When Gareth Southgate resigned the day after the Euro 2024 final, the Football Association had a huge task ahead of it: to replace England’s greatest manager of the modern era, the man who had redefined the role.

It was not a position it ever wanted to be in. The hope had been that if England had beaten Spain in Berlin, Southgate could have been persuaded to go on another two years. But with Southgate leaving, the FA’s CEO Mark Bullingham and technical director John McDermott had no choice but to look elsewhere.

Three months later, Bullingham was sat in Wembley Stadium’s media room, with McDermott watching on a few yards away. And next to Bullingham was Thomas Tuchel, the new England manager, having signed his 18-month contract eight days earlier.

The FA was delighted to land a manager who Bullingham described as giving England “the best chance of winning the World Cup” and who had been keen on taking the job for some time. His contract, which is worth around £6million a year, includes a bonus for winning the World Cup and he will be assisted by his long-time lieutenant, Anthony Barry.

Tuchel arrives with a glittering CV and a sense of glamour. He won the Champions League and the Club World Cup at Chelsea. Unlike Fabio Capello, who took the job at 61, Tuchel — aged 51 — is at his peak.

But it was not an appointment without its challenges or even controversies. The Athletic has spoken to multiple people with knowledge of the FA’s process — all of whom wished to remain anonymous to protect their relationships — and can reveal:

• A shortlist of candidates to succeed Southgate had been drawn up before the European Championship.
• Pep Guardiola was the FA’s ideal candidate but he would not commit to taking the job.
• Bullingham’s claim that the FA “interviewed approximately 10 people” riled some of those connected to leading contenders, who felt it mischaracterised how seriously other candidates had been considered.
• The treatment of Lee Carsley, who was left to struggle with questions about whether he wanted the permanent job even after Tuchel had signed his contract, surprised former FA insiders.
• Tuchel will not attend either of England’s November internationals against Greece and the Republic of Ireland as he prepares to start formally on January 1.

When the FA put its succession plan into action, it had one clear goal: to try to win the World Cup in 2026. “As we set out our process,” Bullingham said on Wednesday, “our priority was to find someone that can give our players the best possible chance to win.”

The first public step in the recruitment came at the end of the week in which Southgate resigned. On the morning of July 18, the FA published its job description for the role of Men’s Senior Team Head Coach.

The very first bullet point proved that the FA was going for someone to help it win that first major men’s trophy since 1966. “Lead and develop the England senior men’s team to win a major tournament,” it read, “and be consistently ranked as one of the top teams in the world.” The posting also mentioned that the successful candidate must have a “strong track record delivering results in the Premier League and/or leading international competitions”.

As soon as the FA published that, it was clear what its “ideal profile”, in Bullingham’s words, was for the job. It was looking for an experienced winner who had a proven record at the top of the game rather than someone who would just keep the Southgate culture ticking along.

The other key factor from the start concerned nationality. Southgate had been hugely successful during his near eight-year tenure and was very proud of his work building a distinctly English identity for the national team, but the FA wanted to cast the net as wide as possible in pursuit of his successor.

In the summer, the FA board held a vote on whether the new coach should be English or not. While there was some appetite for England to choose an English coach — citing the belief that the game’s major countries should not be looking outside their own borders for managers — the vote went overwhelmingly the other way.

So while being English would not be a criterion in the search, experience of English football and of developing English players would be. There was to be no repeat of the Capello situation in 2007, when a previously successful manager was parachuted into the England job with no prior experience in English football.

Put all of those criteria together and a few names clearly stood out. Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino, Jurgen Klopp and, above all, Pep Guardiola.

Guardiola was the FA’s dream candidate. In 15 full seasons of senior management, he has won 12 league titles, three Champions Leagues, six domestic cups, four UEFA Super Cups and four Club World Cups. He has done so with a distinctive style that has arguably revolutionised how football is played in this country. And he is deeply rooted in English football, having developed a sizeable percentage of the current England team, including Kyle Walker, John Stones, Phil Foden and Rico Lewis, since joining Manchester City in 2016.

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But there were two problems. The first was that Guardiola is contracted to City until the end of this season. With City taking part in the Club World Cup next summer, he would be unable to manage England until the September 2025 break, less than a year before the 2026 World Cup. It is hard to see how such a limited time with the England players could ever have been deemed conducive to the FA’s goal of winning that tournament, which will be co-hosted in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The second was that Guardiola himself has not decided what he will do at the end of this City contract: stay, take a break, or go to a different job. There were other factors at play here outside the FA’s control, not least City’s ‘115 charges’ legal battle with the Premier League, the outcome of which could have a significant bearing on the club’s prospects next season and beyond.

