November 8 Notebook
November 08, 2005 04:54 PM | General
November 8, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For whatever reasons good coaches sometimes don’t win. Such was the case at West Virginia University during Frank Cignetti’s four-year tenure as the Mountaineers' head football coach from 1976-79.
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| Former West Virginia football coach Frank Cignetti recently announced his retirement from the coaching ranks after 20 seasons at Indiana, Pa.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
Cignetti came to WVU in 1970 to coordinate Bobby Bowden’s offense and then later was named the school’s 29th football coach in 1976 when Bowden left for Florida State. The best record Cignetti’s West Virginia teams could muster were 5-6 marks in 1976, 1977 and 1979. His 1978 squad slipped to 2-9 during the lowest point of his life when he was suffering from a rare form of cancer.
Cignetti says the lowest point of his WVU coaching career came in 1977 when his 4-1 Mountaineer team lost 28-24 to Boston College in Morgantown. “Everybody was hurt … we had 11 people out for the game,” Cignetti said in 1980. “We were 4-1 and headed for a bowl game. We never recovered. You’ll never know how many sleepless nights I had then.”
Or later, when Cignetti’s weight dropped from 215 pounds to 168 as doctors tried to figure out what was ailing him. He endured three operations (one of them for the removal of his spleen that nearly cost him his life) in the winter of 1978 and he spent the 1979 recruiting season recuperating in an effort to get ready for spring football practice. It wasn’t revealed publicly that Cignetti was suffering from cancer until the summer of 1979.
There were persistent rumors that Cignetti was going to be moved to another position within the university and that ex-Colorado coach Bill Mallory was going to be brought in to run the football program. But Cignetti fought for his professional life just as he did his own life and was well enough after chemotherapy sessions to coach the 1979 season – his fourth straight losing campaign – but was fired soon after West Virginia’s season-ending 42-7 loss at Arizona State.
“I’m not some kind of brave, courageous man,” Cignetti told former Charleston Daily Mail sports editor Bill Smith before the 1979 season. “I don’t think I’m stupid either. I’m just a guy who’s trying to coach a football team. I’m not looking for public recognition. I know I’m going to have to answer the same questions over and over as the season goes on. What can I say? I can only repeat what I’ve said before.
“I don’t want to die. I want to live and I want to coach.”
The Apollo, Pa., native was eventually able to resume his coaching career in 1986 at Indiana, Pa., where he compiled a marvelous 182-50-1 record in 20 seasons that included a Division II record 28 postseason games, five appearances in the national semifinals and two trips to the national championship game.
He came closest to winning a national title in 1993 when his IUP team suffered a last-second loss to North Alabama in the national championship game. His 199 victories are third-most among current Division II coaches and his 15 postseason wins are second-most all-time in D-II history. He was the national coach of the year in 1991 and 1993 and was a five-time conference coach of the year.
Last week the 68-year-old Cignetti announced that this season was to be his last as a college football coach. He leaves behind a lasting legacy at IUP.
But there is also a legacy at West Virginia University, too. Cignetti’s four-year record of 17-27 doesn’t fully explain his contributions to the school. Those who coached with him say he was a brilliant offensive tactician who could think on his feet. It was Cignetti’s call from the booth that led to West Virginia’s last-second touchdown that beat Miami in 1973, and his decision to put in a misdirection play to fullbacks Heywood Smith and Ron Lee helped West Virginia upset Pac-8 co-champ Cal on the road in 1975.
Even though Cignetti rarely won recruiting battles against Penn State and Pitt, he still managed to sign several outstanding football players that rank among the best in school history: most notably linebackers Darryl Talley, Dennis Fowlkes and Delbert Fowler, quarterback Oliver Luck, defensive backs Jerry Holmes and Fulton Walker, wide receiver Cedric Thomas, and running backs Walter Easley and Robert Alexander.
There were also some of the best coaches in football on Cignetti’s West Virginia coaching staffs, including Nick Saban, Gary Stevens, Joe Pendry, Greg Williams and Rick Trickett.
“I tell people Nick Saban and I got fired at the same time,” laughed Dave Van Halanger. “He went on to become the highest paid coach in history.”
Some have characterized Cignetti’s tenure as one of the low points in the school’s history; others referred to the state of the West Virginia program back in 1979 as being “one of the nation’s 10 worst at the time.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. The Mountaineers were playing a national schedule that featured the likes of Arizona State, Oklahoma, North Carolina State and California – replacing such schools as William & Mary, VMI and The Citadel. A new 50,000-seat football stadium was under construction (the alternative was remodeling antiquated old Mountaineer Field) and Cignetti left his successor Don Nehlen a football team that had 40 of its top 44 players returning for the 1980 season. Among those were Talley, Luck, Alexander, Fowlkes, Fowler and Walker.
Certainly the nation’s worst programs don’t go from two wins one year to a bowl game three years later, just ask Rutgers, Temple, Baylor, Duke or Kentucky. They also don’t play in brand new state-of-the-art football stadiums.
“When Frank leaves in 1979 we open up that new stadium in 1980,” said Van Halanger, now the strength and conditioning coach at Georgia. “We get the new weight room and we get the new everything. We were close.
“We played a great Pitt team in Morgantown the last game in the old stadium and they beat us 24-17 and we were driving. They had Rickey Jackson, Hugh Green and all those great, talented players,” Van Halanger said.
Cignetti had to deal with two powerhouse programs close by in Pitt and Penn State the likes of which no other WVU coach with the exception of Nehlen had to contend with. Pitt and Penn State weren’t just good in the late 1970s -- they were elite. Jerry Claiborne’s Maryland Terrapin teams of the mid 1970s were the class of the ACC and Kentucky was a formidable program back then, too. Those things are sometimes lost in the haze of time.
In an effort to get some additional biographical information on Cignetti, I retrieved his news clipping file from the archives. Most of the clips were a depressing array of accounts concerning his medical condition that must have been extremely difficult for his young family to read at the time. Of course the record book will read: Frank Cignetti 17-27 as WVU's football coach. But those who know Cignetti and worked closely with him during his days at WVU will always remember him going 1-0 against cancer.
I have never met Cignetti and only had a brief telephone conversation with him for a story I wrote about the 1975 Peach Bowl team earlier this summer. He was gracious with his time, patiently answering my questions while preparing for what turned out to be his last season at IUP.
However, I did get to know the late Jack Fleming very well through the years and I specifically recall a conversation with Fleming once about the Cignetti years at WVU. The famous voice of the “Immaculate Reception” became a big fan of Cignetti as a first-hand witness to his courage, dedication to his job and family, and his strong values. Said Fleming, “There isn’t a man I admired more than Frank Cignetti.”
That is a tall tribute, indeed.
Good luck with your well-deserved retirement Coach Cignetti.
