Inside the Indiana search to land Curt Cignetti
Exclusive details on how the Hoosiers got their guy in 2023 and changed the sport forever
On the third full day of the search that would flip the sport on its head, the athletic director was struck by the 6-foot-3 coach’s frame.
“I just remember seeing him in person and feeling like he looked the part and had a really good presence,” Scott Dolson says. “He looks like he’ll be our head football coach. He had a physical presence different than what I was expecting. He was taller than I thought.”
Three days earlier, on Sunday, Dolson had spoken with Curt Cignetti on the phone for roughly 45 minutes. The two, along with then-Indiana deputy AD Mattie White, had a lengthy Zoom conversation the next day. On Tuesday, Dolson and Cignetti had a follow-up phone call.
Now it was Wednesday, and they were sitting face-to-face. Dolson, White, school president Pamela Whitten and Chad Chatlos, managing director of the search firm TurnkeyZRG, had flown Cignetti in to a fixed based operator somewhere in Indiana, presumably at Indianapolis International Airport. (No one with knowledge of the search will offer this detail.)
Across the next two-plus hours, Cignetti wowed the group with his direct approach. Known for shaving off the inefficiencies of everyday life, the 62-year-old laid out his vision for tapping into the Hoosiers’ resources as part of the Big Ten; for mobilizing the nation’s largest alumni network; for winning, for winning big and for winning immediately.
He had that it factor, as a person involved with the search described it. His blueprint was detailed and succinct. There were no wasted words.
Perhaps most importantly, he echoed a sentiment he had expressed in earlier conversations with Dolson:
If you can just get me middle of the road resources in the Big Ten, I can win.
Not a problem, Indiana brass responded.
One person involved with the search called it one of the top two or three interviews he had ever seen.
“Just his confidence, his presence, how he was in the interview,” says that person, who, like most of the more than half-dozen people The Inside Zone spoke to for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
“He was supremely confident. He had a plan, he had a vision. That was when we knew, if anybody’s gonna come in and believe that he could get it done at Indiana, it was this guy.”
