My Two Cents: Be Angry, But Stop With the 'Fire Everybody' Talk, Because it Can't Happen

Indiana football is a mess, and after a fifth-straight loss on Saturday at Rutgers, fans are howling for change. They want everyone fired, but that's just not reality in big-time college football. Money talks first, and cleaning house just can't happen right now.

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — First off, let's dispense with the obvious. You're angry with Indiana football. You have that right, and it's completely understandable. Man, it is so completely understandable.

Second off — yeah, it's a thing — for those of you who have been around the losingest  program in college football history for a long time, this is nothing new to you. And because it's not new, get this:

Quit talking about firing everybody, because that's just not realistic. And it's also not going to happen.

At least not any time soon. We will vote for a new president before we fire an Indiana football coach, and that's a calendar lock.

Indiana lost to Rutgers 24-17 on Friday, but that score does nothing to tell the full story. It was the first time Rutgers won a home Big Ten football game in five years and it solidified — for the second straight year — that Indiana is now once again the worst team in the mighty Big Ten East. The Hoosiers have now lost five games in a row, but this was the ugliest of the losses by far.

And it's a dumpster fire.

But saying all that, it is not realistic to fire Indiana coach Tom Allen right now. And by the way, it's also not realistic and completely foolish for some of you who spout off on social media that the athletic director, Scott Dolson, should be fired, too, or that Indiana should leave the Big Ten. You clearly have no clue about the business side of college athletics.

But I digress. Let's get back to the topic at hand, your desires to fire everybody. Sure, you can be frustrated, but you have to learn to be realistic, too. And firing everybody isn't going to happen.

And the biggest reason why? Because money talks.

Indiana coach Tom Allen reacts during the second half against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights at SHI Stadium. (Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports)

Plenty of blame to go around, for sure

A lot has changed with Indiana football in the past five years, and much of it is very good. Memorial Stadium is now a lovely place to watch a game, especially now with a cold beer in the stands. The football facilities are beautiful. And just two short years ago, the Hoosiers were winning football games.

During the regular seasons in 2019 and 2020, the Hoosiers went 14-5 and beat a lot of really good teams, like Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Michigan State and more. They were seven points away from winning the Big Ten East in 2020, with their only loss at Ohio State, losing 42-35 to a great team that later played for a national title.

It's been a complete sinking ship since then, though. The Hoosiers went 2-10 last year and lost all nine Big Ten teams. They've lost five in a row now, and there's no end in sight to the losing streak.

So yeah, you're angry. But I can tell you right now that despite your wishes, Tom Allen will not be fired today, or at the end of the season. And probably not next year, either.

And why? Because it would cost too much to fire him and no one — not even the most loyal and richest Indiana boosters — are going to pony up $25.5 million to get rid of Allen. It was easy to find $10 million to fire Archie Miller. This isn't that. Two different IU worlds, for sure. The big-money folks won't do that because no one cares about Indiana football enough to foolishly — and it would be very foolish — to spend that kind of money on a buyout.

The reason for that is very simple. Indiana, in more than a century of football, has NEVER been good for more than a few years at a time. Bo McMillen won a Big Ten title in 1945, but never won more than seven game in any of his other 14 years at IU. He had only five winning seasons in the Big Ten. He went 16-3-1 in 1944 and '45 combined, the greatest two-year stretch in Indiana history. But that was it. (And, by the way, there was a war going on.)

John Pont won a Big Ten title in 1967, but never won more than six games in his eight years outside of that magical Rose Bowl season. He went a combined 15-6 in 1967 and 1968, but those were his only two winning seasons at Indiana.

Bill Mallory had great success by Indiana standards in 1987 and 1988, going 8-4 and 8-3-1, and he actually won eight games again in 1993. He went 53-37 in a nine-year stretch from 1986 to 1994, and that's the ONLY nine-year stretch in Indiana football history where they won 16 more games than lost. That was hey-day for Indiana, and they NEVER finished better than third in the Big Ten. 

Sad, isn't it?

Indiana has had a hard time finding successful head coaches since then. The only coach to win more than 70 percent of their regular season games over a two-year period? That would be Tom Allen.

It's very hard to win at Indiana, but Tom Allen has done it. It's also hard to recruit to Indiana, and he's done that, too. The best three recruiting classes in IU history are all on his watch.

And because he did win, he was rewarded with a contract extension that completely ties Indiana's hands. If Indiana wanted to fire him this year, the buyout is $25.5 million, basically all the money he's owed for the next five years. This time next year, that buyout is $20.8. It's not until Dec. 1, 2024 that IU's obligation drops to 50 percent of the remaining contract, and the figure would be $7.95 million.

So, he's not getting fired for at least two years.

Who's to blame for that? This is the game you all want to play, so I'll bite.

Pointing fingers at familiar targets

Look, Tom Allen deserves a lot of blame for where this Indiana program is right now because he's in charge and, as he often says, ''the buck stops here.'' He's right. But let's start at the top with the blame game and I'll clear up many of the misconceptions a lot of you have about how this works.

