Indiana Coach Curt Cignetti’s Salary Progression As A College Football Coach Is Absolutely Insane

Even Nancy Pelosi is impressed at how fast Curt Cignetti managed to turn $125,000 into $11.6 million.

The second-year head coach at Indiana has engineered one of the most incredible turnarounds we’ve EVER seen in college football. I’m still in awe of what I watched the Hoosiers do in the Peach Bowl, absolutely dominating a very good Oregon team and securing their first-ever appearance in the national championship game with a 56-22 win over the Ducks. (And honestly, the game wasn’t even as close as the final score made it look. It was a total, soul-crushing beatdown).

This is all coming from the losingest college football program in history, a program that went 3-9 in 2023, the year before Cignetti arrived in Bloomington. Until this year, the team hadn’t won the Big Ten conference since 1967 (and they were co-champions that year), and since 1967 they had only made a bowl game (meaning they finished with at least a .500 record) 13 times before Cignetti.

Just an absolutely insane turnaround, and it’s even more impressive when you realize that Cignetti has managed to build one of the best teams in college football history with ZERO five star players, and only 7 four stars. Compare that to Oregon, which has 6 five stars and 52 four stars, and you’ll see exactly why Coach Cig is worth every penny of his massive $11.6 million salary.

But what’s even more insane is when you look at Cignetti’s salary progression as a college football coach.

At 64 years old, Cignetti is one of the older coaches in college football these days: In 2026, there will only be 5 head coaches older than he is, with Bill Belichick holding it down as the oldest at 73 (and he probably holds the title for the youngest girlfriend of any college football coach too).

To understand why it took so long for Cignetti to get to the top of the college football world, you have to look back at his career. The former quarterback for WVU started out as a GA at Pittsburgh way back in 1983 before getting his first job as an assistant coach at Davidson College in 1985.

From there, Cignetti spent over TWO DECADES as an assistant coach, mainly coaching QBs and TEs at places like Pittsburgh, NC State and Temple.

But in 2007, he got the call that would change the trajectory of his career when he was asked to join legendary coach Nick Saban’s inaugural coaching staff at Alabama.

At the time, Cignetti was only making $170,000 per year, but he’s spoken many times about the invaluable experience he gained coaching under the greatest coach of all time in Nick Saban. In fact, ahead of the Peach Bowl the coach spoke about the impact Saban had on his career:

“I felt like after one year with Coach Saban, I’d learned more about how to run a program than I maybe did the previous 27 as an assistant coach. And stayed with him for three more years.”

Cignetti would get small bumps in pay during his years at Alabama, going to $200,000 in 2009 and making $250,000 in 2010, which would turn out to be his final year with the Crimson Tide.

After that, Cignetti decided to make a move that shocked even Nick Saban: He took a salary cut to land his first head coaching job at IUP, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a small Division II school with a stadium capacity smaller than a lot of high schools and a team that his father had coached for nearly two decades.

When Curt Cignetti took over the team from previous coach Lou Tepper, the IUP Crimson Hawks (I obviously had to look up their mascot) had only won 4 conference games over the past two seasons, and had gone from a perennial powerhouse in their division under his father to dropping out of the rankings altogether.

But as we all know by now, it doesn’t take long for Cignetti to turn a program around: His first year, he led IUP to their first winning conference record in three years, and the next season they won their conference title and advanced to the NCAA Regional Finals. In fact, in just five seasons at IUP, Cignetti managed to lead the team to two playoff appearances and a 53-17 record – and he did it while only making $125,000 his first season as a head coach, half of what he was making as an assistant at Alabama. (His salary his final year at IUP had increased slightly to $138,000).

In 2017, Cignetti accepted the head coaching job at Elon University in North Carolina, where he stayed for only two years but once again engineered an impressive turnaround, taking the Phoenix (I had to look up their mascot too) to their first FCS playoff berth since 2009 in just his first season. He also made the playoffs in his second season, thanks to a win over then-top 5 JMU…a team that he would become very familiar with very soon.

Cignetti was then named the head coach at James Madison University for the 2019 season, at which point his salary had finally eclipsed what he was making as an assistant at ‘Bama. He was paid $425,000 his first year, and guided the Dukes through the transition from FCS to FBS while managing to win the Sun Belt East Division title in their first season at the FBS level in 2022.

JMU wasn’t eligible for a bowl game in either of their first two seasons in FBS, and therefore wasn’t eligible to compete in the Sun Belt Conference Championship game either. But in their first two seasons at college football’s highest level, James Madison went an impressive 19-5, earning Cignetti not only a nice raise to $677,000 but also interest from Power 4 schools in need of a head coach.

In 2024, Cignetti finally landed his first P4 job with the Hoosiers, at a salary of “only” $4.5 million, which obviously sounds like a lot to most of us but ranked him near the bottom of P4 coaches – and for good reason: Indiana was a bottom-dweller of the Big Ten and had never really been able to compete or draw fans to their games.

That changed last year though, when Cignetti led his team to the College Football Playoffs and earned himself a nice little raise: Just 10 games into his first season in Bloomington (all of which were wins, the school’s first 10 win season in school history – much less the first 10-0 start), Cignetti was rewarded with an 8-year, $72 million contract, bumping his salary up to $8 million per year (plus a $1 million per year retention bonus, so $9 million).

The ink had barely dried on that contract though when several major jobs came open this college football season, including schools with deep pockets like LSU and Penn State.

Well Indiana wasn’t about to lose one of the best coaches in college football, and before those schools could even fill their positions the school announced yet another extension for Cignetti that would raise his salary to $11.6 million per year. And thanks to a “good faith” clause in the contract that was triggered by reaching the CFP semifinals, Cignetti’s in for another raise here soon: The university is now required to negotiate yet ANOTHER new deal making Cignetti at least the third-highest paid coach in college football.

Right now, Cignetti’s $11.6 million salary makes him the fourth-highest paid coach, behind Georgia’s Kirby Smart, LSU’s Lane Kiffin and Ohio State’s Ryan Day, who’s current contract is valued at $12.58 million. That means after the dust settles from the playoffs, Cignetti can expect about a million dollar raise ahead of next season.

So let’s take a look at that salary progression again:

2007 – Alabama assistant – $170,000
2009 – Alabama assistant – $200,000
2010 – Alabama assistant – $250,000
2011 – IUP head coach – $125,000
2016 – IUP head coach – $138,000
2022 – JMU head coach – $425,000
2023 – JMU head coach – $677,000
2024 – Indiana head coach – $4.5 million
2025 – Indiana head coach – $8 million
2025 – Indiana head coach – $11.6 million
2026 – Indiana head coach – at least $12.58 million

Not a bad payday for a guy who took a pay cut for his first head coaching job just 15 years ago. And I’m sure if you ask the folks at Indiana, he’s worth every penny – and then some.The post Indiana Coach Curt Cignetti’s Salary Progression As A College Football Coach Is Absolutely Insane first appeared on Whiskey Riff.