The Pros and Cons of Curt Cignetti Leaving Indiana for Penn State Football
It started quietly, just a few murmurs from boosters, a tweet or two from national insiders, but it’s mid-October, Indiana University head football coach Curt Cignetti’s name is everywhere.
The man who had dragged Indiana football out of the basement and into Big Ten catbird’s seat in less than a year suddenly finds himself at the center of another storm, especially after leading his team into a hostile environment last Saturday in Eugene, and came away with a 10 point win over a top-5 ranked Ducks team, the same team that beat Penn State Football in double overtime less than three weeks ago, that began an epic two week collapse for now fired James Franklin, former head man in Happy Valley.
The Penn State job is open. For just the third time in two generations.
And this time, the question isn’t if Penn State will call. It is whether Cignetti will answer the phone.
Inside the Mind of Curt Cignetti, and Penn State’s advantages, hurdles to luring him to Happy Valley
1. The Architect of the Impossible
When Cignetti took over at Indiana, the skeptics were boisterous as usual.
You don’t fix decades of mediocrity overnight. You don’t make recruits choose Bloomington over Ann Arbor, Columbus, or Happy Valley.
But Cignetti did, and fast.
In just one year, he made Indiana physical, confident, and dangerous.
The Hoosiers didn’t start hitting Steve Alford three-pointers again, they started hitting people, not just literally, but psychologically. They believed. The program’s collective body language changed. Cignetti had built something out of thin air, a program with swagger, NIL juice, and national headlines – all done at the place that Bobby Knight built.
That matters to him.
Cignetti’d done this before, he rebuilt JMU, turned Elon into a playoff team, I.U isn’t Elon or football in Harrisonburg, this one hits differently. It’s Big Ten football, it’s big-time football, and it’s working.
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Indiana Before Cignetti and After Cignetti
- In 2023, under Tom Allen, Indiana went 3–9 overall, notching a 1–8 Big Ten record.
- That was part of a downward trend: the program had struggled in recent years, with few seasons above .500. dating back to the Lee Corso era, yes that Lee Corso (1973–1982) who posted a 41–68–2 career record although he did lead IU to the 1979 Holiday Bowl, their first bowl win ever.
First Year Under Curt Cignetti (2024)
- Indiana’s 2024 record: 11–2 overall, 8–1 in the Big Ten
- 11 wins is a program record.
- The team made their first-ever CollegeFootball Playoff appearance (lost in Round 1 to Notre Dame).
- They began the season with a 10–0 start, the first ten-win season in program history.
- Cignetti also earned multiple Coach of the Year honors, including AP Coach of the Year.
- The improvement from 2023 to 2024 was +8 wins, one of the biggest single-season turnarounds in recent memory.
- Current Season (2025)
- Indiana’s 2025 record: 6–0 overall, 3–0 in Big Ten
- They are ranked #3 in the AP Poll, which is the highest in program history.
Why Penn State Football is Tempting
Penn State is college football royalty, blue-blood pedigree, national exposure, generational talent pipelines, and a budget that dwarfs most NFL practice facilities.
If Indiana is the underdog he rebuilt, Penn State is the empire waiting to be reborn and restored.
For Cignetti, the temptation is obvious:
- Legacy. Build Indiana, you’re a hero. Win a national title at Penn State, you’re immortal.
- Resources. Penn State’s booster network and NIL infrastructure make Indiana’s recent growth look like seed money. The tools Franklin begged for are now table stakes.
- Recruiting leverage. At Penn State, he could walk into living rooms and win battles on brand alone. No more explaining where Bloomington is.
- The Stage. Primetime games, national rankings, playoff contention, that’s the oxygen of the elite. And Cignetti, though humble in tone, has always been addicted to competition and challenges.
He knows the risk, but he also knows that you can’t be risk-averse if you’re seeking to become one of the truly elite programs on the college football landscape.
At 64, he’s not building for another decade-long project. He’s looking for the final chapter, the defining one.
The decision takes care of itself should Cignetti’s team go in to win this year’s national championship.
3. The Cons: Why Leaving Indiana for Penn State Would Be a Betrayal
Still, we forget sometimes that these coaches are humans, they’re not robots.
