LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Curt Cignetti is 64 years old. That's not a punchline. It's not a caveat. It's a challenge to everything we think we know about success.
Because at 64 — an age when a lot of people are wrapping up — Cignetti is just getting warmed up. He's leading an undefeated Indiana football team. He just went on the road and beat Oregon. And he's now, quite possibly, the hottest name in college coaching.
Penn State, the flagship program of his home state, is reportedly sniffing around. A job that wouldn't have glanced his way when he was coaching at Elon, or even when he was building James Madison. Certainly, he wasn't a blip on their radar when he was winning at, of all places, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Now? They may be camped outside Memorial Stadium all season long.
But here's what I love about Cignetti's story: It's not just about football. It's about timing. It's about persistence. It's about patience .
It's about the idea that you can spend decades doing good work, largely unnoticed, and still end up building something great.
Cignetti shows us that it's never too late for lightning to strike. Never too late for a dream to catch fire. And it doesn't take a miracle. It just takes hard work, persistence and belief in what you're doing.
He's not alone.
Bryan Cranston didn't get Breaking Bad until he was 50. Colonel Sanders launched KFC in his 60s, after a string of failures and roadside rejections. Morgan Freeman didn't become a household name until Driving Miss Daisy at age 52 — though he'd had a long, successful career on the stage before that. Paul Cézanne, the famed painter, didn't really sell his work until he was 60.
None of them were chasing youth. They were chasing excellence.
There's something in that to respect, and celebrate.
He doesn't talk like a guy trying to land the next big job. He talks like a guy trying to win the next play.
He showed up for his Monday press conference after beating Oregon sounding less like a man who just engineered a program-defining win and more like a guy trying to sell you on a 12-step plan for personal reinvention.
- "Rip off the rearview mirror," Curt Cignetti said.
- "Eliminate the noise and clutter."
- "Control the controllables."
- "You get out what you put in."
- "Next week's news is determined by what you do today."
Put Vince Lombardi, Nick Saban, and Tony Robbins into a ChatGPT prompt and you'd likely get lines like Cignetti is delivering.
But at Indiana — Indiana — his players believe that stuff. They buy it. And they're 6-0. They're ranked No. 3 in the country – the highest ranking ever for the Big Ten's lowest-winning program, historically. They've got an edge, a physicality, a purpose.
He's not one of the 35-year-old wunderkinds with a designer play sheet and a film crew following him around. He's the son of a coach, a College Football Hall of Famer, raised around the game, now winning games in Bloomington with defensive pressure, quarterback grit, and a roster full of players who weren't the envy of the Big Ten.
Cignetti connects. He teaches. He leads. And clearly, he still has something to say — and young men willing to listen.
You don't have to be a young guy to relate to young players. It helps. But it's not required. Not if you're real. Not if you know what you're doing.
Sure, the Penn State talk will linger. It'll be a subplot all season. That's the price of success.
But Indiana has bigger things to think about.
This team has a shot to win the Big Ten. To return to the College Football Playoff. To prove that last year wasn't lightning in a bottle — it was the opening chapter of something real.
That's what Cignetti is focused on. So am I. Because stories like this don't come around every year. And sometimes, they don't really start until Chapter 6.
Curt Cignetti is 64. And he's just getting started.
Quick Sips
MIAMI CHALLENGE: Louisville football is looking to avoid a two-game losing streak, but it will have to pull off a signature win to do it heading to No. 2 Miami. How Cardinals' coach Jeff Brohm sees the week heading into the Friday night matchup is the subject of a Monday column.
PRESEASON RANKINGS ARE OUT: The AP released its preseason poll on Monday. Kentucky is No. 9, Louisville is No. 11, and both are ranked in the preseason for the first time since 2019. Read more about the poll here, and you can see my ballot right here.
The Last Drop
"It's really important that we understand who we really are and what's got us to this point. Always, last year, this year, all the years in the past, you know, in this game what does it take to be successful? You've got to have commitment. You've got to make sacrifices. You get out what you put in. You've got to have discipline to do what you have to do when you have to do it -- and do it right. You've got to have work ethic, attention to detail. You've got to control the controllables, eliminate the noise and clutter, which you guys (reporters) do a great job of providing a lot of that, and stay humble and hungry."
Curt Cignetti, in his Monday news conference after Indiana's win over Oregon
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