Curt Cignetti knew in third grade that he wanted to be a football coach. Growing up on the sidelines in Morgantown, watching his father command a programme, breathe life into young men, and carry the weight of expectation on the West Virginia sideline, the path was never in question.
Decades later, just hours before the biggest game of his coaching career, Cignetti finally stood inside the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, staring at a video kiosk honouring the man who shaped everything he would become.
Curt Cignetti, Frank Cignetti Sr., and a Family Defined by Football
Frank Cignetti Sr. was enshrined there in 2013. His son, head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers and architect of one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college football history, had never made it to the ceremony. Practice beckoned. There was football to coach.
“I was the only family member that couldn’t make the ceremony,” Cignetti admitted last week. “We were in fall camp at IUP, and I wasn’t going to miss practice.”
12 years later, with Indiana preparing for a College Football Playoff Semifinal against Oregon, fate delivered Cignetti to his father’s doorstep. When he finished viewing the display, he gave a fist-bump to the touch-screen and said, “Good to see you, buddy.”
Frank Cignetti Sr. built his legacy one program at a time. A former NAIA All-American end at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, he returned to his alma mater after a tumultuous four-year stint as West Virginia’s head coach and transformed the Crimson Hawks into a Division II powerhouse.
The numbers alone tell part of the story: 199 career wins, a 182-50-1 record at IUP across 20 seasons, 14 PSAC West Division titles, 13 NCAA Division II playoff appearances, and two national championship game berths.
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He earned the 1991 Division II Coach of the Year award and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013. IUP’s football field now bears his name.
Yet the numbers can’t capture what those who worked alongside him remember most. Paul Tortorella, who arrived at IUP in 1995 as Frank Sr.’s defensive coordinator and remains there today, witnessed the programme’s culture firsthand.
“He was like a father figure,” Rich Ingold, a former IUP quarterback and assistant under Cignetti, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
When Frank Sr. coached his final game in November 2005, a loss to California (Pa.), he reflected on the demands of the profession.
“When you have the headset on, you live and die on every play.”
A Son’s Journey, A Father’s Influence
Curt Cignetti’s path to becoming one of college football’s elite coaches wound through places far from the spotlight. He played quarterback at West Virginia while his father coached there, staying even after Frank Sr. was fired following a difficult 1979 season complicated by a cancer diagnosis.
The elder Cignetti spent 35 days in the hospital battling lymphomatoid granulomatosis, and his wife, Marlene, once called their children to say she didn’t think their father would survive.
He did survive. And when Curt began his own coaching journey, starting as a graduate assistant at Pitt in 1983, his father’s example guided every decision.
“[My dad] had by far the biggest influence on me as a person and as a football coach,” Cignetti said in a 2004 interview with NC State. “I just admire his discipline, his work ethic, and his sense of values. There have been a lot of great coaches who coached for him and went on to do great things.”
Curt spent 26 years as an assistant, including four seasons under Nick Saban at Alabama, where he helped recruit and develop Julio Jones, Mark Ingram II, and Dont’a Hightower.
When his first head coaching opportunity finally came in 2011, it was at IUP, the programme his father built. It was a homecoming in every sense.
“The IUP job was personally special for Cignetti as his father, Frank Cignetti Sr., played for the Crimson Hawks and later patrolled the sidelines for 20 years as head coach,” Indiana’s athletics department noted when detailing his career path.
Frank Cignetti Sr. passed away in September 2022 at age 84, during Curt’s fourth season at James Madison. The tributes poured in from across the football world. National Football Foundation Chairman Archie Manning called him “a highly influential coach in Western Pennsylvania” whose “legacy touched the lives of countless players and assistant coaches.”
Curt’s own words, shared on social media that day, were simpler: “I was blessed to have a great Dad! He inspired me and so many others. Love you Dad! Rest in peace.”
Standing at that press conference in Atlanta last week, surrounded by reporters asking about Oregon and Indiana’s historic season, Cignetti opened up about what his father meant to him in a way he rarely does.
“I learned so much from my dad, you know. I don’t even know where to start,” he said. “He was a great leader, and he led by example, and he was a role model, and he was a strong man. He had a little John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in him.”
The lessons extended beyond Xs and Os.
“My dad was a big influence in my life. He was a great role model, led by example, and really just a good person, hard worker, honest, treated people well,” Cignetti has said. “I never heard him say a bad thing about another person. He was a big family man.”
The Cignetti Dynasty Is Alive and Well
The Cignetti coaching tree spreads across multiple levels of football. Frank Jr., Curt’s brother, currently serves as offensive coordinator at IUP, the programme both his father and brother once led.
He previously worked in the NFL as quarterbacks coach for the St. Louis Rams and coordinated offenses at Pittsburgh.
And Frank Sr.’s influence reached beyond his own bloodline.
Manette Cignetti, Curt’s wife of 36 years, echoed that sentiment after Indiana’s 56-22 demolition of Oregon in the Peach Bowl.
“It’s amazing how many people we’ve run into that his father touched their lives that either coached with him or played for him,” she told The Sporting News. “Like here today, I probably had five people come up to me and tell me, you know, I was there. I was a player. I was a coach.”
The visit to the Hall of Fame display, Manette said, made an impact on her normally stoic husband. “It was pretty emotional. He was very touched. All of us are very proud that his father is there, and his father had the utmost influence on his life.”
Indiana faces Miami on Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship, seeking to complete a 16-0 season that would represent one of the greatest turnarounds in American sports history. Curt Cignetti, now 64, stands one victory away from becoming a national champion as a head coach.
Should he continue winning at his current pace (his career record stands at .796), he could one day join his father in the Hall of Fame, making them the second father-son coaching duo to earn that distinction, alongside Lee and Jim Tressel.
There’s something fitting about where Cignetti found himself last week, standing before his father’s tribute just hours before leading his programme into the national semifinal. Frank Cignetti Sr. built winners everywhere he went. His son has done the same. Somewhere, the Big Guy is watching.
