Curt Cignetti’s Elon Success Most Closely Resembles Indiana’s Football Revival

The head coaching job on Curt Cignetti’s resume that best reflects what he has achieved at Indiana is Elon, where he turned a struggling program into an immediate winner. Cignetti's one-time Elon colleagues recall how he won there and what his formula for success is.

Curt Cignetti coaches on the sideline during his first game as Elon coach in 2017, a loss at Toledo. Elon would not lose again for quite some time afterwards as the FCS school won eight in a row for Cignetti afterwards. / Elon athletics

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana hired Curt Cignetti from James Madison in November 2023. One look at Cignetti’s 52-9 record with the Dukes is all one would need to know about his credentials. As the man himself said, “I win. Google me.”

Cignetti’s record is impressive, especially considering an added degree of difficulty when JMU transitioned from FCS to FBS in the middle of his tenure.

However, James Madison was already a winner when Cignetti arrived on the Harrisonburg, Va., campus. The Dukes had made the FCS playoffs in the three seasons before Cignetti arrived, winning the FCS national championship in 2016 and finishing as the runner-up in 2017. They were ready-made.

Elon – Cignetti’s stop before JMU – was not a perennial winner.

North Carolina-based Elon was a one-time NAIA power, winning national titles in 1980 and 1981. But the football program was in a bad way in the 2010s. After making a FCS playoff appearance in 2009, the Phoenix bottomed out.

Starting in 2011 and leading up to when Cignetti was hired at Elon, the Phoenix won a total of 17 games in six seasons. A move from the Southern Conference to the tougher Colonial Athletic Association in 2014 didn’t help. Elon went 4-20 in CAA games in its first three years in the league.

Sound familiar? Indiana’s Big Ten record in the three seasons before Cignetti was hired was 3-23. The situations are eerily similar.

“I drew parallels to that early on when I was hired, having gone through that one time before,” Cignetti said at a recent press conference. “They were similar situations, yes.”

Much of what worked at Elon is working now at Indiana. Those who were on the ground at Elon when the Phoenix had their rise are not surprised that Cignetti is turning the same trick with the Hoosiers.

Cignetti Heads To Elon

Curt Cignetti is introduced as Elon's football coach on Jan. 2, 2017. To the left is Elon athletic director Dave Blank. / Elon athletics archive

Dave Blank had been Elon’s athletic director since 2006 when he went through a football coaching search after the 2016 season. However, as it is with so many things related to Cignetti, the timeline in Blank’s relationship with Cignetti begins in Cignetti’s home state of Pennsylvania.

Blank was head basketball coach at Division II Lock Haven from 1988-95. Lock Haven competes in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, the same league as Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Blank knew of Cignetti and his family’s lineage of coaching success. Curt’s father, Frank, was athletic director at IU-P while Blank was at Lock Haven. Through those circles, and through Curt Cignetti’s own success as an assistant coach, Cignetti was on Blank’s radar.

Blank was convinced Elon could win despite its lack of success at the time. The school had grown, the stadium was barely a decade old, and there was a decent group of players on-hand.

Convinced Elon could win and a former coach himself, Blank knew what he wanted in his football boss.

“As I talked with Curt, I could see a focus that was really attractive to me. It’s something that I thought that Elon would really benefit from and that was needed. I thought he could bring that to the table,” Blank said.

In a recent appearance on Hoosiers Connect’s Players Perspective podcast, Cignetti remembered his own impressions of the situation at Elon, a school he was familiar with after his stint as an assistant coach at North Carolina State from 2000-06.

“I get off the plane and go down there, and they had built so much since I had been there last,” Cignetti said. “I remember them being a school of 3,400; now it was 7,500 and it was like a country club. They had nice facilities relative to what we had at IU-P and it was like three times more money. I looked around and I said, ‘Why can’t you win here?’ I got offered the job; I took the job.”

While Blank, who retired as Elon’s athletic director in 2023, downplayed the rough stretch Elon had been in when Cignetti was hired from IU-P late in 2016, Cignetti bluntly recalled how closely Elon’s state of affairs paralleled the situation when he arrived at Indiana.

“They were like 10-45 (in previous seasons) and nobody thought it could get done there. Nobody. No one at Elon thought it could get done,” Cignetti recalled.

Blank noted that Cignetti steered clear of the kind of bold statements he made when he arrived at Indiana. The situations were different.

There was no transfer portal in 2017. While FCS had a bit more freedom of roster movement than FBS teams did at the time – FCS teams could bring in FBS players after spring football without the players having to wait a year to play – there was no chance for the kind of mass roster makeover that Cignetti implemented at Indiana.

A different, but equally effective approach, had to be taken. He had to make the players he inherited believe in his plan and in themselves.

