My Two Cents: Tom Allen a Great Man, But Business is Business and He Had to Go
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — To properly write about the end of Tom Allen's time as Indiana's football coach, I really have to start at the beginning.
It will tell you a lot about the man.
I launched our HoosiersNow.com Indiana site on Aug. 1, 2019, which also happened to be football media day prior to the start of the season. I drove to Bloomington from Alabama, where I was doing some book business, and got there just in time for the interviews. My site was finished being constructed a few minutes earlier and had just gone live.
I didn't know football media relations director Jeff Keag, but I filled him in on what I was about to do at IU. I asked him, if it was possible, if I could meet Tom Allen and introduce myself for a couple of minutes. When Allen was done talking, Keag motioned me out to the hallway and introduced us. Tom reached out and gave me a firm hand shake. I told him I was an Indiana grad and had a lot of Florida roots, just like he did. We had many similar acquaintances. He said it was nice to meet me and even said ''welcome home.''
He also said that if I ever needed anything, to just ask. Just a few weeks later, I was putting together a huge four-part series on Allen's pipeline into Florida for recruiting. The Hoosiers had more than two dozen Floridians on their roster. I interviewed a dozen people, maybe more, but I really needed Allen's voice.
I asked for 15 minutes, and he said yes to a phone interview on the topic.
Want to know about Tom Allen the man? Well, we talked for an hour.
Now here we are, five seasons later. I had great respect for Tom Allen the man right off the bat in 2019, and I still have great respect for Tom Allen the man today, on this final Sunday in November, the day he was fired as Indiana's head coach after seven seasons.
What changed? Well, Tom Allen the coach who went 14-5 in 2019 and 2020 and had a winning percentage of .737 in those two seasons spent the last three seasons going 9-27 and winning only three Big Ten games. It was a great rags to riches story for the losingest program in college football history, and it was an epic riches-to-rags collapse that led to Sunday's firing by Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson.
Let me be clear. As much as I admire and respect Tom Allen the man, this firing absolutely had to take place. It was one thing to lose — and Allen's teams lost far too often in the past three years — but it was how they lost that finally got him fired. In each of the past three years, there were several games they had won that they let slip away. His once-proud defense just wasn't any good any more, and after offensive coordinator Kalen DeBoer left after the 2019 season to become the head coach at Fresno State, that offense has been brutally bad from 2021 on.
Allen made several bad coaching hires — see offensive coordinator Walt Bell — and kept other bad coaches — namely offensive line coach Darren Hiller — far too long.
And when things got bad, Allen did a poor job of not letting it get worse. There were several good assistant coaches — Deland McCullough, Mike Hart, Grant Heard and more — who bailed as quickly as they could for greener pastures. Their replacements were huge drop-offs, and that's on Allen.
When the spiral started, this new era of the transfer portal and NIL conspired to rip apart Indiana's roster. The Hoosiers really struggled to recruit offensive linemen, and the best ones they had — like Matt Bedford — kept getting hurt. Injuries were often a big issue.
Most obvious, of course, was quarterback Michael Penix Jr. He was one of those prized Florida recruits brought in by Nick Sheridan and Allen. He was going to be a star in Bloomington, but in his first four years he had four season-ending injuries. He graduated with an Indiana degree — and never once was healthy enough to play in an Old Oaken Bucket game.
Penix had a COVID year of eligibility remaining, and he and Allen had a long sit-down. No one loves Michael Penix more than Allen, and no one has more respect for the kid's talent, but during their conversation, both agreed that it was best for both sides to move on. Indiana played 45 games during Penix's career — and he was available for only 20 of them.
Replacing Penix has had a lot to do with Allen's demise. Penix was rushed back early from his ACL injury to start the 2021 season, but he wasn't himself. The offensive line, which was horrible, couldn't protect him. After going 6-1 in 2020, the Hoosiers started 2021 ranked No. 17 in the country. But they instead got clobbered 34-6 at Iowa and lost a strange game to No. 8 Cincinnati at home two weeks later. Two weeks after that, Penix hurt his shoulder in a 24-0 loss at Penn State and his IU career was over.
Since then, Jack Tuttle, Donovan McCulley, Grant Gremel, Connor Bazelak, Dexter Williams, Brendan Sorsby and Tayven Jackson have started games at quarterback — with largely horrible results.
Penix, of course, transferred to Washington to be reunited with DeBoer, and all he's done there is lead the nation in passing in 2022 and go 12-0 this year. They're a top-5 team and primed to win the Pac-12 and make the playoffs.
