EUGENE — Two of the top teams, led by two of the best coaches in the Big Ten will square off at Autzen Stadium when Dan Lanning and No. 3 Oregon host Curt Cignetti and No. 7 Indiana.
Each a former member of Nick Saban’s coaching staff, Lanning and Cignetti’s time in Tuscaloosa did not overlap but was nonetheless formative to each becoming head coaches, albeit by very different paths since.
As they each attempt to lead teams back to the playoff this season with new transfer quarterbacks, Lanning and Cignetti are garnering greater attention from swaths of the country that are less familiar with their journeys, both of which are remarkable in their own ways.
“That speaks to a guy that (people) want to coach with him,” Lanning said. “He’s won everywhere he’s been; that’s really apparent. But he’s obviously a phenomenal coach and done a really good job.”
Lanning did not have the family connections of Cignetti, whose father, Frank Sr., coached at West Virginia and IUP, where Curt landed his first head coaching job at the Division II school after helping transform Alabama’s receiving corps from 2007-10. Cignetti then went to FCS Elon, then James Madison, taking the Dukes from FCS to FBS. That led to the job in 2024 at Indiana, where he led the Hoosiers to the College Football Playoff with many players and assistants who followed him.
“Whether his dad was a coach and his brother, that had nothing to do with his ascension – he never worked for his dad and he never worked with his brother. He’s done it his own way and I do think he had a chip on his shoulder,” said IUP coach Paul Tortorella, Cignetti’s defensive coordinator and successor.
Oregon’s fourth-year coach took an unconventional route to get into college coaching, from his all-night drive to Pittsburgh to become a graduate assistant followed by stops at Arizona State, Sam Houston State, Alabama, Memphis and Georgia before becoming Oregon’s head coach in December 2021. The Ducks have steadily improved in each year under Lanning, winning the Big Ten Championship and reaching the playoffs last season.
“Probably one of the most impressive young coaching phenoms to come around in a while I would say, having been in this game for a little bit,” Cignetti said.
Their shared previous time at the SEC powerhouse and current Big Ten coaching rank are where most commonalities stop between Lanning, 39, and Cignetti, 64. They are separated in age by a generation yet share some similarities in process and motivational tactics.
“Curt even had to convince the people close to him that he could be a top notch Division I elite head coach, otherwise with all the connections he had why didn’t this happen sooner?” CBS analyst Gary Danielson said. “He took the long road and now he carries that chip on his shoulder. His ultra ego is the key to this IU football team. There is no doubt that they take his walking into the alley and punching the bully right in the nose, that’s all part of what this football team is.”
A deeper understanding of Cignetti’s climb, particularly since 2011, illustrates the common cloth from which he and Lanning are cut.
“Discipline,” Tortorella said was one of his former boss’s pillars. “And they’re all business.”
The blueprint
Like Lanning, Cignetti began his coaching career at Pittsburgh, before Lanning was even born. Stops at Davidson, Rice, Temple, another stint at Pitt and North Carolina State followed before he arrived at Alabama as a member of Saban’s inaugural staff.
Cignetti recruited and coached several eventual first-round draft picks while with the Crimson Tide, including Julio Jones, helping transform a traditional I formation style offense to a modern passing attack.
Nearing 50 years old at the time, Cignetti was intent on becoming a head coach. With Lou Tepper leaving IUP, an opportunity to return to his native Western Pennsylvania and take over where his father coached for 20 years was the right place.
“Sometimes what happens when you’re an assistant in Power Five you go take a head coaching job that’s not a very good job and then you’re never a head coach again because you get fired,” Tortorella said. “He knew that he could come here, even though it was Division II football – we run it like a Division I program. Curt knew the history, but Curt’s smart. He’s looking, I want to be a head coach, I can go somewhere that I love where my dad was the head coach and we’re going to win.”
Cignetti went 53-17 in six seasons at IUP, with three Division II playoff appearances, then left for Elon. Several members of his coaching staff followed, including Mike Shanahan and Bryant Haines, who are his coordinators at Indiana.
