- Indiana coach Curt Cignetti signed his third contract extension in two seasons, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football.
- Cignetti led the Hoosiers to their first national title, first 10-win season, and first Big Ten championship in over 50 years.
- In just two seasons, Cignetti has won 27 games, a feat that took previous Indiana coaches many more years to achieve.
As strange as this sounds, Curt Cignetti is getting hosed in this whole rags to riches deal at Indiana.
Holistically speaking, of course.
Because while college football is overflowing with the absurd from all points, because the dam has burst at so many pressure spots and sucked the oxygen from the room, the greatest story ever told in the sport’s history is just another passing headline.
Cignetti just signed his third contract extension in two seasons, this one pushing his annual income to the top of college football. Right there with Kirby and Dabo and Sark.
Yet it barely moved the needle.
Nothing shocks about college football anymore. Not the 27-month party in Bloomington, and certainly not the aftermath.
Three years ago, Cignetti was coaching a provisional FBS team at James Madison and begging the NCAA to allow the Dukes to play in the postseason. Now his contract says he must be paid among the top three coaches in college football should Indiana reach the College Football Playoff semifinals.
The Hoosiers did in 2025, and now he is — to the tune of $13.2 million annually through 2033.
Yet another first for the coach and his Indiana program overshadowed by the structural abyss of the sport. A series of firsts so remarkable, it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime lottery that keeps paying off.
Over and over and over.
Buy Indiana championship books, prints
First 10-win season in school history, and the first College Football Playoff appearance in the school history.
First unbeaten and untied season in school history, and first national title in school history.
First Big Ten championship in more than half a century, first 16-0 season in college football history (sorry, Yale, that mishmash in 1894 doesn’t count).
Cignetti has won 27 of 29 games, and the two losses in 2024 were to national champion Ohio State and runner-up Notre Dame. He’s quickly pushing Georgia’s Kirby Smart for the most successful assistant from the Nick Saban coaching tree.
Shoot, he may as well be pushing Saban at this point.
Smart walked into a program that was averaging nine wins a season in the best conference in college football, and won a national title in his sixth season.
Cignetti walked into the losingest program in college football history, a team that had one Big Ten win the year before he arrived. He won it all in Year 2, and the program’s emergence has pushed the Big Ten past the SEC as the strongest conference in college football.
Now that’s a first.
Think about this: It took Tom Allen, the coach at IU before Cignetti, six seasons to win 27 games. Kevin Wilson had 26 wins total in six prior seasons.
Wait, it gets much better.
Bill Lynch had 19 wins in four seasons, Terry Hoeppner — who first made Indiana think seriously about football before his untimely death — had nine wins in two seasons.
Gerry DiNardo and Cam Cameron combined to win 26 games in their eight seasons, and the great Bill Mallory — the father of modern Indiana football (for what it was worth) — won 31 games in his final six seasons.
Starting to get a clearer picture of what Cignetti has accomplished?
The best part of this ridiculous metamorphosis? It’s only getting better.
In two months, rent-a-quarterback Fernando Mendoza will be the No.1 overall pick in the NFL draft (another first), right around the time Indiana’s latest prize haul from the transfer portal finishes spring practice.
The only hiccup to this devastating 18-wheeler trucking everything in its sights also underscores its greatest strength: high school recruiting. Indiana has recruited and signed 62 high school players since Cignetti arrived, and just this cycle landed its first nationally ranked player.
Every other player — including star wide receiver Charlie Becker and linebacker Rolijah Hardy — was unranked nationally by the 247Sports composite.
This isn’t organic recruiting, it’s next-level development from both high schools and the transfer portal. It’s Indiana tripling down on a coach who does it his way, coloring so far outside the lines of every other successful coach in the history of the sport, there is no comparison.
And that, everyone, is the biggest first of all.
Who exactly is Cignetti’s comparison? Who has come close to winning the way he has ― in this ever-changing era of college football?
Days before this ride began in December of 2023, Cignetti had come to realization he was staying at JMU. Had a good gig, and wasn’t going to make the mistake of jumping at the first Power conference job ― like a few of Saban assistants had done in the past.
Now look: He’s among the highest-paid coaches in the game, and has no peers.
Holistically speaking, of course.
Highest paid coaches in college football
Per USA TODAY coaches 2025 salary database.
- Kirby Smart, Georgia: $13.28 million
- Curt Cignetti, Indiana: $13.2 million*
- Ryan Day, Ohio State: $12.58 million
- Lincoln Riley, USC: $11.54 million
- Dabo Swinney, Clemson: $11.45 million
- Steve Sarkisian, Texas: $10.8 million
* denotes latest raise.
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