Curt Cignetti Shares Unique Connection With Penn State Interim Coach

It's been a tumultuous season at Penn State.

So when Terry Smith was promoted to interim head coach after James Franklin's firing, he was glad to hear from a familiar face.

"Curt Cignetti is a friend of mine. He reached out to me when all of this went down, so I'm appreciative to him," Smith said Monday. "He's a Pittsburgh guy, and we go way back from his dad being a coach at [Indiana University of Pennsylvania] and I know the whole family so it's a great relationship."

Curt Cignetti Indiana Football — Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti against the Maryland Terrapins at SECU Stadium. | Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images

Out of Gateway High School in Monoreville, Pa., Smith played wide receiver for the Nittany Lions from 1987-91 and later coached Pennsylvania high school football, as well as Duquesne and Temple. He returned to his alma mater when Franklin was hired in 2014, and has since been an associate head coach and cornerbacks coach.

Cignetti, a Pittsburgh native, also had coaching stints at Temple, Pitt and IU-Pennsylvania before making his way to Bloomington. On Saturday, the two will face off in Smith's first Beaver Stadium home game as Penn State's interim head coach against the No. 2 Hoosiers at noon ET.

The Nittany Lions have lost five straight games, but four have come by one possession –– the outlier being last week's 38-14 loss at No. 1 Penn State. Smith is 0-2 as the interim, beginning with a 25-24 loss at Iowa on Oct. 18. But from Cignetti's perspective, the Nittany Lions are playing with some fire under Smith and will pose a challenge on Saturday.

"Terry has done a really good job of sort of rejuvenating these guys, and it'll be his first opportunity to play a game at home," Cignetti said. "Tough place to play, 100,000 plus people. They're a really good football team. They've had some tough times, and we've got to have a great day today and a great week to stack days just like always. Be prepared, have the right mindset, play really, really well, first play to last play."

"Been a change up there, obviously. James Franklin, fifth in the country last year, was about 105-40 after 11 years, did a tremendous job, has always represented himself with class. A lot of respect for him and Penn State. Always have had a lot of respect for Penn State, too."

Now in his second season at Indiana, Cignetti has engineered one of the best turnarounds in college football history. The Hoosiers went 9-27 in three seasons before his arrival, but he's immediately turned them into a national contender with a 20-2 overall record.

Indiana reached the College Football Playoff last season, and the Hoosiers are sure to be among the nation's top teams when the first set of CFP rankings are released Tuesday night. Having known Cignetti and his family of coaches for years, Smith shared his perspective on what has led to Indiana's success.

"He's an outstanding coach," Smith said. "His entire family, they're just all men that have been coaching. You know, he has a methodical approach to things. He's a player developer.  He runs a great program. Obviously, at JMU and all the places he's been; Elon, just everywhere he's had success."

"Guys buy into the program and once you get buy-in and trust, you go do some special things. That's what he's doing right now. He's got those guys playing as good as anyone in the country. I respect everything he's doing and he's doing it the right way. "

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