That was just the start, of course. Allen, relying too much on Walt Bell's opinion, opted to start Bazelak, a transfer who flamed out at Missouri, instead of Tuttle to start the 2022 season. It was a bad choice, and it splintered the locker room, where Tuttle was a respected leader. How much? Even after Bazelak was selected to start, it was Tuttle who was voted to be a team captain.
Tuttle opted to transfer, and several others went with him. He and tight end AJ Barner, another key recruit in the Allen era, just went 12-0 at Michigan and will play for a Big Ten title Saturday.
The list of departures is long. So is the list of transfers brought in, because Allen had no choice. He's brought in more than 40 transfers the past two years, and the revolving door is no way to build a program. Sure, fill some gaps, but complete overhauls don't work.
Recruiting has been horrible the past two years. The 2023 class ranked 68th nationally and dead last in the Big Ten, without a single 4-star or 5-star recruit. They were fifth the year before, with four 4-star recruits, but two of them — Dasan McCullough and Trevell Mullen, who grew up in the program — have already quit.
Indiana football is a mess right now. There aren't enough good players — not even close — and there aren't enough good coaches, either. There's also likely not enough support from the administration, from donors and from a fan base that doesn't care a lot about football.
It's Indiana football, and it's been this bad for a long, long time. There are occasional bright spots — and Tom Allen's 2019 and 2020 teams were definitely bright spots.
But the rest was pretty bad, especially these last three years. He leaves Bloomington with a 33-49 record, a .402 winning percentage. You have to remember that it's damn hard to win 33 games in Bloomington. His predecessor, Kevin Wilson, won 26, Bill Lynch won 19, Terry Hoeppner nine, Gerry DiNardo eight and Cam Cameron 18.
You have to go all the way back to Bill Mallory, who coached 13 seasons at Indiana from 1984 to 1996, to find someone who won more than Allen. He won a school-best 68 games.
You get my point. It's very hard to win at Indiana. Tom Allen tried his best. There isn't a football coach in America who loves Indiana University and the state of Indiana more than Tom Allen.
But he made a lot of bad choices with coaches and players, and he made a ton of bad game-time decisions, too. Just all the bad choices in these last three losses — where he could have easily saved his job with a few more wins — were enough to get him fired.
But let's remember where we are. This is Bloomington. This is Indiana. Football is complete second-fiddle, maybe even more like third or fourth now.
For example, many fans will grumble about this right up until about 4:30, when Indiana plays a basketball game. Then they'll turn off their Tom Allen anger and start bitching about three-point shooting.
That's Indiana.
I'll look forward to seeing Tom Allen in person sometime soon. I'll look forward to shaking his hand and thanking him for all he did. I cherish my time with him in 2019 and 2020; that was so much fun.
I'm greatly appreciative of all the time he offered me and my writers. I really wish it had worked out, I really do. But it didn't, and it's time to move on.
It had to happen, but it's still too bad. Tom Allen the person? He'll be missed. He really will.
Related stories on Tom Allen
- TOM ALLEN FIRED: Indiana fired head football coach Tom Allen on Sunday morning after a seven-year tenure that included two bowl games in 2019 and 2020, followed by a 3-24 Big Ten record from 2021-23. CLICK HERE
- JACK ANKONY'S COLUMN: Indiana will pay one of the largest buyouts in history to fire Tom Allen. That demonstrates the school is more serious about football than it’s ever been, but that commitment must continue in a new era of the expanded Big Ten, NIL and transfer portal. CLICK HERE
- ALLEN COMMENTS ON JOB SECURITY: Following a 35-31 loss to Purdue in the Old Oaken Bucket rivalry game, Indiana coach Tom Allen was asked about his job security. The Hoosiers finished 3-9 this season, the worst record in the Big Ten. CLICK HERE
- IU-PURDUE GAME STORY: Indiana’s defense struggled to contain Purdue quarterback Hudson Card’s running and Hoosiers quarterback Brendan Sorsby threw three interceptions in a 35-31 loss in the Old Oaken Bucket game. CLICK HERE
- FLORIDA-TO-INDIANA RECRUITING PIPELINE: Here is Tom Brew's four-part series on Indiana's Florida recruiting pipeline from 2019 that's mentioned in the column above. The link here is to Part 4, but the other three stories are linked to from there. CLICK HERE
