Curt Cignetti staying at Indiana isn't just good for the school. It's also a win for college football.

This week, Indiana University decided to make its football coach the third-highest paid coach in the country.

Wait a second.

Indiana University decided to make its football coach the third-highest paid coach in the country?

Yes. You read that right.

On Thursday, the school announced that Curt Cignetti agreed to terms on a new eight-year contract that keeps him in Bloomington through the 2033 season. Cignetti will make an average of $11.6 million per year, which would rank third nationally, behind Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Ohio State’s Ryan Day, in 2025. The new contract marks a massive commitment to both Cignetti and the sport from a school best known for its basketball bona fides — and it comes less than a week after Penn State fired James Franklin, creating a potentially intriguing opening for the Pittsburgh native.

“I couldn’t be more proud to be a Hoosier, and I plan on retiring as a Hoosier,” Cignetti said in a video released by the school. “The way this state has embraced us and our success in football has meant more to me than anything else.”

Cignetti is the architect of one of the greatest and quickest turnarounds in college football history. In his first season, he took the losingest program in the sport’s history and turned it into a College Football Playoff participant. Now in Year 2, he’s got the Hoosiers up to No. 3 in the AP poll — their highest ranking ever — on the heels of their first-ever win over a top-five team on the road. By beating Oregon last Saturday, Indiana proved it can be a true national championship contender. Indiana!

Keeping Cignetti is, obviously, a big deal for Indiana. But it’s also a win for college football.

How many times do we see a coach take a program to new heights only to jump to a job he thinks is bigger and better? How many times do we see players do the same thing in the NIL and transfer portal era? It happens so frequently now that it’s no longer stigmatized, which is why what happened in Bloomington this week is so rare.

A 64-year-old head coach — and the toast of the sport — decided he would stay put. He decided he didn’t want to be considered by one of college football’s bluest of bluebloods or the various SEC schools that will need to hire coaches come December. This is a man who chose to leave the enviable position of Alabama assistant coach under Nick Saban to become a first-time head coach at Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania more than a decade ago. He turned that struggling program into one that won two conference titles and made three NCAA playoff appearances. Cignetti then went to Elon, where he inherited a program that had had six consecutive losing seasons. In his first year, he took his team to the FCS playoffs. When he eventually went to James Madison in 2018, it was the first time he took over a winning program.

That roundabout path to a Power 4 head coaching job explains quite a bit about Cignetti and why he’s choosing to stay put. The only way for him to become a head coach in the first place was to get a job in Division II. The only way for him to get a shot at the upper echelon of college football was to get a job at Indiana, the Big Ten’s perennial doormat.

But Cignetti builds the program he wants to run. It doesn’t matter if he inherits failure or success, the eventual product he creates looks the same. It’s a well-prepared team that plays tough, physical football. It’s a winner.

And you don’t forget who gives you the opportunity to do the thing you love at the highest possible level. Why would Cignetti leave a place that has given him the resources and support he needs to compete with the sport’s elite programs? Why would he leave bosses who —twice now — have preemptively fended off outside interest with raises that show how highly they think of their football coach?

Athletic director Scott Dolson didn’t want Cignetti to feel, even for one minute, like his success was being taken for granted. Cignetti would be paid like one of the best coaches in college football deserved to be paid. He approached Cignetti about a new deal early this week, and it got done in record time. The $93 million deal is fully guaranteed unless Cignetti is fired for cause, two sources told NBC Sports. The contract calls for $15 million owed to Indiana if Cignetti were to leave for another school, the sources said.

But this is a man who said he plans to retire as a Hoosier. This is a coach who understands a fan base so starved for football success it didn’t even know how to process what was happening in real time last season. Students who typically tailgated in the parking lots now had to rewire their brains and remember to walk into Memorial Stadium in time for kickoff.

These Indiana fans will love and appreciate Cignetti for the rest of his life. They don’t expect annual CFP appearances — though they certainly wouldn’t complain if he keeps this up — and they’ll celebrate a new floor for this program being 7-5 or 8-4 seasons. Those kinds of seasons used to be the exception, not the rule. Literally just six years ago, there was an internet phenomenon known as #9Windiana; it was a group of very online fans who supported the radical belief that the Hoosiers could win nine games in one season. They even sold T-shirts!

It’s now time for Indiana fans to dream bigger. They can believe in their coach because he believes in them. He believes that the grass isn’t always greener somewhere else. And he believes that the Indiana football program can do things previously thought impossible.

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