The rising â or is it risen? â star in college football coaching is Indiana's 64-year-old Curt Cignetti, who has led the Hoosiers to an improbable 15-0 season and Monday's national championship game.
Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti holds up the trophy after the Peach Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal against Oregon on Jan. 9 in Atlanta.Â
Cignetti was a reserve quarterback at West Virginia in the early 1980s when ex-Arizona head coach Rich Rodriguez was a defensive back for the Mountaineers. What do they have in common? The college teammates were both among the rising stars in the game; RichRod was offered (and turned down) the head coaching job at Alabama in 2008 after he had coached West Virginia to consecutive seasons of 11-1, 11-2 and 10-2.
RichRod was subsequently fired at Michigan and Arizona. Even Cignetti has been fired â with a former Arizona coach.
From 2000-06, Cignetti was the QB coach/offensive coordinator for North Carolina State's Chuck Amato, who had been Arizona's linebackers coach from 1980-82 under Larry Smith. Both Amato and Cignetti were fired after the 2006 season.
Early at NC State, Cignetti was a tight ends coach/recruiting coordinator under Mike Canales, who was then coaching future NFL standout QB Philip Rivers. When Canales was hired away by the New York Jets, Cignetti replaced him as OC.
Small world, huh? Canales in 2004 became Arizona's offensive coordinator under Mike Stoops. Working with a dreadful offensive roster, Canales coached UA teams that went 3-8 and 3-8 before a 6-6 finish in 2006. Stoops fired Canales after three seasons.
Canales' main offensive analyst in those days was young Kevin Patullo, who was also fired when Canales was forced out at Arizona. Incredibly, Patullo then rose through the NFL ranks and was the Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator this year; he was fired last week.
This whole RichRod, Cignetti, Canales, Patullo saga is a cautionary tale of how difficult it is to maintain success in football coaching.
According to The Athletic, 127 NFL coaches have already been fired this offseason. In the Big 12, 43 coaches have been replaced during the hiring/firing season.
It hasn't always been that way. From 1987-2000, Arizona coach Dick Tomey fired just two of 31 assistant coaches. In 1989, he fired offensive coordinator Ben Griffith and in 1993 he fired receivers coach Norm Anderson. That sort of job stability in college and pro football is long gone.
