History is here for Alabama<\/a><\/p>\nCignetti is now the hottest coach in college football and the architect of Indiana\u2019s dramatic rise to No.1 in the country. The Hoosiers are Big Ten Conference champions and undefeated going into the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff. It\u2019s a great story, especially considering who the Hoosiers are playing. Cignetti and IU take on Alabama in the Rose Bowl on Jan.1 out in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n
For Indiana, this is a dream season. It\u2019s all thanks to Cignetti, who had a vision way back when he was working with Saban.<\/p>\n
Cignetti could have stayed at Alabama back in 2010. Alabama had just defeated Texas in the Rose Bowl for the Tide\u2019s first national championship since 1992. Life was good. It was time to make a choice, though. Remain one of Saban\u2019s underlings indefinitely, or start a new path.<\/p>\n
Coach Cig was ready to bet on himself, but Saban had concerns.<\/p>\n
IUP? Really? After everything they had built together?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had some questions whether that would be a very good move for me,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cI was just ready to kind of run my own show. I had been an assistant coach. I was hitting 50.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d say Cignetti chose correctly. Look at him now.<\/p>\n
Sometimes in life, you\u2019ve gotta take a chance and risk it all. IUP was Cignetti\u2019s big gambit, but he had a plan.<\/p>\n
Saban advised against it.<\/p>\n
Who chooses the Crimson Hawks over the Crimson Tide?<\/p>\n
\u201cI started my full-time coaching career at age 23 at Rice University when they were in the Southwest Conference, so I had been doing it 28 years,\u201d said Cignetti, who is the son of Hall of Fame coach Frank Cignetti, Sr. \u201cI was just ready for something different. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I respected his opinion, but I decided to make the move.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frank Cignetti, Sr., finished his career at IUP after coaching at West Virginia with Bobby Bowden. Frank\u2019s son would begin his head coaching career where his dad retired. I love that. Cignetti respected where he was from and he wanted to add to his father\u2019s legacy before building on his own.<\/p>\n
Saban\u2019s coaching tree is all over these playoffs, though. Just go down the line. Five of the eight teams in the CFP quarterfinals are former Saban assistants. Saban was pretty good at developing players. Turns out he was even better at teaching future head coaches.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s Kirby Smart at Georgia, of course, and Mario Cristobal at Miami. Lane Kiffin opted out of the playoffs, naturally, but even his replacement at Ole Miss, Pete Golding, is a former Saban assistant. <\/p>\n
Dan Lanning at Oregon is a former Saban guy, too, and then there\u2019s Cignetti, who\u2019s quickly transforming into the Saban of the Big Ten.<\/p>\n
Saban had \u201cthe Process\u201d at Alabama. Cignetti calls it \u201cthe Blueprint.\u201d Same thing. Same results. Saban started out 12-0 in his second season at Alabama. Indiana is 12-0 going into the Rose Bowl.<\/p>\n
It all goes back to Alabama. Cignetti didn\u2019t waste his opportunity coaching for Saban. He was taking notes and filling up his own three-ring binders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably think about it every day, to be quite honest with you,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cBecause it had such an impact on my growth and development. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think, philosophically, the program that we run here is probably a lot more the same than different from Alabama\u2019s. So, there is probably not a day that goes by that I don\u2019t draw from those experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizational techniques, standards of excellence, all that stuff that Cignetti learned at Alabama he\u2019ll now be using against the Tide. Indiana is a seven-point favorite, and the rise of the Hoosiers is the NIL era\u2019s biggest success story. When Cignetti showed up on campus two years ago, he flipped the roster and got to work. IU went 11-2 last year, losing to Notre Dame 27-17 in the first round of the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n
Now Indiana is back and favored to win it all.<\/p>\n
Cignetti turned down Penn State to stay at Indiana. Who does that? Probably the guy who chose IUP over Alabama. From there, Cignetti went to Elon and then James Madison.<\/p>\n
It all started with the Crimson Hawks in Indiana, Pennsylvania, though. Saban was right. Cignetti might be a little crazy. He knows it, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say there weren\u2019t many mornings early on where I wondered what I did because it was such a tremendous, radical change, but at the end of the day it prepared me for where I am today,\u201d Cignetti said.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the difference between Saban and Cignetti, though. It\u2019s one thing to resurrect Alabama. To do that at Indiana is unlike anything we\u2019ve seen in college football.<\/p>\n
MAILBAG SOUND OFF<\/p>\n
Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what\u2019s on your mind. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything for the reader mailbag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is an opinion column. Nick Saban heard the words, and immediately he had to question Curt Cignetti\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-366071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}