Kirk Ferentz and Curt Cignetti’s coaching starts come full circle in Saturday’s matchup

IOWA CITY — Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti remembers seeing Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz walk around the University of Pittsburgh football facility when he was a graduate assistant.

At the time, Ferentz had already moved onto his role as an offensive line coach at Iowa under Hayden Fry. Ferentz still visited the Panthers’ during the offseason, however, because just three years before Cignetti was a GA at Pitt, Ferentz was a GA there, too.

“When I was here coaching, every spring break I'd get in the car and we'd go back to Pittsburgh,” Ferentz said. “They'd always start spring ball ahead of us, so I got to go down there and watch them practice, whatever it was, three, four times a week.”

Ferentz and his wife still had family in the area then, so it was fairly routine for him to make an appearance at the facility once football wrapped up for the year. He knew Cignetti’s father, Frank Cignetti Sr., a little better.

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“His dad was very well-known in western Pennsylvania and coached at West Virginia but had a long great career at Indiana, PA,” Ferentz said. “So familiar with him.”

More than 40 years after Cignetti saw Ferentz waltzing through the Pitt football operations buildings, the two head coaches meet on the field of Kinnick Stadium.

Whether it’s felt across the 70,000 attending fans or not, it’s a small, full circle moment between the two coaches — both of whom got their starts just years apart and have become coaching stars in their own right.

Ferentz, now the winningest head coach in Big Ten history, plays host to Cignetti’s red-hot Hoosiers, who brought the program to the national conversation within weeks of joining the conference in 2023.

“That's really impressive. That's good coaching,” Ferentz said of Cignetti’s quick turnaround. “They clearly have a vision of what they want to be, and it looks like it's working really well for them.”

Cignetti brought 13 players with him to Indiana from James Madison in Virginia, many of them starting out as under-recruited players with only a handful of Division I offers out of high school. Though several Hawkeyes jumped straight to Power Four football, Indiana has its fair share of former Group of Five and FCS transfers.

They are good players. Just ask quarterback Mark Gronowski.

“Especially that those top level teams - like a JMU, South Dakota State, North Dakota State, the Montana schools - all those schools have such high (talent),” Gronowski said. “A lot of those guys have been and will continue to go and play at the FBS level and give high level competition at wherever they're at.”

The Hawkeyes’ signal caller - along with Bryce Hawthorne, Zach Ortwerth, Sam Phillips and Jonah Pace - all got their first opportunity outside of Iowa. Rather than getting their offer as a 17-year-old in high school, it came via the transfer portal when the timing was better for them.

“It's really cool to see some guys, maybe not recruited greatly or highly out of high school, grow and develop while they're in college, and can play at that play at the next level,” Gronowski said.

Though Cignetti had the transfer portal advantage in his Indiana rebuild, the turnover still impressed Ferentz. The Hoosiers were 33-42-1 from 2018-2023. In his two seasons, Cignetti has won 15 games, including nine Big Ten wins, and only two losses.

“I'd have to think long and hard if anybody has done it,” Ferentz said. “It's been very impressive.”

Saturday will be a battle between two programs under coaches with a similar start, but cultivated their programs under entirely opposite scenarios. Coaching can be a small world, especially in college football, but it adds that additional anticipation of what this game could be.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Coach Ferentz,” Cignetti said. “Everything he's accomplished throughout his career as a head coach and as an assistant too ... This will be a challenge, a more difficult challenge than the last one for sure, and the sooner our guys realize that, the better.”

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