From IUP to No. 1 in the country: Curt Cignetti's small-school path to Indiana

SITTING IN CURT Cignetti's office, Ethan Cooper wasn't certain Indiana University of Pennsylvania was the right fit. Then the offensive guard recruit noticed Cignetti's Alabama national championship ring.

"He took it off and let me hold it," Cooper recalled. "That solidified the deal for me."

Long before Cignetti led Indiana to its first perfect regular season and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff, he built a winner while honing a blueprint for success at his first head coaching job -- Division II IUP.

Cignetti had spent nearly three decades as an assistant, including four seasons (2007-10) under Nick Saban at Alabama, before he got the opportunity to run his own program.

At 49, he went to IUP, where his father, College Football Hall of Famer Frank Cignetti Sr., had forged a Division II power. Cignetti didn't just inherit the program; he rebuilt it, applying the standards he'd learned in Tuscaloosa and elsewhere in his own way.

"I remember thinking, either this dude is crazy and it's not going to work, or it's going to work really well," former IUP captain and All-America offensive tackle Byron Dovales said. "He was hard on us. But we won fast. From then on, I was like, whatever this dude says, I'm in."

On New Year's Day, the Hoosiers open their playoff run in the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Prudential against Alabama (4 p.m. ET, ESPN). Nearly a decade after leaving IUP, Cignetti is in position to win his own national title ring as a head coach.

His former IUP players say they saw it coming.

"He had this confidence," former IUP wide receiver Walt Pegues said. "You could tell even then that he trusted his process -- and what he was building."

THEN-IUP ATHLETIC director Frank Condino didn't expect to hear from Cignetti when the IUP football job came open after the 2010 season.

"Curt was ready to be a head coach. He had burned his spurs and worked really hard," Condino said. "I'm not sure why he couldn't catch a break at the Division I level. But for us, it was a no-brainer to hire somebody of his caliber, especially with all the family ties at IUP."

IUP had not won the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference since 2006, the year after Frank Cignetti Sr. had retired, and had won just four conference games over the previous two seasons.

Shortly after Cignetti took over, Dovales and a dozen or so other players got an email telling them to meet at the ROTC building on a Tuesday night.

"The team minister was like, 'Cignetti wants me to put you guys through this ROTC leadership course,'" recalled Dovales, who was a sophomore then. "'Don't tell anybody about it. You can accept or decline. But the team captains will be chosen through this program.'"

That winter, in addition to morning football workouts, the selected players -- who would also form Cignetti's leadership council -- carried logs, bear-crawled with teammates on top of their backs, competed in paintball, dove into pools to save drowning dummies and jogged through campus with prop guns.

That ROTC tradition remained throughout Cignetti's IUP tenure. Cignetti picked the players after having his coaching staff rank everyone on the roster, from first to last.

"The most physically taxing stuff I've ever done in my life," Pegues said. "It was a beast. But it made us tougher and really built leaders within the team."

That was only part of it. The entire team had to be at the fieldhouse with their toes on the line by 5 o'clock in the morning three times a week. At the first conditioning workout, the players noticed trash cans lined up everywhere. Cignetti told them they could throw up in them if they needed to. But if they missed a sprint or rep, they'd have to return the following morning and do the entire workout again.

"Our starting safety walked out after one day," Dovales said. "He shook everyone's hand and quit, saying, 'I don't love football this much.' I think we had 12 kids quit before the end of winter conditioning, just from the 5 a.m. workouts."

By spring, players realized Cignetti knew not just how hard to push them, but also when to ease off.

He spent the entire first spring practice simply explaining every drill, so they wouldn't waste time later. Cignetti also cut spring practices in half from the previous season to a little over an hour.

Anyone who made a second mistake was immediately replaced for the day. He made sure in team periods the offense got off three snaps every minute using a timer.

"Everything was so efficient," Dovales said. "Always on a schedule."

Two-thirds of the way through spring ball, the players were getting ready for another practice when Cignetti walked in with a puzzling announcement.

"Dudes are in treatment. My ankles are taped. I got my hands taped. Got everything ready," Dovales said. "He goes, 'We had a great spring ball, guys.' And we're all looking around like, 'What are you talking about?'"

Cignetti canceled the final five spring practices and told them to focus on their grades and be ready to go again in the fall.

THE CRIMSON HAWKS went 7-3 in Cignetti's first season in 2011. A year later, they won the PSAC and reached the Division II playoff quarterfinals.

Cignetti was never big on long pregame speeches. He was also comfortable letting awkward silences do the work.

Before the 2014 opener, Cignetti walked into the meeting room and began pacing back and forth.

"We're just waiting for him to say something," recalled cornerback Allen Wright. "Finally, he says, 'Who all in here knows Cassius Clay?' And we're all looking at each other like, 'Where are you going with this?' Then he goes, 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. That's what I want you guys to do today. Let's go.' We were waiting for a bigger speech. But that was all he had for us."

The Crimson Hawks rolled past Saint Augustine's by three touchdowns, their fourth straight victory under Cignetti to begin a season.

"Sometimes he would say something quick after a practice or before a game, then he would just walk off," said IUP quarterback Lenny Williams. "He had some epic walk-offs."

Cignetti's pursuit of efficiency extended to watching film, where he always jotted notes on a yellow pad instead of a laptop or tablet. When players walked in to watch film in his office, Cignetti would already be correcting them before they could even sit down.

"And it was the most minute of details, like the angle of a step or placement of your outside hand," Dovales said. "His father was the same. I got an opportunity to sit with his father and watch film quite a bit and he was very meticulous and could coach every position from one shot. I see where Coach got that from."

Earning a compliment from Cignetti didn't come easily, either. A wink and a smile were the best any player could hope for. After four years as a starter, Dovales finally got his at an All-America banquet after his senior year -- making it that much more meaningful.

"He said, 'Byron, I don't meet too many people like you, but you've got this thing about you that's just special,'" Dovales said. "And he was like, 'Wherever you go, make sure you keep it.'

"That has stuck with me to this day."

THROUGH CIGNETTI'S FIRST two seasons at IUP, he often cited his tenure at Alabama. How he won a national championship and recruited future NFL stars like wide receiver Julio Jones. Former IUP receiver JoJo Gause noted that Cignetti even had a signed picture of Jones in his office.

The day before the 2012 PSAC championship game against rival Shippensburg, Cignetti started to say, "When I was at Alabama..." when one of the players boldly interjected.

"Yo, Coach Cignetti," the player said. "'No disrespect, but you're not at Alabama no more, man. This is Indiana.' And everyone just laughed and cheered."

Cignetti rarely smiled or made jokes in front of the team. That time, he let out a big grin.

"He could see that we had confidence in him. We were all bought in," Dovales said. "You don't have to go back to the things you did at Alabama. What you're doing now is working. We trust you. We believe in you. That was really the start of what became a great run for him."

The next day, the Crimson Hawks defeated Shippensburg 41-10 to reach double-digit wins for the first time since Cignetti's father was the coach.

After another 10-win season in 2016, Cignetti left IUP to become the head coach at Elon and then James Madison after that, ultimately propelling him on the path that landed him at Indiana. In Bloomington, he would become the first to win back-to-back AP Coach of the Year awards. Only Brian Kelly, Gary Patterson and Saban have won that award twice since its inception in 1998.

"I'm not surprised one bit by his success," Dovales said. "I saw it from day one -- and he has been the same coach ever since."