People in the industry, including some who know him well, have noted that Guardiola changes his mind almost every day about what he wants to do next summer. When he went on Italian TV last week to discuss his future — after Tuchel had signed his England deal but before the news broke — he said that he had not decided what he would do next, but that “anything can happen”.

Pep Guardiola was the FA’s dream choice (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

The FA did reach out to Guardiola, but he would not commit to taking the job. He would have been ideal and there was excitement about the prospect of appointing the most successful manager of the 21st century to lead the England team. But with Guardiola unable to commit, that optimism faded and the talks never became advanced.

Bullingham did not reference Guardiola specifically in his press conference on Wednesday but did acknowledge that “clearly some (candidates) were more up for the role than others” when asked whether the FA had been rejected by anyone. When contacted by The Athletic, the FA and City declined to comment.

With Guardiola out of the picture, who else was there? Jurgen Klopp ticked all the same boxes as Guardiola and, unlike the City manager, was out of work having left Liverpool at the end of last season. But he made clear that he would not be jumping straight back into the game after ending a draining nine-year tenure at Anfield. Speaking at a coaching conference while the FA was still accepting job applications, Klopp said it would be “the biggest loss of face in the history of football” if he were to go into another job immediately. He has subsequently taken a role as Red Bull’s head of global soccer.

Pochettino was also out of work then, having left Chelsea at the end of last season. He would also have scored highly based on what the FA were looking for. Plenty of England players from the Euros — Luke Shaw, Walker, Harry Kane, Kieran Trippier, Conor Gallagher, Cole Palmer — owe much of their development to the Argentinian and his coaching staff. Pochettino, however, has since become the new manager of the United States’ men’s national team.

In terms of English candidates, Graham Potter has been out of work since he was sacked by Chelsea in April last year. There was support for Potter’s potential candidacy from other Premier League managers, but contact never got beyond the informal stage.

When Potter was a guest analyst on UK broadcaster Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football show on September 30, he said he was “supportive of whatever the FA decide to do” and “supportive of whoever the coach is”. When asked whether he would prefer his next job to be in club or international football, he said that he was “open to anything”.

Interest in Graham Potter never progressed to an advanced stage (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Eddie Howe was one of the early favourites and the possibility of an England approach for him overshadowed his Newcastle United side’s start to the season after what had already been a summer of upheaval. The FA approaching Newcastle and trying to negotiate compensation for their head coach would have been a difficult situation for everyone involved. Ultimately, Howe was never put in a position where he had to make a tough decision: there was no direct approach to him and he did not apply for the role.

When asked whether he was contacted on Friday, Howe said “no” and confirmed that he was not interviewed. He added: “I was lucky and fortunate enough to watch him at Chelsea. What a brilliant guy, person and coach, I had two days with him and thought he was fascinating. I really wish him well. I think he’s a great appointment. I hope he leads England to many trophies.”

There was consternation among some candidates at Bullingham saying on Wednesday that the FA “interviewed approximately 10 people”. Some of those closely connected to the candidates took issue with that presentation of the hiring process, pointing out that one informal phone call did not necessarily constitute an interview.

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Ultimately, it was Tuchel who ticked more of the FA’s boxes than anyone else, especially once it was clear that Guardiola was not going to happen. Here was a candidate who had won things at the highest level and who was at the cutting edge of modern tactics and coaching. He was unattached, having left Bayern Munich at the end of last season, meaning there would be no wrangling over compensation.

And while he was not English, he had a direct connection to English football. Tuchel had a fantastic 20-month spell at Chelsea, bonding with the fans and developing English talents including Mason Mount, Reece James and Ben Chilwell, all of whom played for Southgate’s national team. Tuchel was a big admirer of English players. He signed Kane and Eric Dier for Bayern and wanted Declan Rice, too.

He loved living in England and was widely known to be keen to return, but Tuchel was not going to be on the market forever. He spoke to Manchester United in June about potentially replacing Erik ten Hag, but no deal was reached, and he had been linked to the club again more recently after United’s poor start to the new season.