The foundational elements of Cignetti’s programs — accountability, toughness, physicality, effort and discipline — were set during that era, the blueprint, as he’s gone on to call it. Many are shared by Lanning, whose four “DNA traits” at Oregon are connection, toughness, growth and sacrifice.
They each also ascribe to Saban’s mantra that the “hay is never in the barn” before a game.
“He believed in the blueprint that he had that certainly is tied to coach Saban and what he learned at Alabama and tweaking it along his way at IUP and Elon and James Madison and now to Indiana,” said Elon coach Tony Trisciani, who served on Cignetti’s staff. “He really trusts and believes in that blueprint. He’s a great motivator; he can instill confidence in the group. He does not allow for any complacency. Doesn’t matter what you did yesterday, got to do it today.”
As a head coach, Cignetti’s teams have had a positive turnover margin in all but one season, including leading the country. His teams at Elon, JMU and Indiana also typically ranked in the top 20 in fewest penalty yards per game.
“The thing he used to say, I’ve taken it, is don’t lose the day before you have the chance to win it,” Tortorella said. “They’re not going to lose the game. You’re going to have to beat them.”
In 2017, Cignetti took over an Elon program with six conference wins in the prior five seasons combined and led the Phoenix to back-to-back FCS playoff appearances.
At James Madison, Cignetti coached the Dukes to a 2019 FCS national championship game appearance and two more playoff appearances, then through their transition to FBS as a member of the Sun Belt. After a 52-9 five-year run at JMU, Cignetti accepted the job at Indiana at age 62.
The bravado and dry wit that has since become synonymous with Cignetti was being seen on the biggest stage yet.
He arrived in Bloomington declaring “Purdue sucks! But so does Michigan and Ohio State!”
At his first national signing day press conference, Cignetti said of his plans for rebuilding Indiana: “It’s pretty simple. I win. Google me.”
At Big Ten media days before his first season at IU, he explained “We had to wake some people up and create some excitement. After all this is the entertainment business, too.”
Cignetti backed up the bluster with a 10-0 start last season, though skepticism lingered due to a weak schedule. Losses to Ohio State in the regular season, and Notre Dame in the first round of the CFP accelerated that perception.
“IU lost two games and the criticism was way worse than Oregon (losing in the Rose Bowl),” Danielson said. “The criticism of IU was they were a fraud, that they couldn’t beat anybody, that their schedule allowed them to get there. I did not feel that they were a fraud and I feel they deserved everything they got.”
Ready for a battle
Saturday is “the natural game,” according to Danielson, for two teams that achieved great success last season, but had it soured by playoff defeats.
Both Lanning and Cignetti have changed how their respective programs are viewed.
Oregon is proving capable of reloading, developing and leaning on less experienced players as it pursues a return to the playoffs. Indiana is been more productive and balanced on offense and more disruptive on defense, with a destruction of top-25 Illinois to its credit this season.
UO cornerback Theran Johnson grew up in Indianapolis and played against Indiana while at Northwestern both before Cignetti’s arrival and since. His view of the program has changed rapidly.
“When I was growing up (it was) kind of a laughingstock,” Johnson said. “(They) really turned it around. Now they’re respected, ranked, beating ranked teams. You can’t do anything but tip your hat off to them. We respect them and I know that they respect us. We’re coming in ready to battle.”
No. 3 Oregon (5-0, 2-0 Big Ten) vs. No. 7 Indiana (5-0, 2-0)
- When: Saturday, Oct. 11
- Time: 12:30 p.m. PT
- Where: Autzen Stadium, Eugene
- TV: You can watch this game live for free with Fubo (free trial), with DirecTV (free trial) or streaming live on demand with Paramount Plus.
- Stream: DirecTV (free trial) or Fubo (promotional offers) or Paramount+ (free trial) or Sling (college football season pass is just $199). Streaming broadcasts for this game will be available on these streaming services locally in Oregon and Washington, but may not be available outside of the Pacific Northwest, depending on your location.
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