Curt Cignetti and the "surprise season" extension
What did Indiana get into by extending their budding star coach year 1?
Indiana may have been off this weekend, but Hoosier brass still got to work, ironing out a massive extension for head coach Curt Cignetti that makes him the highest paid Indiana public employee ever, per College Football Network.
All told, Indiana is backing up a $72 million Brinks truck to the Cignetti residence. That amount will be split over eight years, averaging around $8 million a season before any performance-related bonuses.
Breaking down the deal
It may surprise some to see that Indiana, of all teams, has this kind of money to toss around. As I said as a guest on this week’s
podcast, Indiana has a surprisingly robust NIL and donor base. Traditionally that money’s been funneled into their basketball teams. However, Cignetti has flipped traditions on their head and forced the Hoosier brass to invest that money into football.So what is Cignetti bringing home in this deal? Reported contract terms are a simple eight year, $8 million average salary that will run though November 30, 2032. For thsoe keeping score at home, that’s about a $3.5 million annual increase on his current deal. But there’s some other add-ins that make the deal more interesting:
A $1 million per year retention bonus if Cignetti stays with the program.
Non-reported performance-based incentives, such as for winning the Big Ten, College Football Playoff appearances, Coach of the Year Awards and more.
“Further assurances aroudn program infrastructure and support…[that] likely include commitments in the form of things like staffind and assistant-coaching salary pools,” per the IndyStar.
Those are all relatively common additions, but it shows one thing: Indiana is ready to be a football contender. They’ve already talked abouy massive renovations to Memorial Stadium and committing to Cignetti to lead the program into the future is one big positive.
There’s just one problem: the history of surprising coaches getting a massive extension.
The dreaded surprise extension
Let’s start with the question: what is a Surprise Season Extension? In this case, it’s an extension that comes on the heels of a team doing much better than anticipated. That can be something like Missouri’s big season last year (see: Eliah Drinkwitz), or something like Wake Forest reaching a Top 10 CFP ranking for the first time ever (see: Dave Clawson).
I hunted through the coaching carousel ranks and tried to pair down that list. I started with Power Five schools or, in the case of Liberty and SMU, schools that spend like a Power Five school. Then, I cut out the “minor” extensions - one or two year deals triggered by contract clauses. These are all significant investments by the university that dramatically rework the coach’s contract in terms of years covered and in compensation.
So where does that leave us? Well, it’s a bleak picture.
Not counting Indiana’s extension with Cignetti, there are 15 coaches that fall into our data set. Of those 15, nine have posted winning records since the extension. Not bad, right?
Wrong. Four of those nine winning record coaches were poached despite the extension. So that cuts us down to five successful extensions. That list is:
P.J. Fleck at Minnesota: 11-2 at extension (2019), 33-22 since
Matt Campbell at Iowa State: 9-3 at time of extension (2020), 26-22 since
Joey McGuire at Texas Tech: 7-5 at extension (2022), 13-10 since
Eliah Drinkwitz at Missouri: 11-2 at extension (2023), 7-3 since
Rhett Lashlee at SMU: 10-2 at extension (2023), 9-1 since.
So, from 15 “surprise season extensions,” only five - or one third - have truly panned out. And of those that have panned out, Matt Campbell has taken his fair share of heat, Joey McGuire’s Red Raiders have been middling in the Big 12, and P.J. Fleck’s Minnesota has fallen off since his extension seasons. I’d go so far as to say that Rhett Lashlee was the best one, but he’s on his first season with an extension.
I think we can glean a lot from the remaining coaches, though.
Two hires really stand out on the negative side: Mike Norvell and Dave Aranda. Norvell’s Florida State team is bad. Like, really bad. Almost historically bad for how good they were last year. I don’t think he’s on the hot seat, but he’s certainly working his way there.
Aranda is squarely feeling the heat, though a solid second half has cooled his seat’s burner some. Still, Baylor is feeling the heat of that contract and the potential buyout along with it, seeing as Aranda’s Bears have been a nonfactor since the Big 12 Championship run that caused the extension in the first place.
The problem is, most of these guys are middling at best. Dave Clawson, for example, had a great run at Wake Forest, but the Demon Deacons haven’t been good since Sam Hartman left. Was Clawson’s slow mesh the key to success, or was Hartman just that much of a fit? We can also take Brent Venables, who is looking outclassed this year at Oklahoma. I’m surprised there isn’t more noise about this because the Sooners are bad. They have no answer at quarterback and the defense has taken a significant step back.
So was this a good idea?
Looking at the data, it’s not likely to pan out well for Indiana fans. Only one-third of our data set results in a solid extension for Indiana. In fact, it’s almost as likely that he gets poached regardless of the extension as it is he stays and makes Indiana a quality program. With that said, the data set is about split even on if the Cignetti era will be a winning or losing one. I anticipate the Hoosiers continuing to win, but there’s just one problem: The portal giveth and the portal taketh.
I covered this idea in full before the start of the season, so I won’t get into it in too much detail here. If you want the details, take a look at the articles linked below:
Additional Reading:
Why am I bringing Colorado into this? Well, Indiana is going portal-heavy like Colorado. The Hoosiers signed 31 transfers this offseason, many of them coming with Cignetti from James Madison, his previous stop. That trasnfer class was headlined by - you guessed it - Kurtis Rourke from Ohio.
But this wasn’t a highly lauded class - ranking 28th in the 247Sports Transfer Portal Rankings. Only four schools - Colorado, Louisville, Texas State and Georgia State - signed more than the Hoosiers’ 31 prospects.
Traditionally, portal builds like this haven’t been sustainable. But there’s a big difference here: Cignetti was bringing his players with him. We saw it at Colorado with Shedeur and Shilo Sanders playing well in Year 1 alongside Travis Hunter because they knew how the team would look from Jackson State. Cignetti bringing in a bunch of contributors from James Madison is similar.
But if Cignetti is truly going to build a program here at Indiana, he needs to step up the recruiting. Right now, 247Sports has the Hoosiers’ 2025 high school recruiting class ranked 13th in the Big Ten. Upgrades to the infrastructure like reportedly in Cignetti’s extension will help that, but the Hoosiers have to capitalize on this season’s success. The portal isn’t kind if you keep begging it for assistance.
What I’m Reading:
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An idea hatched after years of 12-hour days glued to the couch, Tyler Schuster puts his passion for the sport on full display, delivering big-picture ideas, weekly previews and gambling nuggets directly to your inbox.
, , and : I’ll be a little selfish on this one and plug a great college football podcast that I was lucky enough to appear on this week to talk UEC and SID Sports! Brian, John, Gary and I had some great conversations about the state of the sport, playoff races and picked some games this weekend. Be sure to tune into this week’s Tailgators' Setup podcast and subscribe for more great content from them!Split Zone Duo by Alex Kirshner, Steven Godfrey, and Richard Johnson: You can't beat Alex, Richard and Godfrey. They're on the front lines breaking news and creating the best content in the game. I 100 percent recommend SZD for anyone into college football and Steven Godfrey hating your team. They’re mostly a podcast publication, but sometimes being able to listen to three well-informed guys talking about college football is what you need in your life.
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