Once the FA identified Tuchel as their preferred candidate, it moved fast and secretively. The first meeting was just with McDermott. Tuchel — who told the BBC that the FA had first approached him in late August — spoke on Wednesday about the good feeling he got when he learned this job was “about football” and specifically about the focus on trying to win the next World Cup.

From left: new assistant manager Anthony Barry, FA CEO Mark Bullingham, head coach Thomas Tuchel and technical director John McDermott (Eddie Keogh/The FA via Getty Images)

The second meeting was with McDermott and Bullingham, where Tuchel gave a presentation about how he intended to work, which hugely impressed his interviewers. “Thomas was absolutely outstanding,” Bullingham said on Wednesday, “providing a really clear vision for the role and how he would work with our players and get the best out of them and to give us the best chance at the World Cup.”

From there the process was, as Tuchel put it on Wednesday, “very fast, very exciting, very confidential, very trustful”, with his agent Olaf Meinking doing the deal directly with the FA. On October 8, Bullingham presented Tuchel’s proposed appointment at a hurriedly convened meeting of the FA board.

It was a very brief meeting held on Microsoft Teams, with some members unable to even make the start of it. While there was no debate on the call, it did leave some members wondering afterwards why there was such a rush to secure Tuchel’s signature, given Carsley was already in place to manage the two November games and England will not play again after those until next March.

It was only at the end of that week that news of England’s serious interest in Tuchel started to emerge in Germany, but he and the FA wanted to keep this as discreet as possible, Tuchel admitting on Wednesday he did not even call Kane, England captain and his former player from Bayern, to discuss his taking over.

The FA did not want the news to emerge during the course of this month’s international break, when England played Greece and Finland still under the interim management of under-21s head coach Carsley. But this meant that he was placed in the difficult position of having to answer questions about whether he wanted the permanent job even though someone had already signed a contract to take over.

Lee Carsley was left in an awkward position in having to field questions over his interest in the England job (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Carsley visibly struggled with it twice, first after the Greece game, when he said that he would “hopefully” return to the under-21s after November, and then again following the Finland match, when he said England should appoint a “world-class” manager who had won things, unlike him.

Both of those statements make far more sense in the context of what was happening behind the scenes, but at the time they caused confusion and left Carsley looking out of his depth. One former senior FA employee told The Athletic they had been surprised by the organisation’s handling of Carsley’s situation.

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For all the pride in securing Tuchel, Wednesday’s unveiling press conference still left plenty of questions for the FA.

There is the matter of his start date, not until January 1, which means that Carsley will take England for two more games in November. The FA confirmed to The Athletic Tuchel will not even attend those matches against Greece in Athens and the Irish at Wembley.

On Wednesday, Bullingham said the January start date was decided on so that Tuchel could have a “singular focus” on the World Cup qualification campaign, but if England finish second in their Nations League group — which is the position they are currently in — they will have play-offs in that competition next March anyway.

There is also the issue of the Football Leadership Diversity Code.

At the start of this process, the FA said it would comply with its requirements. The code, set up in 2020 to encourage diversity in football jobs, states that: “Shortlists for interview will have at least one male and one female Black, Asian or of Mixed-Heritage candidate if applicants meeting the job specifications apply.” At the end of the process, it did not appear that this specific criteria had been met, although the FA did take the unusual step of advertising the job publicly so as to encourage the broadest range of possible applicants.

The fact that, after eight years of Southgate, the FA has decided to go for an elite foreign manager has caused disappointment in some quarters, but the pool of English managers is quite shallow and Bullingham admitted on Wednesday that the FA was not awash with English options for this post.

“Clearly, you would love to five to 10 domestic candidates who are coaching clubs in your domestic league, challenging and winning honours,” he said. “We are not quite in that place at the moment.” Once the FA board had approved the idea of going for a non-English coach in the summer, the likeliest outcome was a big European name such as Tuchel.

Tuchel (centre) and Bullingham take questions from media at Wednesday’s press conference (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Overall, the appointment has met with a positive reaction from fans who recognise that Tuchel has an excellent track record, competing at the highest level of the club game all over Europe. Anyone who saw him on Wednesday will have been impressed by his charisma and clarity on stage. He will be a compelling and recognisable frontman for English football on the biggest stage in 2026 (assuming England qualify, as they have for the past seven World Cups). He may even help them to win it.

England now have a manager who is at the cutting edge of European football and that has not always been the case in the past, but at the same time, it is clearly a risk.

