Indiana football moved swiftly to stabilize a key staff role. Three days after Derek Owings left for the University of Tennessee, Curt Cignetti is expected to hire Colorado State strength and conditioning coach Tyson Brown. Brown previously worked under Jim Mora at UConn and had been expected to follow Mora to Colorado State.
Cignetti tapped a familiar connection, signaling urgency and continuity as Indiana seeks to protect recent momentum. The hire would place Brown in Bloomington as the program’s head strength and conditioning coach.
Curt Cignetti Makes Immediate Statement With Indiana Staff Hire
Indiana addressed a significant offseason departure with speed and intent, signaling that recent success will not slow the program’s standards. Derek Owings left Bloomington for Tennessee the morning after Indiana’s 27-21 win over Miami, accepting a deal that made him the highest-paid strength and conditioning coach in college football at $1.2 million per year. His exit created a significant opening, but Curt Cignetti wasted no time reshaping his staff’s structure.
The move to hire Tyson Brown underscores that urgency. Brown arrived after a brief stay at Colorado State, where he joined Jim Mora’s staff for just one month. Before that, Brown worked under Mora at UConn from 2024-25 as the director of football strength and conditioning.
His history with Cignetti runs deeper. Cignetti gave Brown his first opportunity to oversee a full-strength program in 2018 at Elon, a professional connection that played a role in the reunion.
Brown brings extensive experience across multiple Power Five programs. He led strength and conditioning operations at Mississippi State from 2020 to 23 and previously held the same role at Washington State from 2018 to 20.
Earlier in his career, Brown served as an assistant at Washington State from 2014-17, South Florida in 2013, and Washington from 2011-12. His entry into the profession included time as a strength and conditioning intern with the Houston Texans in 2010 and a graduate assistant role at Baylor from 2008-09.
Brown inherits a program shaped heavily by Owings’ influence. Tennessee formalized Owings’ contract on Jan. 13, according to On3, with annual compensation of $1.2 million, a jump from the more than $900,000 he earned at Indiana following a contract extension last summer.
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Owings initially joined Cignetti at James Madison University in 2020 and followed him to Indiana after the 2023 season. His work earned FootballScoop.com’s strength and conditioning coach of the year award in 2025.
Cignetti consistently credited Owings as a cornerstone of Indiana’s rise. “I know the players really like what we’re doing down there,” Cignetti said in February of 2024. “He changes their bodies. He’ll cut a lot of body fat, still add lean muscle mass, quicker, stronger, faster, more explosive. I’ve seen the results. You look at the GPS numbers sort of here last year, relative to maybe where we were the year before. He’ll make ’em faster.”
Cignetti also described Owings as a “winning edge,” emphasizing his impact on player development and performance. Owings departed for Knoxville alongside assistants Josh Huff and Carl Miller, leaving multiple vacancies behind. Brown becomes the central figure in rebuilding that unit as Indiana looks to preserve the physical identity that fueled its recent success.
