My Two Cents: Indiana is a Better Football Team Because Tom Allen is a Better Coach
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – When Tom Allen was hired to be Indiana's football coach four years ago, the snickers started almost immediately. He's just a high school coach, the critics cried. He's a cheap hire, they said, which was always the Indiana way when it came to football.
Tom Allen had a vision, though, a vision of what Indiana football could be. So he went to work, He hired a staff, and they went to work, too. They recruited day and night and the players they've reeled in, they've worked and worked.
With all that, this program has gotten better. It's gone from the bottom of the Big Ten to near the top. Indiana is 6-1 this year, a team ranked No. 7 in the country. Players are winning All-American honors, and coaches are getting recognition and new jobs.
Indiana football is for real, much like Tom Allen thought it could be.
And one thing that often gets overlooked is that Tom Allen is a better coach now than he was a few years ago. He's grown up, too, He's smarter now, There is absolutely no doubt that Tom Allen at 50 is a better football coach than he was at 46.
One of the biggest reasons why is that Allen has learned how to delegate. He doesn't have to do everything himself anymore. He's hired a great staff, and now he lets them to their job. A coordinator most of his life, it was hard for him to give up calling the defensive plays, but he knew that was the right thing to do.
And the results are evident.
"I think the biggest thing is delegating and just trusting your coaches to be able to do more things so I can be more effective at the things I need to be focusing on instead of trying to do too many things myself.,'' Allen said Monday during his meeting with the media ahead of Saturday's Outback Bowl game against Ole Miss. "That's probably been the biggest thing.
"Relinquishing calling the plays was big, and having a guy like Mike Hart now as an associate head coach, who really does a lot of things to help me as a head coach. I let him to do things, and then we talk about it. That's helped a lot.''
Managing the game has come easier, too. See more, learn more. It really is that simple.
"I'm more comfortable with the game itself, and the anticipation of things that are going to happen during the course of the game,'' Allen said. "That's something you grow with as a head coach
"Just learning how to anticipate things that can happen with your team, and how to keep your team in the right mindset amidst the good and the bad, that's important,'' he said. "Those things come to mind. It's just like anything else. The more you do things, the better you get better at it, especially when you listen to your coaches when they tell you things you can get better at. I think we all have to have that coachability to ourselves, and that goes for me, too.''
The person who understands that better than anyone is Kane Wommack. Allen hired him three years ago to be the linebackers coach, and last year Allen promoted him to defensive coordinator so Allen could focus strictly on head coaching duties.
That's a lot for Allen to walk away from the sauce. It's up to Wommack to keep stirring. This is, after all, Tom Allen's defense.
"The first year that I was here, I was getting adapted to how we do things and when Tom turned the reigns over to me defensively about a year ago. I found the blend of what I envisioned and what Tom envisioned for the defense,'' Wommack said.
"There we some things in the early part of the 2019 season that we really had to work through and have tough conversations back and forth, so it was really good and we were really close. It is has brought us closer together going through those things and truly building a system that we both felt very comfortable about. ''
Wommack, who will be the head coach at South Alabama next year, says going through all of that will help him down the road, too.
"That 'a-ha' moment for me was how do I be the defensive coordinator for this program he envisioned and not the one I envisioned myself,'' Wommack said. "That's important, and it's a great lesson to learn as I move into being a head coach. It's something that I can communicate and work through with my coordinators and assistant coaches.
"Ultimately as the head coach, there is a vision that needs to be cast from top to bottom, and everybody has to buy into that vision. Not that everybody will not put their own spin and creativity upon that, that's what makes it unique to individuals and the team, but at the same time understanding that vision all has to be seen from the top down and everybody has to execute that vision in their role. That's one of the things I have learned most in my time here at Indiana.''
Learning isn't just for the players. The coaches learn as they go too, and that's what had made this team so much better. They keep hitting all the right buttons.
And that's what makes Saturday's game against Ole Miss so important. Everyone knows the numbers. It's been 29 years since Indiana has won a bowl game That's a streak they want to end.
They learned from last year's 23-22 defeat by Tennessee in the Gator Bowl, and they don't want a repeat of that. So they're getting everything done as well as they can. But you never think you've done enough.
"We're trying to maximize (preparation time) and you don't want to start too early on an opponent. You don't want it to get stale,'' Allen said. "We have been in these situations several times in the past and just trying to create a different outcome for us here. I feel good about where we are.
"I guess you never know for sure until you go out and start playing the game, but to be able to go through what we have, and now get into the normal week. We need to have a great week. You got to have that high level of attention to detail, great focus. I challenged our guys today as we left the field, that we need to have our best Tuesday tomorrow and we've got to have our best Wednesday on Wednesday. That's the mindset and our guys have bought into that. They have worked hard. They have trained well. This is what we do.''
And they're doing it well.
