College Football Playoff National Championship: Miami v Indiana
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A few months from now, as has been the case for the last decade, my colleagues and I will receive an email from our editor with a ballot in it. We will be instructed to rank the Power Four coaches in order from best to worst; however, we see fit.

I don't know how my colleagues will vote, but I can tell you right now who I'll be putting at No. 1 on my ballot: Indiana's Curt Cignetti.

There were many seasons where I didn't have to debate much. Nick Saban was the best coach in the sport, and he's the best college football coach of all time. Still, I don't know that Saban ever did anything as difficult as what Curt Cignetti accomplished in two years at Indiana.

Saban won six national titles at Alabama to give him seven total after winning one at LSU too. He didn't build those programs from nothing, though. LSU hadn't won a national title since 1958, but it has long been one of the top programs in the sport, and it's won two more since Saban left. Those six he won at Alabama were incredible, and his first ended a 17-year drought that no doubt felt like a lifetime in Tuscaloosa, but Saban's first at Alabama was the school's 13th.

Compare that to Curt Cignetti, who inherited an Indiana program that had long been one of the losingest programs in the country. It had never won a national title. Hell, it hadn't won a Big Ten title since 1967, and even that was a split title. It was a program that had long been a doormat in the Big Ten at a school that treated football as something you had to suffer through before basketball season started.

Further complicating the situation, it was a Big Ten conference that had just added four new programs in Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington. All of whom had far more football success than Indiana, and like every other school in the Big Ten, looked at Indiana on the schedule every year as a win. In other words, the Big Ten that Curt Cignetti walked into was more difficult than the one that had already been kicking Indiana's ass for most of the last 125 years.

In two years, he delivered a Big Ten championship and a national title. It is the most impressive thing I've ever seen in college football. Remember, not only did he win a larger, more difficult Big Ten, but he won a national title in an era where it's harder to win the national title than ever before. It's no longer just about putting together a perfect 11-0 or 12-0 and hoping the media notices. It's not even the BCS or the four-team College Football Playoff. You have to not only make the tournament, but you have to beat at least three of the best teams in the country when you get there.

And he did it at Indiana. Indiana. In two seasons.

Yes, Kirby Smart has won two national titles, as has Dabo Swinney. That's awesome, but Cignetti won more playoff games this year than those two have combined in the last four seasons.

Ryan Day has a national title as well, but he's been at Ohio State -- Ohio State -- for seven seasons and needed six years to accomplish that. Cig took two.

And he told us all along, this is what he would do! Cignetti showed up at Indiana and immediately began talking smack about Indiana's Big Ten foes in a pep rally at a basketball game. During his press conference, he told people, "I win. Google me."

Then he won, but nobody needs to Google Curt Cignetti anymore. They already know who he is.

He's the best damn coach in college football.