Let's start with the administration. You can't blame Scott Dolson for the fact that Indiana's offensive line can't block anybody. That's not on him, right? He's the athletic director, the CEO of a mammoth athletic department. He lets Tom Allen run his football program just like he lets Mike Woodson run the basketball program. It's hands-off oversight, as it should be. None of us want micro-managing.

Is there blame in his chair? Well, a little. When Indiana had those great 2019 and 2020 seasons, Allen deserved a raise and an extension, for all the reasons I just mentioned. Back-to-back successful seasons are very rare in Bloomington.

This was still on Fred Glass' watch, of course, but Allen's extension is heavily one-sided in his favor. Let me be clear — it was NOT a mistake to extend Allen. What was a mistake was leaving no wiggle room if things imploded. The mistake Glass made was that he gave away too much, even though he was probably just bidding against himself. But let's be fair to Glass, too. None of us saw this implosion coming, not even the biggest IU haters.

But that's high-dollar football, and that's the arena Indiana is in. It's big money, with billion-dollar TV contracts and more. Allen is still in the lower third of salaries in the Big Ten.

If there's anything I can criticize Dolson for, maybe he should have held Allen's feet to the fire a little more when it came to firing offensive line coach Darren Hiller. That happened a few weeks ago, finally, but it probably should have happened at the end of last year, right along with when Allen fired offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan. But beyond that, this is not an administration or facilities issue.

The biggest problem at Indiana now is the level of the coaching staff and the utter lack of player development. They were really good in 2019 because Kalen DeBoer was a terrific offensive coordinator. He was only here one year, and Tom Allen deserved credit for hiring him in the first place. DeBoer, if you haven't noticed, was great at Fresno State for two years and now has a Washington team at 6-2.  They haven't played in a bowl game since 2018, so he's turned them around quickly, too. 

It's great for me — and not the least bit hurtful — that he's done it with Michael Penix Jr. as his quarterback, too. The former oft-injured Indiana quarterback LEADS THE NATION in passing yards and has stayed healthy for all eight games. He's thrown for 300 yards or more in every one of them.

Kane Wommack, now the head coach at South Alabama, was very good at Indiana, too. So was Mike Hart and William Inge and Grant Heard, but they're all good now. Just on paper, all of their replacements haven't worked out nearly as well. And when I'm blaming Tom Allen for things, I start right there.

At Indiana, you can't recruit a bunch of five-star athletes. The sport doesn't work that way. So you recruit the three-star kids and try to coach them up, on the field and in the weight room. ''Add a star,'' that's always been my line. It worked in 2019-20.

That, to me, is the biggest dropoff during this four-year loop. I think the player development side of things has dropped off dramatically. Have we seen players get dramatically better year after year? I don't think so. And I'll blame the entire coaching staff for that, from the top down.

There are some good players on Indiana's roster, but not nearly enough of them. This is going to be another critical season to hit the transfer portal hard, especially for offensive linemen. It's also going to be a winter of hard recruiting as well. 

It hurts, really, to say that what's going on right now really is what Indiana football has been all about for a century or more. It is filled with much more disappointment than glee. We're not alone either, of course. Nebraska and Wisconsin have already fired head coaches this season. Lots of Iowa fans wish they could do the same, and a lot of Michigan State fans are already wondering if giving Mel Tucker all that money was a mistake, too. Northwestern fans love Pat Fitzgerald, but he can't beat anybody right now. 

After every loss, that's what fans do. They want people fired. Well, this is Indiana, and winning 19 games in four years is sort of the norm. I'll say it again, this is Indiana. As much as we'd like to be a player in college football, we're not. We've NEVER been a national factor.

Never.

Just by the way the nature of the sport is built, that may never change. You could fire Tom Allen tomorrow, but the next guy probably doesn't win 19 games in four years either. It is what it is. 

Tom Allen's contract says it all. He is going to be the head coach at Indiana, probably for at least two more years. It's on HIM to fix this. Look, it's no secret that I really like Tom Allen personally. He's a good man, he loves Indiana and he has proven that he can win football games. We never have to worry about him embarrassing the university off the field.

What he hasn't proven, at least in these past few years, is that he can wade past the adversity and dig out of a hole. He proved in 2019-20 that he can win with the right coaches and the right players.

He needs to do that again.

He's not going anywhere, folks, at least not anytime soon. But his coaches need to coach better, his players need to play better for a full 60 minutes and he needs to have a better plan going forward.

Indiana football will go forward, it has to, and that's with Tom Allen for now. So yes, be mad and be frustrated. But also know this is nothing new. 

And accepting that just might be the hardest thing.

Related stories on Indiana football

• HOOSIERS FALL TO RUTGERS: After two quick touchdowns, Indiana punted seven times, and a Connor Bazelak pick-six doomed the Hoosiers in their fifth-straight loss, falling 24-17 to Rutgers on Saturday in New Jersey. CLICK HERE
• TOM ALLEN INTRIGUED BY JOSH SALES, KHALIL BENSON: Indiana football will continue to rotate personnel along the offensive line in search of the best combination, but coach Tom Allen is intrigued by the development of Josh Sales and Khalil Benson. CLICK HERE