My Two Cents: Tom Allen Has No Regrets About Raising Preseason Expectations

Indiana talked about contending for a Big Ten title this season, but complacency and a slew of injuries to many of their best players has turned this season into a disaster. Tom Allen said he has no regrets over chasing lofty goals, even if the season didn't turn out the way he had hoped.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Facts are facts, and history is history. And that's the great thing about history. It doesn't get changed just because new events occur.

Take the 2020 college football season, for example. Indiana went 6-1 in the Big Ten and finished second in the Big Ten East. That is a fact. The Hoosiers' only loss was 42-35 to Ohio State, a team that played in the national championship game. Indiana was seven points away from winning their first-ever division title.

Factoring in that success and the number of returning stars, Allen raised the bar when 2021 rolled around. For the first time in his five years at Indiana, he pushed in all of his chips and started talking about contending for a Big Ten title. 

Was thinking big picture the wrong thing? Was it too much?

I asked Allen on Monday if he had any regrets chasing such a lofty goal, one that Indiana hasn't accomplished since 1967. No, he doesn't, he said, because it seemed right at the time. The question led to a detailed and lengthy answer, and was followed by more questions on the same topic, of how all those great expectations fizzled into thin air and a season went off the rails in a hurry and turned into a massive train wreck for the 2-8 Hoosiers, who have lost 30 players to injury and still haven't won a Big Ten game in seven tries.

Here's his answer:

"You know, no. I don't (regret it). When you don't get the results you want, you go back and you evaluate everything. I've thought that through. I've thought that through several times because basically, you know, the whole objective was to elevate the next level focus and vision of what you want, right?

"... I've always felt since I've been here that our guys really didn't even believe we could win the Big Ten. That's why I said I don't want you guys to break it down on Big 10 championships anymore because those are empty words. I felt that way when I first got here just by watching how everything was being done and the way that the guys prepared. And that's during the season, offseason — all that stuff. I felt like that we had put ourselves in a position — not just 2020, but even 2019 — the changes and the different outcomes on game day and the places that we were able to get victories we hadn't had in the past, at least the recent past.

"And so you talk about, OK, what's next in terms of how you see where you are. You come up with the one word chase, which I thought was a great one word for this season to be able to take where we were, to take it to another level because that's what it's about. Right? Hey, we finished second in the Big Ten East last year. As I've said before, and I'll say it again, you don't break it down on 'runners-up on two.' It's about, you know, we want to win the Big Ten. That's been a program goal since I've been here.

"To be able to help our guys take themselves to stretch that vision another step, that would be the mindset. And so you think about that, and the vision is where you want to be. We talk about chasing greatness. What does greatness look like for this group? I said, without hesitation, winning the Big Ten, you know.

And that's the vision. I came here to eventually one day win the Big Ten Championship. And that's the goal. To me, to be able to take a team that I believe had the infrastructure and the talent to do so, that's what I put out there for our guys to be able to chase after. To me, without a vision,  people perish. You've got to have that,  something that stretches you.

"Is that the reason why we didn't perform well? You know what? I don't think so. There's other variables involved. But at the same time, we didn't perform well. So you've got to go back and evaluate. I'll go back in the offseason and try to figure out where we maybe missed some things. Obviously, as a collective group, would we have been satisfied with just being middle of the pack or above middle of the pack? That's not what I envisioned for this group.

I did envision them to be able to compet for and be in the hunt for Big Ten Championship. That was my vision. That was what I believed. And I don't go back to, man, I missed it on that, you know. So have we played to that level? No.

But at the same time, I believed it. And I wanted our guys to see it. I wanted our guys to be able to understand that, because, you don't really know what you can do. And you limit yourself by putting in caps. Everybody kind of decides what Indiana can become as a program because of its past. And I get it. I get the past is why people predict things or say things about your future. I understand that.

"But how do you break through that? How do you tear down those barriers and those ceilings that people place on you? And, to me, it's by having a vision, casting that vision, and then doing things in place to help surround yourself with people that believe in that vision and players that believe in that vision and want to help you go do that.

"I know it's a long answer, but I've thought long and hard about some of these things. And, obviously, this has been very, very difficult, very challenging. Obviously, we lost a lot of guys. And we don't look the same as we did. But at the same time, that's part of it. We didn't have a lot of injuries last year. I'll do an absolute introspective look at every little thing we did leading up to this year from fall camp to right before the season, to during the season to things in the offseason and in the summertime and in the wintertime.

"And same with talking to (strength) coach (Aaron) Wellman and everything we're doing to try to figure out why we had 30 guys miss (games) because of injuries, 18 guys that we've lost for the season. Those are things that we've got to look at. And we'll just look at this whole program from top to bottom and just make those corrections and press on.''

That's a lot to digest, I know. Many followers constantly harp that last year was a fluke, but they would be wrong. They were the better team on those days against Penn State and Michigan and Michigan State and Wisconsin.

The difference in 2021 is that they all got better. Indiana didn't. I don't use injuries as an excuse — but I use it as a fact. Eighteen guys lost for the season, including their top three quarterbacks. They had to turn to a true freshman — Donaven McCulley — who is nowhere near ready to play college football.

The top four running backs headed into fall camp weren't available to play on Saturuday in the loss to Rutgers. Stephen Carr was out with an ankle injury and two guys — Sampson James and Tim Baldwin Jr. — quit on their teammates and entered the transfer portal in August and September. Indiana used three walk-ons at running back on Saturday.

"You just have to keep pushing,'' McCulley said. "It’s going to get hard, like your life is going to be hard. You just have to keep fighting. You can’t give up. We’re just going to try to win these next (two)  games.

Indiana senior linebacker Micah McFadden said Saturday that "there could have been a little more effort throughout our fall camp preparation to really get everybody’s minds ready for this season and this schedule and opponents that we played.''

And he's right. Complacency might have set in a bit after two seasons on the rise. The season slipped early and completely fell apart.

It will likely end badly, too, with so many people out. Indiana has its final home game on Saturday against Minnesota and then ends the painful year at Purdue on Nov. 27. They are big underdogs in both games, and will likely go 2-10 after finishing 6-1 in the regular season a year ago.

What we'll learn now going forward is whether THIS is the fluke season. Allen will have to make some hard decisions in the offseason with his coaching staff. He has Indiana's best-ever recruiting class coming in and they will have to attack the transfer portal hard again. It works. Michigan State is the perfect example of that.

It's hard to climb in the Big Ten East, and what we've learned is that it's even harder to stay there.

But still, you press on. There is no national championship pedigree in Indiana's football program. It's not basketball. Indiana has a brutal history. Tom Allen started to change that, and 14 wins in two years proved that things were getting better.

Now, they've taken a step back. And where do they go from here? That's a huge unknown right now.

"I feel there's definitely some things to go back and evaluate. And we will,'' Allen said. "And sometimes, you see things and you kind of make a little mental note. And when things don't go the way you want them to go, you're going to have to do a really, really deep evaluation, without question.''