the season I’ve had so far,” Mendoza said. “It’s been such a blessing for my brother [Alberto] and I, and the entire quarterback room, to have coach Whitmer … He’s such a great coach.”
Then there is Bob Bostad, Indiana’s offensive line coach and the one assistant retained from Allen’s staff. The moment Cignetti stepped in the door, keeping Bostad on staff instantly became a top priority.
“Everybody sang his praises about the improvement of the offensive line in 2023,” Cignetti said in October. “I felt so fortunate to be able to retain him.”
Players and peers echo that sentiment. Left tackle Carter Smith describes Bostad as a “great coach” — all business, no wasted movement. Illinois coach Bret Bielema, who was Bostad’s boss when the two were at Wisconsin, went even further.
“Bob Bostad is, in my opinion, one of the best assistant coaches I’ve ever had,” Bielema said in the buildup to Indiana and Illinois’ September clash..
As Indiana’s victories mounted a year ago, outside interest swelled. Haines drew calls from Ohio State and Penn State in the offseason. USC tried to pry Owings away. Other offers followed. Indiana resisted them all, pouring resources into keeping intact a staff that had grown together for nearly a decade.
Cignetti has repeated all season long that their loyalty and the staff’s continuity is the real backbone of the program. On Monday, his praise was direct.
“Development is huge, and I give our assistant coaches a ton of credit for that,” Cignetti said. “Coach Haines, coach Shanahan, Grant Cain, coach Bostad, Derek Owings, every single position coach. We’ve got great people upstairs.”
Indiana’s rise has drawn envy from athletic departments studying how a program devoid of four- and five-star recruits has reached the peak of the sport. The impulse is to hunt for shortcuts — a magical scheme, a breakthrough tactic, a charismatic head coach whose shadow swallows the field.
But whenever Cignetti is asked about the blueprint, he always goes back to the same, unglamorous truth: the people around him.
When the Hoosiers take the field Saturday, the spotlight will reach for Cignetti, as it always does for a head coach. But the program he leads is, in many ways, the product of dozens of fingerprints interwoven over seasons, states and stops across the country.
The rise of Indiana football is not the story of one man pulling a program upward. It is the story of the people he brought with him — the people he trusted, the people who trusted him back and the people who have helped forge something sturdy enough to shake the college football world.
About the Author
Zach Browning is a senior at Indiana University and is a senior writer for TheHoosier.com, a website powered by the Rivals Network that covers Indiana athletics. Zach also broadcasts Indiana sports for WIUX Sports, Indiana’s student-run radio station, as well as Big Ten Plus, a student-run broadcasting program powered by the Big Ten Network StudentU program.