“He definitely was able to take a group of people that were coming from a tough stretch and make them believe that there's no reason why they shouldn't win,” Blank said. “At Indiana, I think he's probably saying some of the same things. Why not us? Why not now? Because there's no reason why he can't win.”

Turnaround Was Quick At Elon

Curt Cignetti speaks to his Elon players during the 2017 spring game at Elon's Rhodes Stadium. / Elon athletics

As it has been at Indiana, it didn’t take Cignetti long to turn the Phoenix around.

According to Blank, part of Cignetti’s success comes from his own belief and an uncanny knack to pass that belief on to others – regardless of whether it’s his players, his coaches or his fans.

 “If we don't believe, if we don't talk and act like we can win, then it's going to be tough to win. He wants to start that from day one. So he comes in guns a blazing,” Blank said.

One man who figured that out quickly was Tony Trisciani. He was hired as Cignetti’s defensive coordinator after a successful five-year stint on the staff at CAA rival Villanova.

From the start, Trisciani, now Elon’s head coach, picked up on the fact that there is no ambiguity in Cignetti’s approach.

“He has a clear plan, a very clear plan, which breeds confidence. He has the blueprint,” Trisciani said. “He knows what he wants, and he can communicate it well. Curt keeps the main thing, the main thing and it's football.”

Elon lost its first game under Cignetti, a 47-13 loss at Toledo. Cignetti has said since that Elon “played hard and played good” and that it was an encouraging sign of things to come. Sure enough, the wins were about to pile up.

Starting with a 34-31 win at FCS power Furman, Elon won eight games in a row. Unlike his start at Indiana, every win was by a touchdown or less; four of them were by a field goal or less. The close wins galvanized Elon in much the same way Indiana’s dominant wins have created football mania in Bloomington.

Elon would tail off down the stretch, but it did earn an at-large bid in the FCS playoffs. The Phoenix lost in a rematch with Furman in the first round, but the 8-4 record was a six-win improvement from the previous season.

“I can't tell you that he thought we would be 8-4 in his first year. And I think he'd say the same thing,” Blank said. “I can tell you that he thought we'd surprise some people and win some games people didn't think we'd win.”

Secret To Cignetti Success

Elon coach Curt Cignetti walks the sideline during a 2018 game against Towson. / Elon athletics

The question with Cignetti isn’t whether he can win, he’s proved that repeatedly, but how does he make it happen? What goes into his blueprint? Those who saw him succeed at Elon have their own ideas.

Trisciani relayed an anecdote that partly goes to the heart of what Cignetti is all about.

“Curt loves football and he loves his family. There's not a lot of small talk. So there can be some awkward silence in a conversation, but he's probably just thinking about how to block power,” Trisciani said.

Cignetti is consumed with football. Successful football. That’s what makes him go. His single-mindedness is the foundation stone of who he is. It’s where the blueprint begins to unfold.

“He's football all the time and it doesn't let up. There's no offseason with Curt. It's just his passion. And you can see that, and you can see that when you talk with him. There’s not a minute off with him with football,” Blank said.

Lots of coaches live, breathe and eat football. There’s nothing particularly novel about that. What separates Cignetti from the others is the way he can communicate his vision to his coaches and players.

“He communicates the standards and expectations well and he keeps it clean. You're either meeting the (standards) or you’re not,” Trisciani said. “He's pushing you every day to meet them and pushing you every day to get better. Something you hear from Curt a lot is you're either getting better or you're getting worse.”

Practices are efficient, but thorough. Cignetti has said since he arrived in Bloomington that he doesn’t like to waste time. Get it done, but get it done right. He communicates that clearly to his staff who then have a clear plan to pass along to the players.

Elon Phoenix head coach Tony Trisciani talks to a referee before the game against the Duke Blue Devils at Wallace Wade Stadium. / James Guillory-Imagn Images

“There's no fluff. He's a meticulous game planner,” Trisciani said. "If it takes two hours or three hours to get through the red zone game plan, he’s not going to stop until he's got it the way he wants it.”

Blank said that before a football is snapped in a practice, Cignetti is gifted in identifying talent and exactly what his roster needs for the way he wants to play.

“He has a great knack of finding players that fit with him and then making them successful. He does that pretty quickly,” Blank said. “The first thing I saw him do at Indiana was the quarterback (Kurtis Rourke). I'm sure a lot of people questioned, ‘What's this kid from Ohio going to do for Indiana?’ But Curt knows what fits with Curt. When I saw it, it didn't surprise me.”

Cignetti prides himself on film study. He recently said he studies film 80 hours per week. Passion for film study is also not unique in coaching ranks. Applying what Cignetti sees after he’s done pouring over film is what separates Cignetti from his coaching peers.

“He can dissect the opponent better than any other football coach I've been around,” Blank said. “He finds the weakness and then he exposes it.”

