I win. Google me.

 

Curt Cignetti, Head Football Coach at Indiana University at Bloomington

I’ve been thinking about Curt Cignetti lately, mostly because his story keeps bumping into everything that annoys me about how we talk about success now.

You know how it goes. Everyone says “be patient,” but what they really mean is “don’t make me uncomfortable by stepping off the approved path.” Stay put. Optimize your resume. Trust the process. It’s like being told to keep circling the airport on a delayed flight because eventually the runway will clear. Maybe. Or maybe you just run out of fuel.

Cignetti didn’t wait.

And that’s the part that sticks in my craw ... in a good way.

Here’s a guy who did everything “right” for decades. Long assistant career. Big programs. National championships. Alabama. Nick Saban’s office. The whole cathedral of college football prestige. And still, no one handed him the head coaching job he was “supposed” to get. At some point, patience stops being wisdom and starts being denial. Not grit, but inertia wearing a motivational hoodie.

So at 49, an age when modern culture quietly nudges you toward “managing expectations”, he took a job most people would pretend not to see on a map. Division II. A 60% pay cut. A program that had been losing so long it probably forgot what winning felt like. People warned him he’d disappear down there. Like success is a Wi-Fi signal and you lose bars the farther you get from the Power Five.

What gets me is that everyone meant well. They always do. “You’ve got it made.” “Don’t throw this away.” “Just wait.” Those phrases sound supportive, but they’re really about risk management for the person saying them. If you fail while following the script, no one blames you. If you succeed by ignoring it, you quietly indict the whole system.

Cignetti went anyway.

Part of it was personal. His father had built that Division II program into something real. Hall of Fame real. Field-named-after-you real. And Curt had spent his whole career being “Frank’s son,” which is its own kind of invisible weight. Nepotism is a funny word ... sometimes it means you’re handed everything, and sometimes it means nothing you do is ever fully yours.

So he went to a place where the expectations were low enough to trip over. And he won. Immediately. Then he kept winning. And nobody noticed.

That part feels painfully familiar in the age of algorithms. If you’re not already trending, you’re invisible. If you’re not winning in the “right” zip code, it doesn’t count. It’s like shouting into a canyon and being told your voice doesn’t exist because the echo didn’t go viral.

He moved again. Won again. Still no calls. He was in his early 60s by then, which in our culture is roughly the age where we start gently suggesting hobbies instead of ambition. Retirement plans. Consulting. Maybe a podcast, if you’re lucky.

Then Indiana called. Not out of belief, but out of exhaustion. They had nothing left to protect. When you’re the losingest program in college football history, dignity is already off the table. You might as well try something unfashionable.

And Cignetti showed up like someone who had run out of patience for polite lies.

“I win,” he said. “Google me.”

People laughed because confidence without branding feels rude now. You’re supposed to hedge. Add context. Credit the team. Thank the process. But he wasn’t selling vibes; he was stating a record. In a world addicted to potential, he showed up with receipts.

What followed still feels unreal. Eleven wins. Then sixteen and zero. A perfect season in a sport designed to prevent them. Beating programs that are basically religions. Winning a national championship with players nobody else wanted. A quarterback who couldn’t get on the field somewhere else, now holding a Heisman like it was always meant to be there.

And suddenly, the culture caught up. Eight-year contract. $93 million. The same people who would’ve warned him against the Division II job now calling it visionary. That’s how it always works. We love risk ... after it’s been de-risked by success.

The thing I keep circling back to is how simple his insight was, and how hard it is for people to accept: if you wait for permission, you’re outsourcing your life to a committee that doesn’t know your name. Institutions don’t discover you; they absorb you once you’re undeniable.

Modern culture tells us to build personal brands, but what it really rewards is people who quietly build proof. Proof doesn’t trend. Proof accumulates. It’s slow and unglamorous and often happens in places no one’s watching. Like Division II football fields named after someone else.

Cignetti didn’t hack the system. He walked around it. Took a side door that looked like a service entrance. And by the time anyone noticed, he was already holding the trophy.

Which makes me wonder about myself, about anyone reading this, how many “step-down” moves we’ve dismissed because they didn’t look impressive enough on LinkedIn. How often we confuse visibility with value. How many times we’ve stayed put not because it was right, but because leaving would’ve looked irrational to people who weren’t going to live with the consequences anyway.

Sometimes the path up looks like a demotion. Sometimes the only way to be taken seriously is to stop asking to be taken seriously. And sometimes the most rebellious thing you can do in a culture obsessed with optics is to go somewhere unfashionable and do undeniable work.

“I win. Google me.”

Arrogance? Maybe. Perhaps better explained as impatience with bullshit.

And honestly, we could use more of that.