Tuchel is unlikely to be here for a long time and if he does not deliver the trophy he has been brought in to target, England may have to start all over again.

Additional reporting: David Ornstein, Simon Hughes, Dan Sheldon, George Caulkin

(Top photo: Michael Regan – The FA/The FA via Getty Images; design: Meech Robinson)

Major League Soccer has dubbed the final match day of its regular season “Decision Day,” because that’s when the final places in the league’s 18-team playoff tournament are decided.

Only two of those spots remain unclaimed, but that hardly makes this Decision Day anticlimactic. LAFC and the Galaxy both go into their finales Saturday with a chance to finish first in the Western Conference and secure home-field advantage through the first three rounds of the postseason, greatly easing their paths to a possible MLS Cup appearance.

The Galaxy (19-7-7) top the standings with 64 points and will clinch their first conference title in 13 seasons with at least a draw in Houston. A loss, however, opens the door for LAFC (18-8-7), which can jump over its rival by beating San José at home and making up a two-score deficit in goal differential, the key tiebreaker.

“We don’t spend a whole lot of time discussing scenarios. For us, the important thing is doing what we can and focusing on that,” said LAFC’s Steve Cherundolo, who is bidding to become the first coach to take his team to three consecutive MLS Cup finals since New England’s Steve Nichol from 2005 to 2007.

The home-field advantage will make that task much easier since LAFC’s 10 home wins in MLS play trail only the Galaxy’s 13. On the road, LAFC is a mediocre 8-6-3.

The Galaxy’s home-road split is even more pronounced: Greg Vanney’s team hasn’t lost in 16 games at Dignity Health Sports Park but is 6-6-4 away. Still, that’s a far cry from last season when the team won just eight times, finishing 13th in the 14-team conference table.

“We changed the group quite a bit from last year. We brought in guys that make a difference,” midfielder Edwin Cerrillo said of a team that added eight starters since the beginning of the 2023 season.

Although the Galaxy go into Decision Day in the lead, they also face the bigger challenges. Not only will they be on the road, but they’ll also be facing a Houston team fighting for a favorable postseason seeding and be without suspended midfielder Mark Delgado and likely winger Joseph Paintsil (hamstring). Another midfielder, Marco Reus, will have limited playing time because of a hamstring injury.

“Here we are, with everything in front of us to play for,” Vanney said. “We want to go win this game to give ourselves the home field through as much of the playoffs as we can. We’re going there to get a result and try to solidify our position.”

LAFC will be playing at home against the worst team in the league, one that has conceded an MLS-record 75 goals. But the black and gold, who will be playing for the 99th time since the start of the 2023 season, will be looking inward, midfielder Timothy Tillman said.

“If we don’t do our job, then it doesn’t matter what the Galaxy does,” he said. “If we do a good job then everything’s in our hands.”

The only playoff berths unsettled heading into Decision Day are the final two spots in the Eastern Conference, currently occupied by D.C. United and Montreal. Both Philadelphia and Atlanta, which are three points back, can advance with wins if D.C. and Montreal lose.

The playoffs open Tuesday with wild-card games between the eighth- and ninth-place finishers in each conference. The first round, a best-of-three series, begins Oct. 25.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Four words came to Curt Cignetti’s mind as he tried to follow along from 800 miles away the path of a tornado that was closing in on his youngest child.

“What have I done?”

It was April 27, 2011. Cignetti was at a function at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), where he had recently started as head football coach, taking a 60 percent pay cut from the $250,000 he was making on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama. His family was still back in Tuscaloosa finishing out the school year. Son Curtis was an Alabama student and was bunkering down on campus as the tornado — which would end up killing 64 people, six of them university students — passed nearby.

Cignetti’s wife, Manette, was three and a half hours south in Mobile for daughter Carly’s high school state tennis tournament. That left the youngest, daughter Natalie, at a friend’s house in a neighborhood that was about to be hit directly. Manette got Natalie on the phone and screamed at her to take cover. She and her friend’s family did, in the basement, under a table, as the house was moved off its foundation — a few hundred yards from a house that was completely obliterated.

“You’re just sick to your stomach, you’re helpless,” Manette said. “Meanwhile, Curt has to be present at this event and is just about having a heart attack trying to figure out what’s going on.”

The Cignettis were safe and soon reunited. But the scare was just the latest prompt for those four words: “What have I done?”