They deal with their real emotions, family decisions, and their own moral compasses. They have inner voices that sometimes pound their consciousness and that’s where many of the inner struggles lie.
I’m sure Cignetti’ll consider the staff that followed him to Bloomington, the players who bought in when nobody else would.
The athletic director who bet her career on him. The fans who finally started showing up again. If you ever hear him speak, you can tell how grateful he is for all of them, their support, love and their belief in him.
Leaving now might feel like betrayal, not just of them, but of himself.
He’s not naïve. He knows how these stories go – leave for the bigger job, stumble early, and suddenly you’re a mercenary instead of a builder.
At Indiana, he’s a king with total control. Bloomington is his kingdom and he didn’t inherit it, he built it.
At Penn State, he’d be a general in a fortress that belongs to someone else. He can’t ignore that trade-off.
Inside Penn State’s War Room
1. The Problem
Penn State’s brand has always been stability, until stability became stagnation and colossal disappointment, in the span of 18 days.
James Franklin won, but not enough.
Too many “almost” seasons. Too many 10 and 11-win seasons that ended up without a ring for the jewelry box.
The boosters want a jolt, a new identity, a fresh voice who can turn potential into playoff wins and into titles..
And as they scroll through names and weigh the check boxes, Urban Meyer (perhaps too toxic), Matt Rhule (entrenched), Mike Elko (ACC loyalty), one keeps popping up on Josh on the short list.
Curt Cignetti.
The irony isn’t lost on them. Penn State once passed on him for lesser résumés. Now he’s turned Indiana into what Penn State fans think they should be: hungry, violent, efficient, and fearless.
2. The Case for Curt Cignetti
He’s not the flashiest name, but he’s the most complete football coach available.
- Proven program builder. Every place he’s coached, he’s won, and won fast.
- Defensive identity. His teams hit. They tackle. They finish. Traits Penn State’s fan base once prided itself on but lost along the way.
- Portal and NIL savvy. Cignetti doesn’t complain about the new landscape. He weaponizes it.
- Recruiting in-state. Born in Pittsburgh, raised in a coaching family, he knows the terrain and the high schools.
- Cultural fit. He’s blue-collar, no-nonsense kind of coach who would’ve fit right beside Paterno in the old days but understands the new age of NIL and media.
He’s not a celebrity hire. He’s a program craftsman and old school architect when it comes to football fundamentals.
His foundation might be the home run, not the fireworks.
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3. The Debate
Still, not everyone is sold.
Some boosters will worry his window is short and that his age limits long-term upside. Others fear his blunt personality won’t play nice with the politics of State College.
But the pushback doesn’t last long and winning cures all.
They’ve seen what happens when flash is chosen over fit. Cignetti, is both, a coach who can talk culture to donors and toughness to players.
The question then becomes can they get him to say yes?
The Truth in Either Ending
Whether he leaps or stays, Curt Cignetti is proof of concept, that great coaching still matters in the age of collectives and chaos.
For Penn State Football, he’s the embodiment of what they’ve lost, their edge, urgency, and belief.
For Indiana, he’s what they never had before, hope with teeth.
And for Cignetti himself, the question will always linger: Do you chase the job that makes history or the one keep the one that becomes it?
It was at PRISM where Staszak produced live games and began his career as an on-air reporter.
After a couple of brief stints with CBS-3, WB-17 and WGAL-8 in Lancaster, PA, Staszak began a 12 year stretch at FOX 29 where he became the lead sportscaster in 2007. It was there that Staszak found himself in the middle of Philadelphia Phillies World Series Championship coverage that earned him an Emmy nomination for best sports reporter in 2008.It was one of five Emmy nominations that Staszak earned over the course of his career.
All told Staszak covered three World Series, two Stanley Cup Finals, an NBA Finals and one Super Bowl during his television run.
Staszak left the TV business for 97.5 The Fanatic in 2013, where he enjoyed eight years bloviating his beliefs on how a professional football team should be run.In 2018 when he fortunate enough to be the first sports talk host in the city, along with cohort Zach Gelb, to provide post-game coverage of the first Super Bowl Championship for the city’s beloved Philadelphia Eagles.
Staszak was also a writer for 97.5 The Fanatic along with 4 Philly Sports and now covers Penn State athletics for NittanyCentral.com.
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