University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Carolina Connections Exist for Cignetti
January 5, 2006 | Football
Jan. 4, 2006
By Adam Lucas
With over 40 years of college and professional coaching on his resume, Gary Tranquill had a lifetime of contacts to choose from when he wanted to talk about offense.
He chose Frank Cignetti.
Cignetti was introduced Tuesday night as Carolina's new offensive coordinator. But he won't need a complete introduction to the Tar Heel offense.
Last spring, Tranquill was thinking back through his coaching career. His numerous stops at the college and pro level afforded him the luxury of a vast network of offensive minds. One stood out.
"I probably talk to Frankie Cignetti two or three times a week," Tranquill said at the time. "We talk about all kinds of things. What we're doing offensively, how we approach certain things, ways to attack different looks. It's a give-and-take process."
Tranquill can get away with calling him "Frankie." But the new coordinator will be known as Frank--or, more accurately, Coach Cignetti--to Tar Heel fans. They didn't coach with his father, Frank Cignetti Sr., at West Virginia, as Tranquill did. That was a star-studded staff that included Nick Saban as the secondary coach; Tranquill was the defensive coordinator.
Yes, defensive. Under Cignetti Sr., Tranquill coached defense. The next year, with Don Nehlen in place as the head coach, he switched to offensive coordinator. It's a move many of today's coaches couldn't make.
"With some of the younger coaches today, they only work with one position and they get on one channel about it," Tranquill said. "They lose a concept of the big picture. But when I played a hundred years ago I played on both sides of the ball, and I think it has helped to coach on both sides of the ball. Today everyone is so highly trained at one specific position they can't tell you much about the other positions."
Initial appearances suggest they make a strange pair. Tranquill, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Yoda, was usually depicted as a football traditionalist, even when his offenses were rewriting the Carolina record book. Cignetti Jr., who looks more like a fighter pilot, will be depicted as part of football's new breed of coaches, which is code for pass-happy and unorthodox. But his 2004 Fresno State squad led the WAC in yards per carry (5.4) and the Bulldogs ran 906 plays this year--over half were rushes. That's an above-average ratio in the point-a-minute WAC.
"Gary is one of my mentors," Cignetti said. "We have the common beliefs that you have to have a solid run game and run the football to be effective. You have to minimize your mistakes to be effective. You have to secure the football. When you drop back to throw the football it starts with protecting the football and being able to complete the football...There might be different groupings or different formations or different plays, but when you look at the foundation of offensive football there are going to be a lot of similarities."
That's probably because they're building from a very similar foundation. Like Tranquill, Cignetti Jr. spent some time coaching defense, serving as the secondary coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania for two seasons. When he switched to quarterbacks coach in 1995, he knew where to start: Gary Tranquill.
"I remember sitting in a classroom and Gary took me through step one: Mike (middle linebacker) declaration," Cignetti said.
He's built a very impressive resume from that day in a classroom with Tranquill 10 years ago. He's been the student. Now he's the teacher.
And now Cignetti will be sitting in the office where many telephone calls to him have originated over the past few years.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
