Indiana's Curt Cignetti made history on Monday when he was named the Associated Press national Coach of the Year, leading the Hoosiers to an undefeated season and CFP top seed. He's the first coach to ever win the award in back-to-back seasons.
The Associated Press has handed out a national college football Coach of the Year award annually since 1998. This year, for the first time ever, we have a repeat winner.
Indiana's Curt Cignetti won the award for the second year in a row. He went 11-2 in 2024 and earned a surprising College Football Playoff bid. This year, he upped his resume, going 13-0 as the only unbeaten team in the country, winning Indiana's first Big Ten championship since 1967 with a win over No. 1 ranked Ohio State on Dec. 6 in the conference championship game.
Cignetti is just the fourth coach to win it twice, joining Brian Kelly, Gary Patterson and Nick Saban.
Cignetti and the Hoosiers are the No. 1 seed in the 12-team College Football Playoff and they will play in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 2026 against the winner or Friday night's game between No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 9 Alabama. It's the first Indiana team to play in the Rose Bowl in 58 years.
Cignetti's team will be led by quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night. It was the first Indiana player to ever earn the honor.
Cignetti received 47 of the 52 votes by the nationwide panel of media members who cover college football. Texas Tech's Joey McGuire and Vanderbilt's Clark Lea received two each, and Virginia's Tony Elliott got one.
Cignetti took over for Tom Allen in December of 2023. Allen had been fired after going 3-24 in the Big Ten during the 2021-23 season. Indiana was the losingest program in the history of the sport (714) unilt they were passed by Northwestern (717) this season for the dubious record.
In a program that had never won more than nine games in a season before Cignetti's arrival, the Hoosiers have double-digit wins for a second straight year and completed a regular season without a loss for the first time. Indiana snapped a 30-game losing streak to Ohio State that dated back to 1988.
"It's another step we need to take as a program," Cignetti said after the Big Ten title game in Indianapolis. "It's a great win, obviously. And we're going to go in the playoffs as the No. 1 seed. And a lot of people probably thought that wasn't possible.
"But when you get the right people and you have a plan and they love one another and play for one another and they commit, anything's possible."