ATLANTA, Ga. (WDRB) -- Curt Cignetti has one facial expression. It's somewhere between "You call that a first down?" and "The waiter brought me the wrong steak."
He smiles the way a mountain moves. Slowly, rarely and usually off-camera.
So, naturally, the internet has turned him into a meme. "Which Curt Cignetti are you?" the image asks, offering identical photos beneath the labels: Happy Cig, Sad Cig, Excited Cig, Furious Cig, Ecstatic Cig. And there's the Indiana coach, looking like he's about to tell a referee exactly where he can put his whistle.
And yet, this unsmiling son of a coach just won the Bobby Dodd Trophy Coach of the Year Award, placed Indiana — Indiana! — atop the College Football Playoff rankings and has his team one win from a national title game.
So maybe we've had it backward. Maybe smiling is for people who haven't figured it out yet.
"There's a lot of times I am happy," Cignetti said. "I just don't show I'm happy."
He doesn't need to. He has a scoreboard to do that for him.
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Cignetti insists there's a method to the resting glare. A tactical logic.
"If I'm going to ask my players to play 150 (plays) the same regardless of the competitive circumstances, then I can't be seen on the sideline, right?" he said. "(If I'm) high-fiving people and celebrating, what's going to happen? What's the effect going to be?"
A meme asks "Which Curt Cignetti are you?"
Translation: If the head coach starts doing cartwheels, don't expect the nose tackle to stay in his gap.
So no celebrations. No grins. No sideline theatrics. Only the thousand-yard stare of a man calculating when to call timeout and how to block a punt using geometry, voodoo, and mind control, either his or yours, he doesn't care.
"So that's why I am like I am during the game.," he said. "Plus, I've got to make important decisions and manage the game. … You've got to be dialed in and thinking ahead. I'll smile and celebrate later in the coaches' room with the coaches. Maybe have a beer."
Maybe. If they win by 50.
This week, Cignetti found himself at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. Which, for most of Indiana's football history, might as well have been Mordor. But now? There's a Heisman display with Francisco Mendoza's name on it.
Also, there's a third-floor tribute to Frank Cignetti Sr., longtime head coach at IUP and West Virginia, inducted in 2013.
It's not just a football legacy. It's a family business. Go ahead, make their day.
"I learned so much from my dad," Curt said. "He had a little John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in him."
Some kids get bedtime stories. Cignetti got frontier justice and two-a-days.
He knew in third grade he wanted to coach. He learned the hard way. He took good assistant jobs, just not at winning programs. He waited. He studied. Then he did the most dangerous thing you can do in this profession.
He bet on himself.
He left Nick Saban's staff — and the sweet SEC buffet table — for a head job at IUP. He took a pay cut big enough to make your accountant faint. And he started building. Coaching. Winning.
Now he's here. Not just in the Playoff. In charge of the No. 1 team in the country.
Ask him the key to beating Oregon and he doesn't blink. He speaks as if reading from scripture. He doesn't have to think about them. He barely takes a breath.
"Line of scrimmage. Run the ball. Stop the run. Affect the quarterback. Protect the quarterback. Turnover ratio. We're No. 1 in the country in explosive plays, runs plus-12, passes plus-15. Both sides critical situations, third- and fourth-down, red area, two minutes before the half and end of the game. And (special) teams has to be winning."
That's not a game plan. That's a worldview.
He didn't say it with a smile. Of course not.
But somewhere behind the granite face, you see a flicker. The faintest twitch. The internal grin of a man who built something from nothing, taught his players to believe, and gave an entire program the same poker face he wears himself:
We are not here for the applause.
We are here for the win.
"People ask, do you ever get to enjoy this?" Cignetti said. "And last week I asked our SID, 'We just won the game and I've got 10 press conferences I've got to do. When am I going to enjoy this?' So no, I do smile. I am happy at times."
Not that he'll show you.
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