Five years ago, Curt Cignetti and Kalen DeBoer combined to earn less than $2 million as head coaches.
On Thursday, Cignetti’s top-seeded Hoosiers face DeBoer’s Crimson Tide in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals, a matchup between two coaches who began at smaller programs, have worked for each other’s schools, and now hold two of the richest contracts in the sport.
NAIA Roots, Alabama Riches
DeBoer’s first head-coaching job was at Sioux Falls, his alma mater and then an NAIA school, where he went 67–3 with three NAIA titles in four seasons as head coach. His success there vaulted him to Division I, where he spent time as a position coach and offensive coordinator at Southern Illinois, Eastern Michigan, Fresno State, and Indiana before the Bulldogs brought him back as head coach in 2020.
DeBoer’s salary at Fresno State paid him $1.3 million and $1.35 million, respectively, in his two seasons at Fresno State, according to the USA Today database. Washington hired DeBoer in November 2021 and initially gave him a five-year deal that paid around $3 million annually. The Huskies gave him a new contract a year later after he went 11–2 in his first season in Seattle. His second contract increased his salary to more than $4 million. DeBoer led the Huskies to the College Football Playoff national championship game in 2023, when they lost to Michigan 34–13.
When Alabama hired him to replace legendary coach Nick Saban in 2024, the school gave him an eight-year contract worth $87 million that pays almost $11 million annually, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football. The deal pays roughly 10 times more annually than DeBoer’s Fresno State gig did.
Humble Start, Hoosiers Rise
DeBoer’s rise still pales in comparison to Cignetti’s salary increases. Cignetti was hired by James Madison in 2019 after head coaching gigs at Elon and Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The Crimson Hawks hired Cignetti after he spent five seasons as Alabama’s wide receivers coach under Saban.
At JMU, Cignetti’s first contract paid less than $500,000 per year, starting at $425,000 in 2019 and increasing by $12,000 each year until the Dukes gave him a new deal that increased his pay to $621,000 in his final two years with the program.
Indiana hired Cignetti away in 2024 for a salary of $4.25 million and proceeded to give him three contracts through his first 19 games as he quickly turned the Hoosiers into a national powerhouse. His latest contract pays him an average of $11.6 million annually. Indiana made the College Football Playoff in 2024 and enters Thursday’s game 13–0 after beating Ohio State in the Big Ten title game for the program’s first conference championship since 1967.
