Indiana wasted little time finding a new head football coach.
The Associated Press is reporting the university has hired James Madison’s Curt Cignetti to succeed Tom Allen, who was fired Sunday after seven seasons.
The 62-year-old Cignetti had a 52-9 record in five seasons at JMU, including an 11-1 record and a No. 24 ranking this season. He was named the Sun Belt’s coach of the year.
After leading the Dukes to at least the Football Bowl Championship semifinals in his first three seasons, Cignetti led the program’s transition to the Sun Belt Conference in the Football Bowl Subdivision two years ago.
The Dukes went 8-3 in 2022, and this year earned the school’s first bowl bid.
Cignetti began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Pittsburgh in 1983-84. He then was the quarterbacks coach at Davidson, Rice, Temple, Pitt and North Carolina State before joining Alabama in 2007 as its wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator.
Cignetti got his first head coaching job at Indiana-Pennsylvania in 2011, then in 2017 became the head coach at Elon. After two years coaching the Phoenix, Cignetti took over at James Madison in 2019, going 14-2 and reaching the FCS championship game.
Now, he’ll be tasked with improving an IU program that has won just three Big Ten games in the past three seasons.
Not only that, but almost 20 players have already declared for the NCAA’s transfer portal, including nearly the entire starting offensive unit. The portal officially opens on Monday, and Cignetti’s first order of business may be trying to convince some of those players to return to IU.
