Curt Cignetti’s rise has reached the point where the résumé almost reads like a dare. At Indiana, he’s 27-2 in two seasons and already has a national championship to his name. That kind of production tends to shut down most debates fast.
The attention-grabber, of course, is the line he made famous: “Google me. I win”.
It landed because it fit the moment, but the numbers behind it are even louder. Cignetti has never had a losing season in 15 years as a head coach, and that stretch runs through every stop he’s made.
At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, he went 53-17 and reached three NCAA playoffs. At Elon, he posted a 14-9 record and made two playoff appearances.
At James Madison, he went 52-9, won an NCAA Championship and added two semifinal appearances. Since taking over at Indiana, he’s kept the same pace and then some.
The milestones keep piling up. Cignetti became the first NCAA Division I head coach to start 10-0 or better in consecutive seasons at different institutions, doing it at JMU in 2023 and Indiana in 2024.
He also became the first Division I coach in the CFP era to win 16 games in a single season, finishing 16-0. He turned 65 in early June, and his overall record now sits at 146-37.
There’s even a little Rutgers connection buried in the background. In 1989, Greg Schiano was a grad assistant at Rutgers while Cignetti was Temple’s quarterbacks coach.
Temple beat Rutgers that year, 36-33. Later, the two crossed paths on opposite sidelines as assistants, with Schiano under Joe Paterno at Penn State and Cignetti moving from Temple to Pitt to work with Johnny Majors and Walt Harris.
As for Rutgers and Indiana, the Big Ten-era series has been tight. Rutgers is 5-5 against the Hoosiers, and the last meeting came in 2023, when RU won 31-14.
Rutgers has taken the last three matchups between the schools. Still, based on what Cignetti has done everywhere else, that streak doesn’t feel like the one to bank on continuing this year.
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