When Curt Cignetti became the hottest name in college football this fall, there was a great deal of interest from West Virginia University football fans.<\/p>\n
The more senior Mountaineer faithful knew the Cignetti name well and immediately connected the history. For the younger members of the fan base, it was a bit of a trickle. \u201cWait, he played for the Mountaineers?\u201d was a common refrain among the more youthful fans, who immediately wanted to know more after seeing Facebook or Instagram posts of Cignetti wearing gold and blue.<\/p>\n
Then, when Cignetti hoisted the national championship trophy after taking Indiana from irrelevance to the top of the mountain, the questions, and rumors, really began to fly. Why didn\u2019t WVU hire him first? Is it true he has a grudge against the Mountaineers because they fired his dad? Does he ever come back to Morgantown?<\/p>\n
After reading endless social posts and hearing all the chatter, I decided to investigate a little further. I knew some of the story, but I needed some details. I wanted to go straight to the source, but with every major media outlet beating down the coach\u2019s door, I probably wasn\u2019t going to be at the top of the list.<\/p>\n
So, I did the next best thing. I went online to research the story and then tracked down an interview that Blue & Gold News publisher Greg Hunter did with Cignetti in June of 2019.<\/p>\n
At that point, Cignetti had just accepted the head coaching job at JMU, and he was preparing for his season opener in Morgantown against the Mountaineers. Of course, questions about his time around the WVU program came up, so the audio of the interview gave me a chance to hear Cignetti\u2019s thoughts at that time.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with the basics. Cignetti\u2019s father, Frank, a native of Apollo, Pennsylvania, came to WVU in 1970 to join the Mountaineer coaching staff led by head coach Bobby Bowden. Frank was an assistant at Princeton at the time, and after some debate, he took the position in Morgantown. Curt was in the third grade then and had lived most of his life in Pennsylvania up to that point, but he was excited about the move, especially the way it started.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember we opened with William & Mary, VMI and Richmond and beat them all like 49-7 (William & Mary 43-7, Richmond 49-10, VMI 47-10),\u201d he recalled during that 2019 interview. \u201cI thought, \u2018Wow, we\u2019ve really made it here. This is a great place.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically, that WVU team won at Indiana the next week to climb to No. 11 in the country, but back-to-back losses to Duke and Penn State brought Bowden\u2019s club back to earth. It ended the season 8-3 but didn\u2019t make a bowl game.<\/p>\n
The 1972 season is another one that stands out to Cignetti. After starting 5-3 with wins over Villanova, Richmond, Virginia, William & Mary and Tulane, and losses to Stanford, Temple and Penn State, WVU won at Pitt and then took down VMI to move to 7-3. The regular season finale against Syracuse was played at old Mountaineer Field with a possible bowl bid on the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Virginia needed to win that game to maybe make a bowl,\u201d Cignetti remembered. \u201cBack then, there were only nine bowls. West Virginia made the Peach Bowl over Louisville. They were coached by Lee Corso and were 9-1 and didn\u2019t make a bowl. That shows you how much things have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
West Virginia was ranked No. 18 in the country when it went to Atlanta for that bowl game, a devastating 49-13 loss to N.C. State.<\/p>\n
The next two seasons, WVU combined for a 10-12 record, and Mountaineer fans began to grumble. By the time Bowden\u2019s 1975 team went 9-3 and found revenge with a Peach Bowl victory over the Wolfpack, Bowden already had one foot out the door. He took the head coaching job at Florida State, and Frank Cignetti was hired to take his place in Morgantown.<\/p>\n
For four seasons, Cignetti patrolled the sidelines for WVU, while Curt quarterbacked the Mohigans of Morgantown High and followed his father\u2019s every move.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good experience,\u201d said Curt, who was a two-time Class AAA all-stater at MHS. \u201cIt was a lot of fun. I enjoyed being on the sidelines and going to the home games. I pretty much knew I wanted to coach at a young age. It seemed like it was a good profession, and my dad enjoyed what he did.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduation, Curt stayed in Morgantown to play for his father, but the two were together for just one season. Battling run down facilities, a lack of funding and then lymphomatoid granulomatosis in 1979, Frank was let go following the 1979 season with a record of 17-27.<\/p>\n
Curt stayed on to play for Cignetti\u2019s replacement, Don Nehlen, but he was a backup to Oliver Luck and Jeff Hostettler and didn\u2019t see much playing time.<\/p>\n
After graduating from WVU in 1983, Curt immediately jumped to the job he had been dreaming of since fourth grade. Despite seeing the rough side of the profession during his father\u2019s time leading the Mountaineers, he still wanted to follow in his footsteps. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the business has really changed a lot,\u201d said Cignetti, pointing out that although there were challenges, the rigors of the profession weren\u2019t the same when he got started. \u201cBack then, coaches didn\u2019t move as much as they do now. The technology wasn\u2019t the same, so there wasn\u2019t the scrutiny. Staffs stayed together longer, and people stayed in one place longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t really learn much about the technical aspects of coaching until I became a graduate assistant coach. Maybe I always thought a little bit like a coach, because when you\u2019re living with a coach, you\u2019re brought up with certain principles and core values. So, maybe there were some of those intangibles rubbing off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite his family connection, Curt had to climb the coaching ladder. He started as a graduate assistant at Pitt for two seasons before becoming the quarterbacks\u2019 coach at Davidson in 1985. He coached quarterbacks at Rice from 1986 through 1988 before moving to take the same position at Temple in 1989, the same year he got married.<\/p>\n
