Forde-yard Dash: Curt Cignetti Is Doing What No Power-conference Coach Ever Has

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news successful assemblage football, wherever nan shirtless dudes point is 1 much logic this is amended than nan NFL game. First Quarter: How Is Your Second-Year Head Coach Doing? Second Quarter: Brian Kelly Is nan Latest, But Not nan Last, to Go.

As nan victories person piled up, The Dash keeps trying to find personification successful nan history of nan athletics who has done what Curt Cignetti (22) is doing astatine Indiana. Not overmuch is turning up. In position of instantly launching a programme supra its historical level, Cignetti stands retired arsenic nan champion to do it astatine a power-conference program.

The Dash looked astatine nan all-time winning percentages for each 68 programs astatine that level (teams presently successful nan SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, positive Notre Dame). Then The Dash identified nan astir successful man—who coached a minimum 20 games astatine that school—in position of winning percentage. Then it was elemental mathematics to spot who has outperformed programme history by nan widest margin.

Cignetti is by acold nan biggest outlier. Ever.

His Indiana grounds is 19–2, a winning percent of .905. Indiana’s all-time winning percent is .426, second-lowest among powerfulness programs, up of only Wake Forest. 

The upgrade: Cignetti is winning astatine a 47.9% higher clip than Indiana’s historical level. That’s absurd. He didn’t conscionable springiness a faint beat to a dormant program; he sewage it up disconnected nan slab successful nan morgue and had it moving upwind sprints immediately.

Is winning 90% of his games sustainable complete a longer play of time? No. Knute Rockne didn’t do that astatine Notre Dame, and neither did Frank Leahy. Nick Saban, top of each time, won 87.7% of his games astatine Alabama. So Cignetti really would beryllium tearing down a wall if he could support this up.

But he’s very solidly up of everyone other successful position of capacity supra history accumulation astatine a school. The next-closest successful those position is Doc Kennedy astatine Kansas (23). Kennedy won 83.1% of his games pinch nan Jayhawks from 1904 to ’10—not precisely nan modern era. Kansas has an all-time .473 winning percentage, which intends Kennedy won astatine a 35.8% higher rate. Not very adjacent to what Cignetti is doing. 

Bear Bryant (24) performed contiguous turnarounds astatine some Alabama and Kentucky. The Crimson Tide went from 4-14-2 successful nan 2 years earlier his presence to 12-6-3 successful his first 2 seasons, an upgrade of 34.5%; nan Wildcats went from 5–14 to 15–6, an upgrade of 45.1%. 

By comparison, Cignetti took complete an Indiana programme that went 7–17 successful 2022 and ’23 and has improved nan winning percent by 61.1%, heading into November. A importantly bigger jump than what Bryant did astatine Kentucky aliases Alabama.

The only different progressive coach who is nan winning percent leader astatine his existent schoolhouse is Jeff Brohm (25) at Louisville. The Cardinals’ all-time winning percent is .527, and Brohm has won 73.5% of his games successful 3 seasons starring his alma mater.

Other progressive coaches who are nan all-time winningest astatine a erstwhile stop:

Kalen DeBoer (27), now astatine Alabama, won 89.3% of his games successful 2 seasons astatine Washington—a patient 27.6% supra programme history. DeBoer presently is 16–5 pinch nan Crimson Tide, which puts him down Saban, Bryant, Frank Thomas, Wallace Wade, Gene Stallings and J.W.H. Pollard. There is simply a agelong history of winning large pinch nan Tide.

DeBoer’s .762 winning percent is conscionable a tick supra Alabama’s .744 arsenic a whole, which is nan champion successful assemblage shot history. The only others supra .700 are Ohio State (.739), Notre Dame (.735), Michigan (.733), Oklahoma (.724) and Texas (.705).

Josh Heupel (28), now astatine Tennessee, won 77.8% of his games astatine Central Florida from 2018 to ’20. He ranks seventh successful Volunteers history pinch a .717 percentage. John Barnhill, who coached Tennessee from 1941 to ’45, is No. 1 astatine .846.

Lincoln Riley (29), now astatine USC, is nan all-time victor astatine Oklahoma astatine .846 from 2017 to ’21. That undoubtedly does not thrill a conception of nan instrumentality guidelines that has ne'er forgiven him for leaving. Riley is hardly up of nationalist title winners Barry Switzer, Bud Wilkinson and Bob Stoops.

Other coaches who became nan biggest winners successful a school’s history this period (30): Urban Meyer astatine Utah, going 22–2 (.917) successful 2003 and ’04 earlier leaving for Florida; Chip Kelly astatine Oregon, going 46–7 (.868) from 2009 to ’12 earlier leaving for nan NFL; Brian Kelly astatine Cincinnati, going 34–6 (.850) from 2006 to ’09 earlier leaving for Notre Dame; and Tom Herman astatine Houston, going 22–4 (.846) successful 2015 and ’16 earlier leaving for Texas.

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