A coach approaching 50 doesn’t leave a job as a recruiting coordinator and receivers coach at one of the top programs in the sport to take over a struggling Division II outfit. That’s a sharp detour from a steady climb in a tough business, as the pay cut suggests. Manette rejected the idea out of hand.

But Cignetti always wanted to be a head coach, like his father, and believed he could win at IUP, like his father. He took the dubious leap. And those early doubts, intensified by the realization that IUP’s football resources had gone backward over decades, soon gave way to validation.

As Cignetti’s Indiana Hoosiers prepare to host Nebraska at sold-out Memorial Stadium on Saturday, in the program’s biggest game in years, he sits at 160 games coached. He has won 125 of them. When he was introduced as IU’s coach in December, after successful stints at James Madison, Elon and IUP, four words came to mind after a question about the difficulty of succeeding at historically hapless Indiana.

“I win. Google me,” Cignetti said.

So far, that’s all he’s done.

Cignetti’s teams usually win because he usually outperforms the coach on the other sideline. For as blunt and confident as he can be, he won’t say it quite like that. But those who have seen him do his work will.

“He and his coaches give you all the answers, so you just know you’re going to win on game day,” said Todd Centeio, a quarterback who transferred from Colorado State to James Madison for his final year of eligibility in 2022 and won Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year.

“I don’t know how he does it, I just know that I trust it,” said Indiana tight end Zach Horton, one of several prominent Hoosiers who followed Cignetti from James Madison.

“Just highly intelligent and raised in the game,” said Duke coach Manny Diaz, who worked with Cignetti at NC State.

“He has an absolutely incredible football mind,” said Jeff Bourne, the athletic director who hired Cignetti to James Madison from Elon, and whose retirement preceded Cignetti’s move to IU. “Watching his scouting of an opponent and preparation of a game plan was just really remarkable. You’d go into some games feeling like, ‘Well, I’m not sure about this one,’ and then we’d win and you’d realize how much it had to do with the preparation of the coaching staff. The way he analyzes opponents and finds ways to beat them, I saw it so many times and it was absolutely amazing.”

He saw it from the other side on Oct. 6, 2018, when Cignetti’s Elon Phoenix came to Harrisonburg, Va., as massive underdogs against FCS No. 2-ranked James Madison and pulled a 27-24 shocker. A couple of months later, JMU coach Mike Houston was off to East Carolina and Cignetti was Bourne’s choice to replace him and lead JMU’s successful transition to the FBS.

Elon went a modest 14-9 in Cignetti’s two seasons there — but that was a turnaround from 12-45 in the previous five seasons. Cignetti’s formula has worked everywhere, and it starts with an eye for the game and a willingness to use both eyes until the lids get heavy to find an edge.

“He’s always in his office, always watching film,” said Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher, another JMU transfer making an immediate splash with the Hoosiers.

Cignetti said the film projector is on “98 percent of the time” when he’s in that office. Then he goes home to the teal recliner that has survived all 35 years of the Cignettis’ marriage.

“All he does is sit in his chair and work,” Manette said.

That’s part of the formula. So is frank, honest talk, which Cignetti has found works with recruits and players alike. That’s where his late father, Frank Cignetti Sr., is apparent in his coaching style.

“He was a great man, a great leader, an up-front guy,” Cignetti said of his father, who passed away in 2022 at age 84. “He’d always tell you what was on his mind. You may not like it, but he would tell you. Usually, to be your best, you’ve got to hear things you don’t like sometimes.”

Frank Sr. grew up in Pittsburgh, his parents having moved from Italy, his father a coal miner.

“Everyone was a coal miner or in the steel mill, that’s what everyone did where I was from,” said Cignetti, the oldest of four kids of Frank Sr. and Marlene. “Athletics was the way out.”

Frank Sr. was an NAIA All-America end at IUP, and his coaching career wound from the high school ranks to West Virginia, where Bobby Bowden hired him to coach the offensive backfield in 1970. When Bowden left for Florida State in 1976, Frank Sr. succeeded him as head coach.

In 1978, Frank Sr. hired a young West Virginia native named Nick Saban to coach defensive backs. He also battled a rare form of cancer, had his spleen removed, was given chemotherapy and last rites twice, and ultimately survived. In 1979, he welcomed his eldest son as a quarterback on the team and was fired after the season with a 17-27 record in four years.

