Put Tom Allen on the hot seat

[Hoosierfan2017 19,887]

Before I begin, yes, I’m aware that Allen is here for years to come because our lovely administration gave him a king’s ransom. Maybe this will be a jinx thread like my Fire Tom Allen thread. 

Allen has been the head coach for five full seasons now. He inherited a program in pretty good shape (for IU), going to back to back bowl games before he took over. His fifth season is now over, and we are the worst team in the Big Ten. We like to blame our division, but we were blown out by Rutgers, Purdue, and Minnesota this year. We returned the vast majority of last year’s starters and had the worst season in a decade. Winless in the conference, and winless against the P5.

After five years, Allen is 26-32, and 15-28 in the conference. We’ve missed a bowl game three out of five years. Some give the covid year more credit than others. However much you give it, we were 6-1 in the conference that year, 9-27 in the conference during the four normal seasons. For all the talk about his recruiting, our 2021 class was 12th in the conference, and the 2020 class was too. We’ll see how many 2022 guys stick with IU. 

We have so many things to fix next season. Give Allen next year to fix them. If we have another year like this year, well…

[Loaded Chicken Sandwich 8,199]

Least talented roster in the B1G. 

By far the WORST staff in the B1G and every bit of that is on Allen. If he doesn't make multiple changes to the staff, he needs fired. Might be gimmicky, but system football can get low level talent teams wins. 

[HoosierAloha 29,894]

I’d be happy with the coaching staff figuring out the basics. When you continue to do the same stupid things week after week it tells you something.


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[Alford Bailey 12,253]

I fully expect 2 more years of awful football then Allen will be let go. 5 years in and we have MAC talent. Not a recipe for any success moving forward.

[hoopsta007 362]

17 minutes ago, Alford Bailey said:

I fully expect 2 more years of awful football then Allen will be let go. 5 years in and we have MAC talent. Not a recipe for any success moving forward.

Don’t insult the MAC like that

[HoosierX 1,448]

Maryland beat Rutgers 40-16 today AT Rutgers. The same Rutgers team that beat us at home 38-3. There is literally no excuse for the abomination of a performance from our team this year.

I agree he’s on a phantom hot seat, because for better or worse, he’s here for a few more years. But if he doesn’t turn things around quickly next year he’s a dead man walking and recruiting will suffer.

[RaceToTheTop 23,630]

22 hours ago, Loaded Chicken Sandwich said:

Least talented roster in the B1G. 

By far the WORST staff in the B1G and every bit of that is on Allen. If he doesn't make multiple changes to the staff, he needs fired. Might be gimmicky, but system football can get low level talent teams wins. 

The Big Ten ranking of recruits are 8th (2018), 10th (2019), 12th (2020), and 12th (2021).   There are problems in that despite past success, it is not translating to recruiting. 

 Compare that to Northwestern:  14th (2018), 12th (2019), 11th (2020), 11th (2021).  We are basically Northwestern's parallel.  They also had success in the covid year, but other than that it's been occasional success paired with years like this year.

[RaceToTheTop 23,630]

I wish I knew exactly what happened that got Kevin Wilson fired.  Not that he was the answer because it wasn't like he had great success -- he started with a completely untalented roster and basically just got them to be an okay team in five years.  What is curious is that Wilson still hasn't gotten another head position despite great success as the OC at Ohio State.  I would think that the fact he hasn't been hired as a head coach anywhere else probably speaks to how bad the situation was when he was our head coach.

[Loaded Chicken Sandwich 8,199]

38 minutes ago, brumdog45 said:

The Big Ten ranking of recruits are 8th (2018), 10th (2019), 12th (2020), and 12th (2021).   There are problems in that despite past success, it is not translating to recruiting. 

 Compare that to Northwestern:  14th (2018), 12th (2019), 11th (2020), 11th (2021).  We are basically Northwestern's parallel.  They also had success in the covid year, but other than that it's been occasional success paired with years like this year.

Fitz is just a better coach. Plain and simple. 

