Before Curt Cignetti made college football history winning, he endured a lot of losing

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Nearly 50 years before he would lead Indiana to the most unlikely national championship in college football history, Curt Cignetti got a harsh lesson about the perils of losing.In November 1978, during Curt’s senior year of high school, his father, Frank, then the head coach at West Virginia, came down with a mysterious illness. Curt idolized his dad, who he would later say “had a little John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in him.” Curt had been on the Mountaineers’ sideline with Frank since he was 9, back when his dad was an assistant under Bobby Bowden.Advertisement