Nick Saban credits Curt Cignetti, original assistants for building Alabama 'from scratch'

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti has definitely turned some heads in the college football landscape this season. In his first year at the helm, Cignetti has led the Hoosiers to an impressive 7-0 start and firmly place them in the national spotlight.

Like many of the top head coaches in college football, Cignetti spent time coaching under Nick Saban earlier in his career. Serving as the wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator during Saban’s first four years at Alabama, both Cignetti and the Crimson Tide benefitted from those early seasons, according to Saban.

“One of the things that guys like Coach Cignetti had an advantage of is when we went to Alabama, they weren’t very good. So, therefore, we built the program from scratch,” Saban said. “I mean, we were 7-6 the first year and 12-0 the second year, lost to Florida in the SEC Championship game. So the whole culture of the program got built.”

While Cignetti was playing a role in building the culture of what would become college football’s premier dynasty, he was also learning how to eventually develop his own program, something he’s putting on full display in Year 1 in Bloomington.

“A lot of the guys that became assistants in 2016 and 2018 and they’re now the head coach at wherever, the program was already successful. It was almost like the players, the players that we recruited in the beginning came because they wanted to do something special and prove something,” Saban explained. “But then it was more like well, what can Alabama do for me later on? So Curt actually got to see it built from the ground up.”

Cignetti has been a winner at all of his head coaching stops, now leading the No. 13-ranked Hoosiers to their first 7-0 start since 1967. And while he and other Saban disciples often talk about what they learned from who many regard as the greatest coach of all time, Saban also admitted that he learned from Cignetti in Alabama’s early years.

“And I think it was a great experience for me, because we learned a lot along the way from each other,” Saban revealed. “But I do think that he probably saw all these intangible things that are necessary to have a successful program and to be able to sustain it. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing that he took away from that.”

ESPN’s College GameDay is visiting Bloomington for Indiana’s matchup against Washington for the first time thanks to their newfound success. Meanwhile, the Crimson Tide will look to get back on track this weekend when they host No. 21 Missouri in Tuscaloosa.