What IU's massive financial commitment to Curt Cignetti means about the football program
BLOOMINGTON – When Fred Glass became Indiana’s athletic director in January 2009, he made fixing football one of his top priorities.
Glass, an IU alum who often remarked that the athletics campus hadn’t changed much (or enough) in the nearly 20 years since he graduated, was overseeing the construction of the North End Zone facility in Memorial Stadium. He had designs on the south end zone as well, which would be enclosed eight years later.
But it wasn’t purely about facilities for Glass. A believer in the patient build that had made coaches like Hayden Fry (Iowa) and Barry Alvarez (Wisconsin) so successful in the Big Ten, Glass often cited those men, as well as Northwestern’s Gary Barnett as inspirations. Glass once surprised Kevin Wilson when, in an end-of-year meeting with his coach after a 4-8 second season in Bloomington, instead of delivering a stern warning of needed improvement, Glass told Wilson he was encouraged by the Hoosiers’ progress and direction.
This patience came with a caveat, one Glass’ deputy, Scott Dolson, believed in with equal conviction: Once Indiana finds its Alvarez, do everything possible to keep him around.
That’s what Dolson committed to Curt Cignetti, in the form of fresh contract terms confirmed 11 days ago. Dolson’s faith will not have been given easily, but it is now delivered fully.
According to terms of the memorandum of understanding signed between IU and Cignetti, Indiana’s coach will now make north of $8 million per year, starting in a contract year beginning Dec. 1. Cignetti will earn $500,000 in base pay, a further $6.8 million in outside, marketing and promotional income in his first year, and a $1 million retention bonus each year he remains in his job, beginning Nov. 30, 2025, bringing his total Year 1 compensation per the terms of his new deal to $8.3 million.
Cignetti is now scheduled to receive what’s believed to be the largest annual salary for an Indiana state employee in history.
IndyStar obtained Cignetti’s MOU via records request Monday.
That financial commitment, stretched across the life of the contract, amounts to $72 million. Cignetti would receive 85% of remaining guaranteed income in the event he is fired before the expiration of the contract in 2032. That buyout commitment rises to 100% of remaining income if at any point in the life of the contract, including this season, Cignetti leads IU to either the Big Ten championship game or the College Football Playoff.
Crucially — in many ways more importantly — Dolson’s commitment did not stop with his head coach.
Indiana will hand Cignetti an $11 million annual commitment in the form of salary pool to hire and retain assistants. That’s roughly double what Cignetti’s initial staff earned this year in guaranteed income ($5.8 million), and approaching 2½ times what Tom Allen’s final staff made.
For comparison’s sake, Iowa’s assistant-coaching salary pool totaled just shy of $8 million according to the most recent available data. Purdue’s total pool totaled $5.5 million as of last year. Per an April report from the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State’s staff salaries added close to $11.43 million in guaranteed compensation.
That’s the air Indiana wants to breathe. The Hoosiers saw the gap between themselves and the Buckeyes last Saturday between the lines, but Dolson and IU President Pam Whitten — a crucial figure in supporting Dolson’s investment in football — had already set about closing it in the film room and on the practice field.
Practically speaking, that number should help Cignetti retain in-demand assistants including (though not limited to) coordinators Mike Shanahan and Bryant Haines, as well as offensive line coach Bob Bostad, defensive line coaches Buddha Williams (ends) and Pat Kuntz (tackles) and quarterbacks coach/co-OC Tino Sunseri.
And, really, anyone else Cignetti doesn’t want to lose.
This is the measure of Indiana’s investment in football, and belief in Cignetti to keep the wins flowing. Any debate over where IU goes from here should be set aside for another day. There can be no doubting where Dolson not just wants to go but is committed to reaching.
There are further big-picture investments in football inbound.
Already, IU is in the process of sectioning off a portion of its weight room for the exclusive use of its football team. Dolson and Whitten have also been working lately to secure planning and funding for a substantial renovation of Memorial Stadium and its surrounding areas, one that will likely touch football team facilities.
Those projects were both in motion before Cignetti’s hiring, but he now enjoys the opportunity to help shape their scope and aims. Particularly the stadium-plus-facilities renovation.
His new contract is a substantial statement, though. It ties Indiana to Cignetti for the foreseeable future (and Cignetti to IU, given it would cost $13 million to buy him out of it next year, then $10 million the year after that). The statement that two-way commitment makes is not small.
More than a decade after his predecessor pointed to Barry Alvarez’s books on a shelf in his office as a reminder of the plan to make IU football better than it had historically been, Scott Dolson believes he’s found his Alvarez. Now, he’s made a substantial commitment to ensuring Cignetti, whose name Dolson believes will be synonymous with the same kind of turnaround someday, goes nowhere anytime soon.
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