Nobody thought that it would take Chris Petersen the better part of a season and a half to get a win over a ranked team, much less one with a winning record. But it did.
The idea of a "signature win" is a notion mostly contrived by sports fans. Oddly enough, the concept seems to only apply to football and, more specifically, to college football.
It goes something like this:
- new coach is hired to put a college program back on track
- program struggles to adapt and seems to take two steps back for every one forward
- said program might win a few big games but not really seem to have turned the corner
- team finally wins a game in a manner that establishes their identity under their coach
Thus the term "signature".