Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti gets much-deserved honor

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti has been rewarded for his remarkable job on the sidelines this season.

On Tuesday, Cignetti was named the Associated Press Coach of the Year after leading the Indiana Hoosiers to a school-record 11 wins, a top-10 ranking and their first College Football Playoff appearance.

Cignetti won the award over Arizona State's Kenny Dillingham, Oregon's Dan Lanning and SMU's Rhett Lashlee.

Although Cignetti has never had a losing record in 14 seasons as a head coach, his impressive turnaround in Bloomington has been phenomenal.

Since the Coach of the Year award was first handed out in 1998, Cignetti is the only Indiana coach to win it. He also became the first Indiana head coach to start 10-0 and win 10 or more games in a season.

With his Big Ten Coach of the Year honor this season, Cignetti has now won conference Coach of the Year awards at Division II program IUP, Elon, James Madison and Indiana. 

Winners of just three games last season, Cignetti has completely turned the Indiana program around. Aside from the COVID-impacted 2020 season, Indiana had not been to a bowl game in a full season since the 2019 campaign when it went 8-5. Cignetti has the Hoosiers in the playoff in year one. 

Heading into the first game of the expanded playoff against seventh-seeded Notre Dame (11-1), Indiana is currently a 7.5-point underdog, according to FanDuel. While Notre Dame is only the second opponent Indiana has faced this season with a winning record, Indiana has taken care of business up to this point, except for a 38-15 loss to then-No. 2 Ohio State (10-2).

Ten of the Hoosiers' 11 wins have been by at least two TDs, including its largest-ever margin of victory in school history, 77-3, against Western Illinois, and a pair of conference blowouts against Nebraska, 56-7, and in-state rival Purdue, 66-0, to close out the regular season.

According to NCAA.com, Indiana also scores the second-most points per game in the country (43.3 PPG) and the most of any playoff team. Defensively, the Hoosiers are sixth in the country, allowing 14.67 points per game while boasting the top-ranked run defense in the nation (70.8 YPG).

The run game should get tested against the Fighting Irish's 10th-ranked rushing attack in Division I (224.8 YPG), but it is hard to ignore the balance on both sides of the ball the Hoosiers have shown.

Although Cignetti dared any doubters to Google his prior success when he was first introduced as the Hoosiers head coach, everyone should be familiar with his career accomplishments.

If Indiana can pull off the upset against Notre Dame on Friday, that would further cement Cignetti's status as a great coach and continue to prove the doubters wrong.