Curt Cignetti now sits alone at the top of the Big Ten coaching hierarchy.
CBS updated its Big Ten coach rankings on Tuesday morning, and Indiana’s head man climbed all the way to No. 1. In the process, he moved past four active coaches and James Franklin, whom Penn State parted ways with last October.
That rise says plenty about what Cignetti has done at Indiana, because the Hoosiers’ turnaround under him borders on the absurd. Before he arrived, Indiana had never won more than 10 games under any head coach.
The program came closest in 1945, when it finished tied with Northwestern and one win shy of perfection. Then Cignetti showed up and delivered 11 regular-season wins in his first year, followed by a national championship victory in his second - results that would have sounded like fantasy to Hoosier fans not long ago.
What makes the jump even more striking is that Cignetti did it without any prior Power Four head coaching experience. He had a track record of winning everywhere he went, but his last two seasons at James Madison were his only previous years in the FBS.
Ryan Day had held the No. 1 spot in the CBS rankings before Cignetti took over. Day’s nine-year run and national championship are proof enough of what he’s built at Ohio State, though the Buckeyes were already one of the sport’s heavyweight programs when he took over from Urban Meyer.
Dan Lanning, who had been ranked No. 2, lands behind Cignetti as well. Indiana’s 30-20 win at Oregon last October offered one sign that the Hoosiers belonged in the national conversation, and they backed it up by pounding the Ducks 56-22 in the College Football Playoff semifinals, blowing up the old “hard to beat a good team twice” line in the process.
Lincoln Riley and Kirk Ferentz were the other two current coaches Cignetti moved past to claim the top spot. USC and Indiana have not met since the Trojans joined the Big Ten, but Riley’s results at two blueblood programs have not matched the standard that comes with those jobs. Ferentz has kept Iowa steady, but in 28 years on the job, he still has not taken the Hawkeyes to a national championship.
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