CFP quarterfinal preview Alabama vs Indiana
Alabama faces top-seed Indiana in a CFP quarterfinal matchup. Does Alabama have what it takes to upset No. 1 Indiana?
BLOOMINGTON, IN – A self-professed film junkie, Curt Cignetti actually got an unintended head start on Alabama prep earlier this season.
The Crimson Tide played games during both of Indiana’s idle weeks this season, and Cignetti confessed he’s “always enjoyed studying coach (Kalen) DeBoer’s offenses.” So, without necessarily meaning to, IU’s coach managed to get eyes on the Hoosiers’ Rose Bowl opponent long before Cignetti know what would await him in Pasadena.
“They do a lot of really great stuff,” Cignetti said. “They’ve got a lot of great players, are extremely well-coached. They’re a really good team, and a tremendous challenge.”
That complimentary nod from one sideline to the other Monday afternoon reflected a College Football Playoff quarterfinal game steeped in intrigue, its two programs remarkably interwoven not least by the journeys of their two coaches.
Cignetti and DeBoer spent time during bowl-organized Zoom sessions praising one another’s success, and considering the similarities in their respective career paths.
From 10,000 feet, Indiana vs. Alabama in the Rose Bowl will be billed as a clash of new and old money. Of Southern establishment against Midwest revolution. History and heritage colliding with so many of modern college football’s overturned conventions.
On the ground, though, it presents a fascinating case study into the binding ties of a sport that’s never quite as far removed from itself as it thinks. And it pits against one another two programs that have never met on the field, yet remain unusually influential on one another today.
Curt Cignetti, Kalen DeBoer mirror one another’s coaching paths with stops at Alabama, Indiana
Their respective histories with one another’s current employers are the only meaningful points of intersection, career-wise, between DeBoer and Cignetti.
DeBoer spent one year as Tom Allen’s offensive coordinator, helping Indiana reach its first Florida-based January bowl game (at a time when that still carried greater meaning) in 2019.
And Cignetti spent four years as part of Nick Saban’s first Alabama staff, coaching wide receivers and coordinating recruiting for the program Cignetti eventually helped win a national championship.
But they’ve both distinguished themselves in their profession through their willingness to climb the coaching pyramid: From outside Division I, through lower levels as either a head coach or coordinator, all the way up to the sport’s biggest stage.
“Knowing coach Cignetti and — you referred to it — his path, nothing but respect for how he’s done it, how he’s gotten to this spot,” DeBoer said.
Cignetti’s path is well documented at this point: He left Tuscaloosa for Division II Indiana-Pennsylvania (IUP), coaching six years at the same school where his father built a hall-of-fame career before moving up through Elon, James Madison and Indiana. He routinely cites that experience as formative now.
DeBoer’s own arc is not that different.
The former Sioux Falls wide receiver won three NAIA national titles with his alma mater before taking coordinator jobs at Southern Illinois, Eastern Michigan, Fresno State and Indiana, then landing his first head job back in Fresno.
In just five full seasons since — Fresno State only played six games in DeBoer’s first season due to COVID-19 — he’s won 54 games, guiding Washington to the national championship game and now Alabama to the playoff.
In an era when breaking into Power Four coaching without Power Four bloodlines has become increasingly difficult, each of the men captaining a Rose Bowl sideline come New Year’s Day will have earned his way to that moment through his willingness to walk the less-traveled road.
“I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” DeBoer said. “I think all of it goes into just being built for these moments.”
Kalen DeBoer is a historical marker of IU football’s growth
If their experiences have indeed built them that way, then what on their paths is shared has built the programs they bring with them.
DeBoer spent just one season at Indiana, but he has with him on staff several faces familiar to Indiana and its fans.
Defensive coordinator Kane Wommack and co-offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan were on staff in Bloomington with DeBoer. Director of sports performance David Ballou worked in Bloomington before joining Nick Saban’s staff, and DeBoer held him over through the coaching change. Rick Danison, a longtime member of IU’s strength staff, now works with Ballou in Tuscaloosa.
Even DeBoer himself still represents something increasingly important in Bloomington.
When Tom Allen hired him from Fresno State, IU handed DeBoer what was then the richest contract given to one of its coordinators. By the time his one season at Indiana finished — inclusive of bonuses and incentives — DeBoer landed just short of becoming the Hoosiers’ first million-dollar coordinator.
That number seems small now, when compared to the eight-figure salary Cignetti now commands, or the new three-year contract Bryant Haines signed this month expected to be worth in the region of $3 million annually.
They all represent the same basic idea: Indiana spent the best part of two decades spending meaningfully on football with the ultimate goal of eventually climbing to the place it occupies today.
“I felt like when we were there, there was a growth, an investment that was happening, and there was success,” DeBoer said. “Coach Cignetti has done a great job providing the spark, which really leads people continuing to be all in. As you get more people all in, you get the moments that you’re in right now.
“It works off each other — the energy and the commitment to the success.”
Curt Cignetti’s Indiana football a flavor of Nick Saban’s Alabama
Cignetti knows Alabama even better, in some ways, than DeBoer knows Indiana.
It was his last stop (of several) as an assistant before beginning his head-coaching career. It was where he won a national championship under Saban.
And it offered Cignetti an experience he refers back to now, almost daily.
“I probably think about it every single day,” Cignetti said.
Cignetti is not shy about referring to his blueprint — an all-encompassing philosophical approach to running his program he adheres to religiously. He even has a self-published handbook on many of its fundamentals to use like a sort of program bible.
Ask Cignetti about the mentors and experiences that helped him build that structure, and he’ll take you on a journey through his football life. From growing up watching his father, Frank Cignetti Sr., to his time at Pitt with Johnny Majors and Walt Harris, through to his time working under Chuck Amato at NC State.
Cignetti’s years at Alabama, which he spent watching perhaps the best program builder in college football history, remain among his most formative.
“Philosophically, the program we run here is probably a lot more the same than different at Alabama,” he said. “There’s probably not a day that goes by where I don’t draw from those experiences.”
He will carry them onto the Pasadena grass in less than two weeks’ time, his program’s first Rose Bowl victory and a place in the playoff semifinal on the line.
That game will come with all kinds of outside noise and meaning. It will be cast as representing many things, some more legitimate than others.
Few more so than the fundamental truth that both Indiana and Alabama will arrive to that moment in a remarkable number of ways because of one another, the connections that bind them together defining their respective journeys to Jan. 1, 2026.
