Indiana / Cignetti are legit

Ugh. Even if it is the “nail in the coffin” it isn’t because the portal allows for quick turnarounds.

You think Cignetti will get poached? By whom? We had a conversation about him recently here. He’s almost as old as Whitt and is in his first year of a contract that runs through the 2029 season. He’s also never coached west of the Mississippi (except for two years at Rice almost 40 years ago), so that kind of limits his appeal and reach. Personally, I think that he stays at Indiana and continues to build them up. They’ve never been known as a football school but they have a national brand, huge fanbase, and get a B1G payout. With NIL and good management, any team in the P2 can turn around their fortunes quickly.

If I knew the answer, I’d be getting paid a lot more and I’d be in the coach hiring biz. The main difference between Napier and Cignetti is the latter had unprecedented success at a couple of places that hadn’t had much before, then transitioned a top FCS team to FBS without a drop in performance. He’d achieved every where he’d been given a chance and then got a promotion to a school that had been bad for about as long as anyone can remember. Whereas Napier had success in his first spot and then went to a place where a lot of seemingly good coaches had failed. Maybe Indiana is a place that’s been down so long they are willing to listen to a good coach while Florida is a place where everyone knows better than the coach?

Day is in a no-win situation. Anything short of winning a title every year (which Urban didn’t do) is considered a failure. He’s lost 9 games in ~ 6 seasons. If that’s failure, please sign Utah up for some of that disappointment.

But you are absolutely correct in that there is no magical algorithm for picking out the right coach. The same coach is just as capable of failing at one spot as they are at succeeding at another. Which is why you should always do a true hiring search. If the guy you already have in your system is the best fit, run with him. But just because he is currently in your system doesn’t mean that he will be the best available option when you are ready to make your decision.