LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Curt Cignetti didn’t need to reintroduce himself at Big Ten Media Days this year. That happened last year, when he arrived as Indiana’s new coach and invited people to examine his coaching record and do the math.
“Normally I stand up here and we’re picked to win the league,” he told reporters in 2024, noting he'd been picked near the bottom of a conference only twice — and reached the title game both times.
That was after he delivered his now-famous preamble months earlier: “Google me. I win.”
They did. And he did.
Last year, Cignetti needed to shake things up. He needed some entertainment value to wake up Bloomington, and the rest of the Big Ten.
On Tuesday, the entertainer stepped to the podium at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas, this time as a Day 1 headliner. And instead of condescending smirks, he had the attention of a proud football league that watched him finish in a tie for second and in the College Football Playoff.
And the question was, what would Cignetti say – what will he do – for an encore? How does he sustain the magic he began in Year 1?
“We're not looking to sustain it,” he said. “We're looking to improve it.”
You see what he did there.
From there, he launched into a dizzying array of leadership lit nuggets. I’m not sure if it’s true that somebody bumped into him on his way into Mandalay Bay and a bunch of motivational books fell out of his backpack – but it could’ve happened.
Who knew? You sit down for a football presser and a TED Talk breaks out.
Cignetti didn’t cite his sources. He didn’t have to. If you listened closely, you might’ve heard echoes of some famous leadership books.
“The way you improve is by having the right people on the bus,” he said — a line right out of Jim Collins’ Good to Great.
“Consistency day in, day out. Consistency is huge,” he said — the kind of mantra you’ll find in James Clear’s Atomic Habits and John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.
“Personal goals are secondary to team goals. When a team is successful, everyone benefits,” he said — a theme at the heart of Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last
“Humble and hungry versus noise and clutter,” he said — which wouldn’t be out of place in Greg McKeown’s Essentialism.
“Keep the main thing the main thing,” he said — Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits readers know this one by heart.
“The landscape is still changing... you’ve got to be light on your feet and nimble,” he said — channeling Who Moved My Cheese.
I could do this all day (and with more coaches than Cignetti). But won’t. These are timeless leadership concepts – regardless of source. But there’s a reason coaches use this kind of language. It works.
Cignetti’s point is that what happened last year wasn’t magic. It wasn’t pixie dust, it was process.
And his program? It’s still a construction site.
“This year's team has a lot of nice pieces,” he said. “I would use that term, ‘pieces.’ Now we've got to mold this group into a team in fall camp. I like a lot of parts on this team. Now we've got to get them all thinking alike, buying into the team vision, which is critical to success.”
Then here they came. It was as if he’d hit the free buffet too hard and started spitting up one-liners.
“You win with people because the season is not a sprint. It's a marathon,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to handle success. You've got to be able to handle failure. You've got to do the right things off the field. You have to stay away from the land mines. You have to pick other guys up when they're down, but you have to have consistency and performance game in, game out, week in, week out.”
What a mess. Some guys just can’t handle Vegas.
But Cignetti can handle a football team. He has a blueprint. He knows how this works. It worked in the Big Ten, same as it did in the Sun Belt, same as it did in FCS. He’s not only built programs at every level, he’s sustained and improved them at every level.
“Last year is done,” he said. “All the Coach Cignetti pictures in the buildings on game days, get them off the walls, all that stuff. Everything is earned, not given now. Okay? Nothing good in life comes easy. What's cheap won't last. What lasts isn't cheap.”
Cignetti aims to make this thing he started at Indiana last.
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