Tom Allen: 'There's Still More Questions Than Answers' on Football Future
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — By nature, football coaches are creatures of habit. They like to work on schedules and timelines, and they like to always know what comes next.
Enter COVID-19, and its complete disruption of life as we know it. The virus has affected everyone, of course, and that includes Indiana football coach Tom Allen, who has had to replace spring football practices with video conferences and working from the kitchen table instead of his office.
It's one thing to adapt on the fly and get through the spring, and Allen and his team have done exactly that, but now the biggest concern is what happens to the football season in the fall. Will the season start on time? Will it be shortened? Will there be fans? Could there — gasp — possibly be no season at all?
Questions, questions, questions — and literally no answers right now.
"We all want to have a season, but we want to do it in a way that's safe for everyone involved,'' Allen said in a video conference with reporters on Wednesday. "Whether it's delayed or modified or pushed back, I don't know. People that get paid to make these decisions and evaluate from a health perspective, we're going to trust them.''
And that worst case scenario, of no football at all? Allen so doesn't want to go there.
"When they talk about looking at all the possible options, I can't sit here and tell you that one of those plans is no football,'' he said. "I have no say-so in any of that, and it's not my decision. It would be hard to accept that. It would be tough situation for everybody, for a lot of reasons.
"You have to be flexible, and you have to adapt and plan. I'm more focused on what I can control. I told my staff today, 'This is what I do know, and we're going to work off those facts.'
Allen has stressed from the beginning that the health and safety of his players and everyone else in his program is top priority. That's why everyone was sent home when the campus was shut down.
"The health and safety of our players is our No. 1 priority, period,'' Allen said. "That's going to drive our decisions, and we're going to listen to the medical experts and the government officials and the leadership of the university.
"When they tell us it's safe to come back, we'll come back. We're trying to plan. I told our staff, it's like planning in the sand. Because you can draw things up and have things planned out, but no one really knows. There's a lot of question marks still out there. "There are a lot of questions, but not a lot of answers for a lot of things. Looking at all the options, they;'re trying to find creative ways to do this in a way that's safe for everybody.''
Allen said the biggest thing moving forward to remaining flexible and being ready to adapt to any timeline that emerges. It's too hard to guess, so they just prepare for a myriad of options.
MORE VIDEO: Tom Allen talks about the options
"I think, No. 1, we continue to have lots of meetings about these topics and we'll continue to have more this week, and every single week. We seem to have more information as every week passes. We're going to put those plans in pencil, because they may have to be adjusted in the future or in the next couple of months.
"We're going to plan that we are going to be playing. I don't know how when, where or how, or how that's going to look. There's still a lot of time. We're still here, it's April 22, and there's a lot of time between now and when those decisions have to be made.' I'm an optimistic guy and I believe in the people who hare working hard on all this. ''
Allen is well aware that there are things more important than football right now, but if there's going to be football, he and his staff are going to be ready.
"As a group, we'll come together and make the best decision possible. We're going to trust the leadership of the state, and our federal government, the NCAA and the Big Ten Conference, and as a group we'll come together and make the best decision possible.
"Once they tell us when and where we can come back and what we need to do, we'll have a great plan. I feel like we have a flexible response right now that's ready to take advantage of whatever we're told to do.''