[DChoosier 7,055]

31 minutes ago, brumdog45 said:

The Big Ten ranking of recruits are 8th (2018), 10th (2019), 12th (2020), and 12th (2021).   There are problems in that despite past success, it is not translating to recruiting. 

 Compare that to Northwestern:  14th (2018), 12th (2019), 11th (2020), 11th (2021).  We are basically Northwestern's parallel.  They also had success in the covid year, but other than that it's been occasional success paired with years like this year.

True but even being in the Northwestern range is a huge improvement over where we were in years past. We had classes back then that would have literally been the 6th or 7th rated classes in Conference USA.  At least we are now landing players with multiple power 5 offers (in the past we landed a number of guys that had zero other P5 offers) and have crawled our way up to lower middle class Power 5 status giving us a punchers chance vs Rutgers/MD/PU/NW etc.

The 2022 class is currently ranked 27th according to 247 and 6th in the BT (right above TN and Okie State). I hope we can hold onto this class.

[Josh 12,364]

53 minutes ago, brumdog45 said:

I wish I knew exactly what happened that got Kevin Wilson fired.  Not that he was the answer because it wasn't like he had great success -- he started with a completely untalented roster and basically just got them to be an okay team in five years.  What is curious is that Wilson still hasn't gotten another head position despite great success as the OC at Ohio State.  I would think that the fact he hasn't been hired as a head coach anywhere else probably speaks to how bad the situation was when he was our head coach.

One of my friends was an athletic trainer on his teams.  She speaks about how he overruled their decisions on sitting injured players in practices and games.  I'm not comfortable sharing any specific players or injuries, but this is what got him in trouble.

[Josh 12,364]

And as long as I'm commenting on this thread, my opinion is that Allen doesn't get the hot seat treatment yet.  He's had the best IU football memories of my lifetime.  This year was an absolute disaster, and his seat should be red hot if he does it again next year.  But at this point I've bought into him for 2 more years.

[Hoosierfan2017 19,887]

1 hour ago, brumdog45 said:

I wish I knew exactly what happened that got Kevin Wilson fired.  Not that he was the answer because it wasn't like he had great success -- he started with a completely untalented roster and basically just got them to be an okay team in five years.  What is curious is that Wilson still hasn't gotten another head position despite great success as the OC at Ohio State.  I would think that the fact he hasn't been hired as a head coach anywhere else probably speaks to how bad the situation was when he was our head coach.

He makes $1.4 million a year at OSU. He wasn’t too successful at IU so maybe he has only gotten lower tier head coaching jobs (if he’s gotten any). DeBoer makes less than him at Fresno State, for example. Might prefer being an OC at OSU over something like that, but who knows. 

[Old Friend 8,389]

On 11/27/2021 at 8:37 PM, HoosierX said:

Maryland beat Rutgers 40-16 today AT Rutgers. The same Rutgers team that beat us at home 38-3. There is literally no excuse for the abomination of a performance from our team this year.

I agree he’s on a phantom hot seat, because for better or worse, he’s here for a few more years. But if he doesn’t turn things around quickly next year he’s a dead man walking and recruiting will suffer.

This.   

Dead man walking is a perfect description.  I see some commenting "he's one of the best Indiana ever had," and I just shake my head.   Kansas had an anomaly season.  Lee Corso had one here in 1979.   Doesn't at ALL mean the coaches are any better or worse.   Last season was without fans, Indiana played teams with injuries and players who were out (COVID opt outs, etc), and literally everything fell our way, including a TD call at the end of the Penn State game that I promise goes the other way in Happy Valley.   And when Penix got hurt, Indiana's offense went down the toilet.  We were that fragile.

Last season was an anomaly until Tom Allen proves it wasn't.  2019 was a solid season..no question, but even still, Allen has a losing record at Indiana (26-32).  He's 15-28 in the Big Ten.  He's finished higher than 4th in his own division ONCE in 5 full seasons...last place twice and next to last another time.  He's never won a bowl game, and finished only one season (last year...anomaly) ranked in the top 25.