“Let’s face it, I’ve got a little chip on my shoulder and some of it is that I had to go to IUP to be a head coach, that I’ve been underestimated my whole life,” Cignetti said. “But the Cignetti name drives me too.”

Cignetti stayed as a backup at West Virginia for his final three seasons of eligibility under Don Nehlen, who he said “was great to me,” and then his coaching career got going as Frank Sr. found his sweet spot. After several years as athletic director at IUP, he took over head coaching duties in 1986 and had a tremendous 20-year run — 182-50-1 with several deep Division II playoff runs, two to the championship game.

Frank Jr. played for his father at IUP and embarked on a coaching career that has included several NFL stops and two stints at hometown school Pittsburgh. Curt started at Pitt as a grad assistant in 1983 and then coached quarterbacks and tight ends there in the 1990s for Johnny Majors and Walt Harris. Manette, who met Curt in her hometown of Indiana, Pa., while in pharmacy school, shared in supporting their young family as a pharmacist.

Pitt is where Cignetti’s recruiting skills — evaluation and relentless pursuit — got him his first recruiting coordinator gig. He carried that to Chuck Amato’s staff at NC State and also coached Philip Rivers there.

“Cig is just one of those coaches that checks every box and you could see all of it back then,” said Noel Mazzone, who worked with Cignetti as Amato’s offensive coordinator in 2003 and 2004.

The Saban connection came back around when he left the Miami Dolphins for the Alabama job in early 2007. Saban had stayed in touch with Cignetti over the years and now wanted him to coordinate recruiting and coach receivers for the Crimson Tide. That meant pursuits such as eventual Heisman winner Mark Ingram, coaching players like Julio Jones and winning a national championship.

“My experience with coach Saban, I can’t even begin to tell you, like, even just after a year with him, how much I learned about running an organization,” Cignetti said. “From A to Z. Every day was like a doctoral class. It was so structured, so organized. He had a philosophy on everything. Everything was just airtight. I learned a ton.”

One thing he learned: Saban liked to look outside to fill coordinator openings, such as when he hired Jim McElwain from Fresno State to be OC in 2008. After four seasons, with his 50th birthday approaching, Cignetti was feeling the urgency.

“I really didn’t want to be another 58-year-old assistant coach bouncing around looking for another job, you know what I mean?” he said. “I’d seen those guys. I’d grown up in the business, I’d followed careers and I didn’t want to be in that situation eight to 10 years from then. I wasn’t a coordinator and I felt like to that point I was always the next guy. I’d been passed over. But I always felt like I could be a good head coach. I wasn’t not going to be a head coach.”

IUP called in December 2010.

“I said, ‘No, you can’t take it,’” Manette said. “I just wasn’t going backward.”

Cignetti turned it down. That was that. Except weeks later, the job still wasn’t filled. Cignetti got another call.

“He looks at me and says, ‘I just really want to be a head coach,’” Manette said. “What am I gonna do? Keep him from his dream? He gave me that look and it was, ‘Oh crap. OK. OK. Let’s go. Let’s do it.’”

It was a much easier decision when Indiana came calling after last season after James Madison finished 11-1 to bring Cignetti’s five-year record there to 52-9.

The Indiana of Pennsylvania move meant Manette resuming work as a pharmacist, in advance of both daughters following up college with medical school — both are doctors now — while Curtis got into medical sales. He and his wife, Amy, have provided the Cignettis with their first two grandkids, Sophia and Isabelle.

Indiana football is a family affair for the Cignettis. (Courtesy of Manette Cignetti)

The Indiana of Bloomington move meant Cignetti’s salary multiplied by nearly seven times — from $677,000 last year at James Madison to $4.25 million per year at IU before bonuses. He’s a 63-year-old coach who has never been a coordinator for a power-conference school and has just two FBS head coaching seasons under his belt. And he was the easy, clear No. 1 choice for Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson.

“From the first time we talked, it was, ‘This guy is just different,’” Dolson said. “People don’t believe me, but I don’t think he’s cocky. He’s really not. He just tells you exactly how he feels.”

That meant frank conversations about administrative support during the interview process and a feeling after talking to IU President Pamela Whitten that it was strong. Cignetti already knew the Big Ten’s media rights deals would extend IU’s resources edge over most athletic departments in years to come. And that a hapless football program isn’t an option for any institution that wants to stay in that neighborhood.