From that point forward, Curt attacked his coaching moves a little differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything I did was to try to keep my family in one place as long as I could,\u201d he said. \u201cI could remember following other coaches\u2019 careers who had passed through West Virginia. There were guys who seemed like they made it big, but their families were torn up. I never wanted to be in that position. My dad always tried to stay in one place for family reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
After four years at Temple, Curt went back to Pitt in 1993. He was close to his family, as well as his wife Manette\u2019s, and his children, Curt Jr., Carly Ann and Natalie Elise, had an opportunity to grow up around Frank, who got back into the coaching game in 1986 as the head coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Curt spent seven seasons at Pitt, before moving to N.C. State in 2000. He was there until 2006, allowing his kids to grow accustomed to a community. In 2007, though, Nick Saban was hired at Alabama. Curt knew Saban when he was in high school and Saban was coaching defensive backs for his father in at WVU, and when he was offered a position with the Tide, Curt knew he had to take it.<\/p>\n
Curt spent four years as Saban\u2019s wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really good, because you learned a lot,\u201d he said of his time under Saban. \u201cIt was like a level 400 class. You learned a lot about a lot of things \u2013 running a program, recruiting, how to practice. He was demanding, obviously, but it was a great experience. It was really beneficial to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the 2010 season, Cignetti took a big risk. IUP \u2014where his father went 182-50-1 in 20 seasons, making the NCAA Division II playoffs 13 times \u2014 had fallen on some hard times, and those in charge turned to a familiar name for some help.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got tired of being an assistant coach, and I took a chance,\u201d Curt explained. \u201cI took a head coaching job at the D-II level. It was a big pay cut, but I liked it there. My wife\u2019s family was from there, and my parents were still there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The gamble worked. Cignetti went 7-3 his first season at IUP, and the next year was 12-2 and ranked in the top 10 in Division II.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just completely different,\u201d he remembered. \u201cI went from the best Division I program in America to Division II, where you don\u2019t have all the support you\u2019re used to. We\u2019d make the playoffs Thanksgiving week, and the university was shut down and nobody was working. I\u2019d come in at 6 a.m. and change out the garbage cans. There was so much hands-on you had to do. But it was a good experience and a big transition.\u201d<\/p>\n
In six seasons at IUP, Cignetti went 53-17 and went to the NCAA Division II playoffs three times. In 2017, he took another challenge, taking over at FCS Elon University. He was 14-9 in two seasons there, making the FCS playoffs on both occasions.<\/p>\n
That brings us to the time of the interview, when Cignetti accepted the head coaching job at James Madison.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis place is different,\u201d he said at the time, pointing to facilities and funding as something that set the Dukes apart, which at the time was still playing at the FCS level. \u201cAt this level, there\u2019s nothing like it, and it\u2019s probably better than half the Group of 5 programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was right. His first season at JMU, Cignetti went 14-2 \u2014 one of those losses to WVU and the other to North Dakota State in the FCS championship game in Frisco, Texas. He took the Dukes to the FCS semifinals in each of the next two seasons, before JMU made the jump to FBS and the Sun Belt Conference in 2022. In 2023, the Dukes were 11-2 and hosted College GameDay.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when major programs started to take notice, and the WVU graduate was hired at Indiana in 2024. He was 11-2 that first season before going a perfect 16-0 and winning the national title this past season \u2014 sparking all the online chatter about his days in Morgantown.<\/p>\n
At the time of the interview, Curt fondly recalled memories like Danny \u201cLightning\u201d Buggs rushing for 159 yards and a pair of touchdowns in that big win over Syracuse in 1972 and Saban\u2019s high school teammate, Kerry Marbury, sitting in the Cignetti family living room in a cowboy hat while Frank tried to talk the running back out of leaving WVU for the Canadian Football League after the \u201972 season.<\/p>\n
Could there have been hard feelings at the time? Sure, the coaching profession is a rough one. But Frank went on to a College Football Hall of Fame Career and had the field at IUP renamed in his honor before passing away in September of 2022. The story had a happy ending, and listening back to the interview, I picked up no indication that Curt held any type of animosity toward his alma mater.<\/p>\n
At 64 years old with an $11.6 million annual contract, though, Cignetti is not coming back to Morgantown. Instead of worrying about what could have been or analyzing what was, my advice to Mountaineer Nation is to celebrate what is. One of their own has reached the top, and that climb \u2013 which exemplifies the grit and determination of the WVU program \u2013 should be celebrated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Curt Cignetti became the hottest name in college football this fall, there was a great deal of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[265,331,7,5446,35854,49,5065,65,63,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-755892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-american-football","9":"tag-college-football","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-gridiron-football","12":"tag-james-madison-dukes-football","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-division-i","15":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football","16":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football-teams","17":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116080237844105919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}