CIGNETTI STILL ADMIRED
May 02, 2011 10:45 AM | General
We know Bobby Bowden’s story. There have been at least 13 or 14 books written about him; Bowden says he is not entirely sure how many because he’s lost count.
Don Nehlen spent 21 seasons at West Virginia, and of course we know just about all there is to know about his fabulous coaching career in Morgantown.
Jim Carlen?
He came to WVU like a Tennessee tornado in 1966 and turned the campus upside down. By the time he left in 1969, the football program had charted an entirely different course as an eastern independent after spending the prior 18 seasons playing in the old Southern Conference.
Frank Cignetti, the guy who coached in between Nehlen and Bowden, is somewhat of a mystery to the younger generation of Mountaineer football fans. When Rich Rodriguez struggled mightily during his first year in 2001, his team going 3-8 and Rodriguez bucking tradition by choosing to wear those white football pants – the same ones Cignetti’s teams wore in the late 1970s - the most often-heard phrase on the streets that year was the football program was returning to the Frank Cignetti years.
For Mountaineer fans, it was not-too-subtle code for losing football.
Yes, Cignetti’s four years as head coach were not the best of times, three 5-6 seasons wrapped around a disastrous 2-9 campaign in 1978 that led to his 17-27 overall record. Outside of the Depression years in the 1930s, when the school was broke because of debt incurred from the construction of the football stadium, no period in Mountaineer football history seemed bleaker.
But what Cignetti had to work with, in terms of the resources he had at his disposal and in terms of the difficult schedules he faced in the late 1970s, those things made his job perhaps the toughest in school history.
Not even the great Greasy Neale, a Hall of Fame coach who spent three losing seasons at WVU in the early 1930s, had it quite as bad as Cignetti. At least Neale had a brand new stadium to work out of. Plus, he had Joe Stydahar.
All Cignetti had were problems, problems and more problems.
“Frank was a heck of a coach, he was just here at the wrong time,” said Nehlen. “The cupboard wasn’t very well stocked and there were no facilities to recruit. I don’t care who the coach was here during that time, plus the schedule was just so hard. Jim and Bobby had it a little easier because they were in that Southern Conference, but when Frank had the job it was a different story.”
To the north, Cignetti had to contend with Penn State and Pitt – two top 10 football programs at the time. To the immediate east was Maryland, a top 25 program under Jerry Claiborne. To the south he had to deal with Virginia Tech and Kentucky, and to the west Cignetti had to recruit against Ohio State and Michigan.
It was an impossible task, for anybody.
“I’ll never forget the day I came down for my interview with Bobby,” Cignetti said, a smile forming on his face. “My wife (Marlene) came with me to our visit to old Mountaineer Field and all of the plumbing in the stadium was frozen and she had to go to the bathroom and nothing was working. You know what old Mountaineer Field looked like in the winter.
“Well, after we had talked and Bobby had offered me the job, we’re driving back home and she said, ‘Frank, there is no way I’m going to Morgantown!’ So I accepted the job, we moved to Morgantown and believe me, if you ask my wife where the best place she’s ever been she will tell you Morgantown – West Virginia University.”
Six years after first meeting Bowden, when Cignetti became WVU’s head coach, he had a reduced recruiting budget to work with and a stadium that was literally falling apart above his head.
“You would be out on the road recruiting and come February the state budget would be in trouble … you can’t be traveling out of the state,” Cignetti recalled. “It’s like being in a poker game and you’ve got a good hand and you’ve got it going and you don’t have money to stay in the game. That was a problem at that time of the year, usually right before signing day.”
And when there was talk of a new football stadium, nobody stumped harder for it than Cignetti. He spent countless hours driving to Charleston and speaking to civic groups around the state, even during his last two years coaching the Mountaineers when he was suffering from a rare form of cancer.
“I got that thing started when I was coaching here in terms of talking about the needs for the program and so forth,” Cignetti noted. “After I was ill and I wasn’t sure how my health was going to come along, I oversaw the transition into those facilities. Believe me, they were outstanding.”
Even during his darkest days in 1978 and 1979, Cignetti always had an eye toward the future. Something lost in those two losing campaigns was Cignetti’s courageous decision to play younger guys, particularly in 1979 when he was fighting to keep his job. It was a selfless act in a very selfish profession, and the direct beneficiary of Cignetti’s forward thinking was none other than Don Nehlen.
“We inherited a lot more football players than people think,” Nehlen admitted. “We didn’t have 500 or 400, but we had some good football players and in my opinion Frank has never been given the due that he deserves at West Virginia.”
Cignetti said he has always related with the hard-working people of West Virginia because he came from a similar background growing up in Western Pennsylvania.
“My father worked in the coal mines, suffered a broken back, and my oldest brother had a football scholarship to Ohio State and he had to go work in the mills to help support the family,” Cignetti recalled. “I understand the adversity the people of West Virginia have been through – great people; great hard-working people - love your coaches when they win …
“They love you when you lose, but they let you know it,” he laughed.
