Indiana’s Curt Cignetti becomes the first back-to-back winner of AP coach of the year

Indiana’s Curt Cignetti exceeded expectations again this season and it earned him a second consecutive honor as The Associated Press coach of the year in college football.

Cignetti is the first coach to win the award in back-to-back years since it was first presented in 1998. He is the fourth coach to win it twice, joining Brian Kelly, Gary Patterson and Nick Saban.

The 64-year-old Cignetti is 24-2 while leading the Hoosiers to unprecedented heights in his two seasons since leaving James Madison of the Championship Subdivision to take over what had been the losingest program in major college football. Last year, the Hoosiers won their first 10 games, were ranked as high as No. 5 in the AP Top 25, and reached the first round of the College Football Playoff.

He outdid himself this year, showing his smashing debut was not a one-off.

Indiana is 13-0, Big Ten champion for the first time since 1967, No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time and the top seed for the CFP. He also is coach of Indiana’s first Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the AP player of the year.

Cignetti was a landslide winner for coach of the year in voting by the nationwide panel of 52 media members who cover college football. Cignetti received 47 first-place votes. Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire and Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea received two each, and Virginia’s Tony Elliott got one.

The magnitude of Cignetti’s work at Indiana can’t be overstated.

In 2022, the Hoosiers became the first Bowl Subdivision program to reach 700 all-time losses. They entered this season with 714, a figure that still stands, and they’ve since been passed by Northwestern (717) for the dubious FBS mark.

In a program that had never won more than nine games in a season before Cignetti’s arrival, the Hoosiers have double-digit wins for a second straight year and completed a regular season without a loss for the first time.

Cignetti had said before last week that his program was chasing Ohio State in recruiting and on the field. The 13-10 win over the Buckeyes in the Big Ten championship game marked another milestone.

“It’s another step we need to take as a program,” he said after the game. “It’s a great win, obviously. And we’re going to go in the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. And a lot of people probably thought that wasn’t possible. But when you get the right people and you have a plan and they love one another and play for one another and they commit, anything’s possible.”