Dolson knows that, too, which is why his department launched a study to help direct the revival of Indiana football while Tom Allen was still the coach. The focus was on “like schools,” Dolson said, that had found football success. Put another way, basketball schools: Kentucky, Kansas, Duke and North Carolina.

There are major differences among that group, but all have found varying measures of success with good coaching hires. Though Kansas is struggling this season, Lance Leipold has given the program energy and fits the profile of an older coach who worked his way up at lower levels. The “do-everything” nature of those jobs can be an advantage, as Dolson observed this season when Cignetti had a full travel plan ready early in advance of a win at UCLA.

GO DEEPER

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The study produced several traits of an ideal coach, including someone who was currently a head coach; a proven evaluator who had been a recruiting coordinator at some point; and an offensive-minded coach known in particular for developing quarterbacks. Cignetti was an obvious choice before they spoke. Then they did.

“It was like he had our blueprint and our plan literally in front of him when I was talking to him,” Dolson said. “Everything that was important to us was important to him.”

Still: Indiana?

This is the program with the most losses in Division I history, 713, and the worst winning percentage by far in Big Ten history at .421. It is to the Big Ten as Vanderbilt is to the SEC, though Indiana does at least have two conference titles to its name — in 1945 and 1967.

Allen provided a brief burst of hope with his 14-7 run in 2019 and 2020. Terry Hoeppner had the energy to change the narrative in the early 2000s before tragically dying of brain cancer after two seasons. Bill Mallory had some solid teams in the 1980s and 1990s. Lee Corso brought personality. No one has gotten out of the place with more wins than losses since Bo McMillin managed that feat in 1947.

Cignetti had no use for that history. But he felt it almost immediately.

“I could tell this place had been beaten down in terms of a lot of people just didn’t think it was possible,” he said. “I was just shocked at how everybody on the outside thought it was impossible to get anything done here.”

That’s the genesis of the Pittsburgh-accented “Google me.” Cignetti had heard enough chatter about the hopelessness of Indiana football by the time he got to his introductory presser.

“That just killed me — that’s typical, straight Cig, right?” Mazzone said.

“He really is humble, but he had to light a fire,” Manette said.

“I just had to set an expectation level that this is who we’re gonna be, and we’re not gonna permit anything else,” Cignetti said. “We’re winning here. There are no self-imposed limitations. I had to show that confidence, not just to the players, but to the fans.”

Then it was on to quickly fixing a roster that had just lost several defensive starters and all but one offensive starter. Cignetti brought in 22 transfers, 13 from James Madison. He leaned on those guys, several of them instantly some of IU’s best players, to get everyone else ready for what was coming.

Practices would be short and relentlessly efficient. Life would be good for those who do the right things and prepare. These coaches would have the formula for winning, weekly.

“It didn’t take long for everyone to get on board,” Horton said, and the Hoosiers have won all six games, the best start since 1967, entering a moment of revelation against Nebraska.

The schedule gets much tougher from here, with Washington, Michigan and a trip to Ohio State coming up soon. But the quality of the football — spearheaded in large part by Ohio transfer quarterback Kurtis Rourke — is undeniable. The Hoosiers are inventive and explosive on offense, and they stop the run and get after the quarterback on defense, with JMU transfer Mikail Kamara already at five sacks. The response from fans and boosters, Cignetti said, has been “over the top.”

“The NIL has grown very significantly from what it was, and it needed to,” he said. “I pushed that hard. I pushed the envelope on that, and people responded.”

Already, this program has better facilities than some may realize — both stadium end zones were enclosed in the past 15 years at a combined cost of $91 million, plus $2 million in locker room renovations in 2019. Indiana athletics had $166.8 million in reported revenues in the most recent budget year, No. 13 in the country and No. 5 in the Big Ten. Indiana University has the second-largest alumni base in the country, about 900,000 people.

So there’s money to be found in case Cignetti’s salary needs to double or so, soon after it got multiplied by seven. As more of college football finds out who he is, his team is in position to contend for a spot in the first 12-team College Football Playoff. The Hoosiers should have a reasonable shot at every game on the schedule but the trip to Ohio State.

Hoosiers fans may need to see more to believe something like that is possible, but so far in 10 months, they’ve seen nothing to declare it isn’t.

“When that time comes to get into that Playoff bid, we’ll look up and see our logo up there,” Fisher said, “and then we’ll get to preparing for that game just like it’s another game week.”

That confidence. That’s what Cignetti’s done.

(Top photo: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)