This is an opinion column.

Nick Saban heard the words, and immediately he had to question Curt Cignetti’s sanity.

Cignetti wanted to leave Alabama to go where, exactly?

IUP, he said, which is neither Indiana nor Penn State, but rather Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

The Crimson Hawks of IUP have a D-II football team, which plays in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference. Indiana, Pennsylvania, is located geographically somewhere between Pittsburgh to the east and Penn State to the west. It’s a wonderful little town, but not exactly well known for college football outside the area.

That’s where Cignetti, Saban’s first receivers coach at Alabama, the guy who developed Julio Jones, wanted to begin his career as a head coach.

Or ruin it before it even got started, which was a clear possibility.

GOODMAN: History is here for Alabama

Cignetti is now the hottest coach in college football and the architect of Indiana’s 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’s 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.

For Indiana, this is a dream season. It’s all thanks to Cignetti, who had a vision way back when he was working with Saban.

Cignetti could have stayed at Alabama back in 2010. Alabama had just defeated Texas in the Rose Bowl for the Tide’s first national championship since 1992. Life was good. It was time to make a choice, though. Remain one of Saban’s underlings indefinitely, or start a new path.

Coach Cig was ready to bet on himself, but Saban had concerns.

IUP? Really? After everything they had built together?

“He had some questions whether that would be a very good move for me,” Cignetti said. “I was just ready to kind of run my own show. I had been an assistant coach. I was hitting 50.”

I’d say Cignetti chose correctly. Look at him now.

Sometimes in life, you’ve gotta take a chance and risk it all. IUP was Cignetti’s big gambit, but he had a plan.

Saban advised against it.

Who chooses the Crimson Hawks over the Crimson Tide?

“I 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,” said Cignetti, who is the son of Hall of Fame coach Frank Cignetti, Sr. “I was just ready for something different.

“And I respected his opinion, but I decided to make the move.”

Frank Cignetti, Sr., finished his career at IUP after coaching at West Virginia with Bobby Bowden. Frank’s 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’s legacy before building on his own.

Saban’s 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.

There’s 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.

Dan Lanning at Oregon is a former Saban guy, too, and then there’s Cignetti, who’s quickly transforming into the Saban of the Big Ten.

Saban had “the Process” at Alabama. Cignetti calls it “the Blueprint.” Same thing. Same results. Saban started out 12-0 in his second season at Alabama. Indiana is 12-0 going into the Rose Bowl.

It all goes back to Alabama. Cignetti didn’t waste his opportunity coaching for Saban. He was taking notes and filling up his own three-ring binders.

“I probably think about it every day, to be quite honest with you,” Cignetti said. “Because it had such an impact on my growth and development.

“And I think, philosophically, the program that we run here is probably a lot more the same than different from Alabama’s. So, there is probably not a day that goes by that I don’t draw from those experiences.”

Organizational techniques, standards of excellence, all that stuff that Cignetti learned at Alabama he’ll now be using against the Tide. Indiana is a seven-point favorite, and the rise of the Hoosiers is the NIL era’s 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.

Now Indiana is back and favored to win it all.

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.

It all started with the Crimson Hawks in Indiana, Pennsylvania, though. Saban was right. Cignetti might be a little crazy. He knows it, too.

“I can’t say there weren’t 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,” Cignetti said.

Here’s the difference between Saban and Cignetti, though. It’s one thing to resurrect Alabama. To do that at Indiana is unlike anything we’ve seen in college football.

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