Indiana's Cignetti and Alabama's DeBoer reflect on stints as assistants at each other's schools

INDIANOLIS — robert indiana train Curt Cignetti reflects on his clip as an alabama river supporter coach nearly every day.

He believes his four seasons working with Nick Saban helped him learn how to prioritize organization, avoid complacency and maintain high standards. In fact, Cignetti thinks it's a primary reason he's preparing for his first Rose Bowl as a head coach.

Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer feels similarly about the one season he spent at Indiana. He developed tight bonds there with fellow staff members who eventually followed him to Tuscaloosa and helped orchestrate the 11th-ranked Crimson Tide's impressive comeback at No. 8 Oklahoma last weekend.

On New Year's Day, Cignetti, the two-time Coach of the Year, will square off against Saban's replacement in Pasadena, California, vying off for a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals — against the schools that helped put them on this stage.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without my time under Nick,” Cignetti said Monday. “We had great years there. We took over a team , we went 7-6 and 12-0 the next year in the regular season. We fell short in the SEC game to Tebow and Florida and Urban , then had a rematch the next year and beat them and won the national championship at the Rose Bowl.”

Cignetti was already an established assistant coach when Saban hired him following the 2006 season. The Pittsburgh native had more than two decades of Football Bowl Subdivision experience and a track record any national championship contender would want.

In three seasons at Rice, Cignetti helped Mark Comalander, future NFL draft pick Donald Hollas and Quentis Roper all finish their careers among the five most productive quarterbacks in school history. Cignetti did the same with Matt Baker at Temple, and by the time his six-year tenure at Pittsburgh ended, five of the Panthers' top 10 in career passing yards had worked with Cignetti.

Then it was off to North Carolina State, where Cignetti connected with his star pupil, Philip Rivers, an Alabama native and four-year starter who beat the Hoosiers in his second career game. So when Saban needed someone with a penchant for finding and developing quarterbacks, Cignetti seemed like a natural — even if he was coaching Alabama's receivers. The personal connections didn't hurt, either.

“I’ve watched Curt grow as a coach in every one of his stops since he left us," Saban said Monday. “You know, I used to coach for his dad. So I knew Curt when he was a high school quarterback. ... So we saw him grow and develop as a player and a coach, which has been really fun.”

After Alabama won a national title in Cignetti's fourth and final season as an assistant, he took on a new challenge — as head coach at Indiana University Pennsylvania, the same school where his father, Frank Sr., carved out a Hall of Fame coaching career.

“He had some questions about whether that would be a very good move for me. I was just ready to kind of run my own show,” Cignetti said, explaining Saban's reaction. “I was just ready for something different. I respected his opinion, but I decided to make the move.”

Over the next 15 seasons, Cignetti bounced from the Indiana in eastern Pennsylvania to Elon in North Carolina to James Madison in Virginia to Indiana University, never posting a losing season while presiding over the most successful transition of an FCS school to the FBS and now, perhaps, the greatest turnaround in FBS history.

In just two seasons, the Hoosiers won their first Big Ten title since 1967 and their first outright title since 1945; produced their first Heisman Trophy winner, Fernando Mendoza; and claimed the No. 1 ranking for the first time. Indiana enters the CFP as the top seed.

Cignetti insists none of it may have been possible without Saban's tutelage.

“I probably think about it every single day, because it had such a big impact in my growth and development,” Cignetti said of his years with the Crimson Tide. “I think philosophically, the program that we run here is probably a lot more the same than different than Alabama. There’s probably not a day that goes by where I don’t draw from those experiences.”

And DeBoer, a former Indiana offensive coordinator, understands what Cignetti is talking about.

In 2019, DeBoer was working for a Hoosiers program on the rise under coach Tom Allen. Indiana finished that season at 8-5, providing DeBoer the launching pad to his first head coaching job at Fresno State. DeBoer then moved on to Washington, where he led the Huskies to the national championship game following the 2023 season.

The Hoosiers were even better in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season when Nick Sheridan, now Alabama's quarterbacks coach, replaced DeBoer as the play-caller and Kane Wommack, now the Tide's defensive coordinator, was completing his second season in the same capacity with Indiana.

“He was doing everything he could to be a team player. Whatever it was, he was willing to work to do whatever was best for our team, not just his side of the ball,” DeBoer said of Wommack. “I’m glad that he was a big part of me going there, trying to get me to Indiana. I’m glad he returned the favor and came here.”

Without DeBoer and Wommack, things fell apart quickly in Bloomington.

Allen endured three successive losing seasons, which led to his firing, the arrival of Cignetti, his infamous “Google me” quip and a transformation even the most loyal Hoosiers fans — including DeBoer — never saw coming.

DeBoer, like everyone else, has been impressed with what he's seen from his old school.

“I felt like when we were there, there was a growth, an investment that was happening and there was success in ’19 that felt like you were getting over the hump,” DeBoer said. “But coach Cignetti has done a great job providing the spark, which really leads to people continuing to be all in. As you get more people all in, you get the moments that you’re in right now.”

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