I don't get the take that he's "the best" of anything.  Not with our facilities and the high school football talent available in Indiana right now.  He hasn't proven a thing to me, yet...other than he can have an occasional successful regular season when we play bad pre-conference games and get Illinois and bad Purdue teams against the west.   Indiana wasn't even competitive this year.  That by itself is enough to warm up his seat.

[IU Scott 2,375]

59 minutes ago, Old Friend said:

This.   

Dead man walking is a perfect description.  I see some commenting "he's one of the best Indiana ever had," and I just shake my head.   Kansas had an anomaly season.  Lee Corso had one here in 1979.   Doesn't at ALL mean the coaches are any better or worse.   Last season was without fans, Indiana played teams with injuries and players who were out (COVID opt outs, etc), and literally everything fell our way, including a TD call at the end of the Penn State game that I promise goes the other way in Happy Valley.   And when Penix got hurt, Indiana's offense went down the toilet.  We were that fragile.

Last season was an anomaly until Tom Allen proves it wasn't.  2019 was a solid season..no question, but even still, Allen has a losing record at Indiana (26-32).  He's 15-28 in the Big Ten.  He's finished higher than 4th in his own division ONCE in 5 full seasons...last place twice and next to last another time.  He's never won a bowl game, and finished only one season (last year...anomaly) ranked in the top 25.

I don't get the take that he's "the best" of anything.  Not with our facilities and the high school football talent available in Indiana right now.  He hasn't proven a thing to me, yet...other than he can have an occasional successful regular season when we play bad pre-conference games and get Illinois and bad Purdue teams against the west.   Indiana wasn't even competitive this year.  That by itself is enough to warm up his seat.

So what was the 8-4 season the year before.  So IU was the only team to benefit from the covid year and the rest hurt them. LOL!

[ap2345 7,098]

These debates are pointless without knowing what the coaching staff, roster, and results will look like when we get to this time next year. 

[Hoosierfan2017 19,887]

13 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

So what was the 8-4 season the year before.  So IU was the only team to benefit from the covid year and the rest hurt them. LOL!

I don’t know why you call it the 8-4 season instead of the 8-5 season. It was a nice season, but we didn’t beat a single team with a winning record.

The covid year was so unprecedented between the no fans, players sitting out because of contact tracing/covid, players opting out of the season. It’s hard to know who benefitted from what. We had a chance to come out and prove that the covid season wasn’t a fluke. Instead, we went 0-9 in the conference. We’ve only gone winless in the conference twice in the past 25 years and five times in the past 60 years. It was one of our worst seasons in program history, and definitely one of the worst considering the preseason expectations. Allen finished his 5th season and we’re firmly the worst team in the conference. We weren’t even competitive. 

[Alford Bailey 12,253]

18 hours ago, brumdog45 said:

I wish I knew exactly what happened that got Kevin Wilson fired.  Not that he was the answer because it wasn't like he had great success -- he started with a completely untalented roster and basically just got them to be an okay team in five years.  What is curious is that Wilson still hasn't gotten another head position despite great success as the OC at Ohio State.  I would think that the fact he hasn't been hired as a head coach anywhere else probably speaks to how bad the situation was when he was our head coach.

His name is getting tossed around for the Akron job. Wilson is one of the most talented offensive minds in the game.

[Chris007 42,107]

17 hours ago, Josh said:

One of my friends was an athletic trainer on his teams.  She speaks about how he overruled their decisions on sitting injured players in practices and games.  I'm not comfortable sharing any specific players or injuries, but this is what got him in trouble.

This and being drunk in public a lot. In the end, he was told that it was unacceptable to make players hurt and there was going to be an investigation. Told to keep himself clean till after it was over, the next night there was a video of him drunk at Irish Lion or Crazy Horse. 

[Alford Bailey 12,253]

Definitely should be on the hot seat. One of the worst teams in cfb and the team absolutely quit on him. Talent level still sucks too. No quick fix here.