Blank attributed Cignetti’s acumen to growing up in a football family, working with top-tier coaches like Nick Saban (Cignetti was on Alabama’s staff from 2007-10) and playing as a quarterback. Take all of the above, add supreme talent evaluation, a prime organizational mind, and an intelligent way to convey a plan and you start to get to the heart of why Cignetti succeeds.

“He's just a really intellectual kind of coach when it comes right down to it,” said Blank, who said he learned a lot sitting in on Cignetti’s film sessions.. “He'd probably like to be the ole ball coach, but he's not, because he's very intellectual. He really studies the game. He studies his personnel. He studies his recruiting, and it's impressive to watch.”

The Ride

Elon quarterback Davis Cheek unloads a pass against James Madison in the first half of James Madison's 27-24 Colonial Athletic Association loss to the Phoenix on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2018, at Bridgeforth Stadium in Harrisonburg, Va. / Tom Jacobs/The News Leader

As Indiana fans are finding out, once the winning ride begins? There’s no end to the benefits an athletic program can experience.

As it has been at Indiana, Elon began to draw much larger crowds. FCS national rankings became commonplace. Goals that were once thought to be unattainable become realistic in short order.

“I can't tell you that I thought Indiana would be (8-0), but I can tell you that I thought Indiana would get a taste of victory with Curt being out there,” Blank said.

“I think the same thing Indiana is experiencing, we experienced. ‘Wow, we beat that team. Oh, we won this game.’ And before long, you go from, ‘Okay, who do we play next week?’ to, ‘Who's got to play us next week?’ It's that kind of mentality and it happened that fast,” Blank added.

Another trait Elon experienced is loyalty from the coaching staff and the players. Many of the coaches Cignetti has at Indiana – co-offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan and defensive coordinator Bryant Haines among them – were with him at Elon. He bred the same kind of player loyalty, too. It’s no secret that many of his key Hoosiers in 2024 were key Dukes in 2023 for Cignetti at JMU.

“Players want to be coached hard. They want to be pushed. You know they want to do right, especially when you've got a leader with a clear vision,” Trisciani said. “You know Curt will support you, and he'll also push you. I think he's fun to play for.”

Everything that Cignetti has achieved at Indiana is what he foresaw himself. There was never any question of falling short.

It was the same way at Elon, and a big part of Cignetti’s motivation is rooted in not being satisfied with what he’s done. Cignetti talks a lot about fighting off the “warm and fuzzies.” It’s something he backs up with his own actions, and it makes his mantra of not setting limitations on your goals become a reality.

“He's zeroed in on how we can get better, rather than worrying about what he did great, because he expects that. It’s who he is,” Blank said. “You'll see that from one season to the next. If we're short in one area, he's going to give that area a lot of attention to improve it because he wants excellence across the program.”

The Future

Right now, Indiana fans are intoxicated by the sudden rise of the Hoosiers. No one is quite sure when cruising altitude will be reached. Blank and Trisciani have the perspective of knowing where this success leads.

Elon made the FCS playoffs in 2017 and 2018. Elon started 4-1 in 2018, including a 27-24 win at then-No. 2 James Madison that undoubtedly turned some heads at the FCS powerhouse.

“What Curt will do that Indiana maybe hasn't seen for a while is Indiana football will be on the map for the national picture and recruiting, and that will include the transfer portal,” Bland predicted.

“Because of the success, that will take some limitations off of him and open things up so he'll take advantage of those things because he knows what he's doing,” Bland added.

Some Indiana fans dread the other possible future scenario for Cignetti – that he leaves Indiana for what’s perceived as a bigger job. Cignetti left Elon after the 2018 season to go to JMU. Elon was not a traditional power in the CAA, and Cignetti took the best job in the league at the time.

Indiana Head Coach Curt Cignetti during the Indiana versus Washington football game at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 26, 2024. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

It’s a reality Indiana will face. For all of the incentive clauses already built into Cignetti’s contract, for the pay raise that almost certainly will come, for the high damages ($6 million after Dec. 1) that Cignetti would need to pay Indiana if he took another job, schools that have richer football traditions and might be better resourced than Indiana is will almost certainly come calling and won’t be deterred by the high cost of success.

Cignetti has expressed his love for Bloomington, for the administration, for the fans and for what he’s built in a short period of time. Whether it’s enough to keep him around long-term remains to be seen.

What is undeniable is the transformative effect Cignetti has on the schools he coaches.

The job Cignetti has done at Indiana is nothing short of remarkable. Elon knows the feeling. They lived the Cignetti-fueled dream, too.

“When he left for JMU, maybe some feelings were hurt, but there was never any ill will towards Curt Cignetti at Elon,” Trisciani said. “They love the sound bites and love his dry humor. They are all behind him in the success he's having at Indiana.”

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