Curt Cignetti has come a long way, in a short time.
In only two years of big-time college football — at a previously small-time Big Ten program — Cignetti has climbed to the top of the mountain. The question now becomes whether he’ll try to climb the same mountain again, or whether he’ll look for a new mountain.
Cignetti has recently said he’s “not an NFL guy.” There’s nothing like a giant bag of cash to change a guy’s mind, however.
The first question is whether one of the six NFL teams currently looking for a head coach will make the call.
If it doesn’t happen now, it never will. Cignetti is 64. He has no NFL experience. But what he has done in such a short time at Indiana can’t be ignored.
Owners are looking for quick fixes. Has there ever been a quicker fix than what Cignetti did in Bloomington?
It won’t be cheap, either to buy out his contract ($15 million) or to hire him. He’s in line to get upward of $13 million per year in a place where he’ll likely be able to stay as long as he wants. Although it’s far from easy to keep winning national championships, the money is there to be consistently competitive (thanks in part to alumni like Mark Cuban).
Regardless, Cignetti has proven himself time and again. From IUP to Elon to James Madison to Indiana, the former West Virginia quarterback, whose father (Frank Cignetti Sr.) bridged the gap in Morgantown between Bobby Bowden and Don Nehlen, has seen his ship come in. Will an NFL owner now sidle up with a superyacht?
If an NFL team looking for a coach believes Cignetti could be the answer, and if the owner is willing to write the check to make it happen, why not make the call? Plenty of teams could do a lot worse.
Plenty of teams have. And history tells us that, in the current cycle, plenty of teams will.