I can remember the late Jack Fleming once telling me that the man he most admired was Frank Cignetti. Now I know why.
Don Nehlen spent 21 seasons at West Virginia, and of course we know just about all there is to know about his fabulous coaching career in Morgantown.
Jim Carlen?
He came to WVU like a Tennessee tornado in 1966 and turned the campus upside down. By the time he left in 1969, the football program had charted an entirely different course as an eastern independent after spending the prior 18 seasons playing in the old Southern Conference.
Frank Cignetti, the guy who coached in between Nehlen and Bowden, is somewhat of a mystery to the younger generation of Mountaineer football fans. When Rich Rodriguez struggled mightily during his first year in 2001, his team going 3-8 and Rodriguez bucking tradition by choosing to wear those white football pants – the same ones Cignetti’s teams wore in the late 1970s - the most often-heard phrase on the streets that year was the football program was returning to the Frank Cignetti years.
For Mountaineer fans, it was not-too-subtle code for losing football.
Yes, Cignetti’s four years as head coach were not the best of times, three 5-6 seasons wrapped around a disastrous 2-9 campaign in 1978 that led to his 17-27 overall record. Outside of the Depression years in the 1930s, when the school was broke because of debt incurred from the construction of the football stadium, no period in Mountaineer football history seemed bleaker.
But what Cignetti had to work with, in terms of the resources he had at his disposal and in terms of the difficult schedules he faced in the late 1970s, those things made his job perhaps the toughest in school history.
Not even the great Greasy Neale, a Hall of Fame coach who spent three losing seasons at WVU in the early 1930s, had it quite as bad as Cignetti. At least Neale had a brand new stadium to work out of. Plus, he had Joe Stydahar.
All Cignetti had were problems, problems and more problems.
“Frank was a heck of a coach, he was just here at the wrong time,” said Nehlen. “The cupboard wasn’t very well stocked and there were no facilities to recruit. I don’t care who the coach was here during that time, plus the schedule was just so hard. Jim and Bobby had it a little easier because they were in that Southern Conference, but when Frank had the job it was a different story.”
To the north, Cignetti had to contend with Penn State and Pitt – two top 10 football programs at the time. To the immediate east was Maryland, a top 25 program under Jerry Claiborne. To the south he had to deal with Virginia Tech and Kentucky, and to the west Cignetti had to recruit against Ohio State and Michigan.
It was an impossible task, for anybody.
“I’ll never forget the day I came down for my interview with Bobby,” Cignetti said, a smile forming on his face. “My wife (Marlene) came with me to our visit to old Mountaineer Field and all of the plumbing in the stadium was frozen and she had to go to the bathroom and nothing was working. You know what old Mountaineer Field looked like in the winter.
“Well, after we had talked and Bobby had offered me the job, we’re driving back home and she said, ‘Frank, there is no way I’m going to Morgantown!’ So I accepted the job, we moved to Morgantown and believe me, if you ask my wife where the best place she’s ever been she will tell you Morgantown – West Virginia University.”
Six years after first meeting Bowden, when Cignetti became WVU’s head coach, he had a reduced recruiting budget to work with and a stadium that was literally falling apart above his head.
“You would be out on the road recruiting and come February the state budget would be in trouble … you can’t be traveling out of the state,” Cignetti recalled. “It’s like being in a poker game and you’ve got a good hand and you’ve got it going and you don’t have money to stay in the game. That was a problem at that time of the year, usually right before signing day.”
And when there was talk of a new football stadium, nobody stumped harder for it than Cignetti. He spent countless hours driving to Charleston and speaking to civic groups around the state, even during his last two years coaching the Mountaineers when he was suffering from a rare form of cancer.
“I got that thing started when I was coaching here in terms of talking about the needs for the program and so forth,” Cignetti noted. “After I was ill and I wasn’t sure how my health was going to come along, I oversaw the transition into those facilities. Believe me, they were outstanding.”
Even during his darkest days in 1978 and 1979, Cignetti always had an eye toward the future. Something lost in those two losing campaigns was Cignetti’s courageous decision to play younger guys, particularly in 1979 when he was fighting to keep his job. It was a selfless act in a very selfish profession, and the direct beneficiary of Cignetti’s forward thinking was none other than Don Nehlen.
“We inherited a lot more football players than people think,” Nehlen admitted. “We didn’t have 500 or 400, but we had some good football players and in my opinion Frank has never been given the due that he deserves at West Virginia.”
Cignetti said he has always related with the hard-working people of West Virginia because he came from a similar background growing up in Western Pennsylvania.
“My father worked in the coal mines, suffered a broken back, and my oldest brother had a football scholarship to Ohio State and he had to go work in the mills to help support the family,” Cignetti recalled. “I understand the adversity the people of West Virginia have been through – great people; great hard-working people - love your coaches when they win …
“They love you when you lose, but they let you know it,” he laughed.
I can remember the late Jack Fleming once telling me that the man he most admired was Frank Cignetti. Now I know why.
WRES: Brody Conley
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