Fred Glass: Worst AD of the BIG10... or Ever?

[southernindianahoosier2]

I saw the fire Dolson thread and it got me thinking... Now that Fred Glass has been out of IU for ~5 years. I want to state my case that he was the worst athletic director in the Big10 during his Tenure and possibly of any P5 School. 

When I saw Cignetti on 60 Minutes talk about how the program had offices from the 1980's, banners that were old and torn, and facilities that were a joke. It reminded me of the one claim to fame Fred Glass had, which was his devotion to facilities. I would hope that that 30 second interviewed shattered any romanticizing of Mr. Fred Glass as I present my case....

While Fred Glass came in during a power Vaccum post Sampson and stabilized the ship and brought a lot of things into the 21st Century; Basketball, IU's lifeblood, suffered the most egregious blows from Glass's indecisiveness and poor judgment. Glass's desire for "consistency," may have steadied the ship, but he steered it straight into irrelevance.

No AD in IU history has squandered more talent and treasure on basketball misfires, transforming a program with five national titles into a punchline for Big Ten mediocrity. Glass's risk-averse approach prioritized stability over bold vision, contrasting sharply with eras under ADs like Bill Orwig, who built sustained winners. Add in blunders like the 2017 eligibility fiasco that cost freshman DB Bryant Fitzgerald a full season due to compliance failures, prompting Glass's own apology, and the short-lived, fan-reviled decision to strip names from football jerseys in 2018, and it's clear his leadership bred more division than dynasty.

When I asked Grok to rank all of the B10 Athletic Directors that overlapped with him during his 12 years of hell tenure while weighting the success of a schools defining legacy sport higher....Glass ranks 13th out of 13: His era featured stabilization and non-revenue success but the weakest flagship-sport contention relative to peer expectations, especially in basketball (IU's defining legacy sport). Programs like Rutgers, Maryland, and Nebraska faced transition challenges but showed comparable or slightly better dual-sport traction in their shorter Big Ten overlaps.

 

[southernindianahoosier2]

I want to say that people gave me crap on here for years because I said in order for IUBB to be a national championship caliber program, we would have to analyze every single aspect of the program: From uniforms, to music, to concessions, to practice facility etc.

It seems like Cignetti embodies what I was preaching for years. Glad we have him, and hope Cig opens everyone's eyes on how to build a championship caliber program by being hyper vigilant at every aspect of the program.

 

[RaceToTheTop]

1 hour ago, southernindianahoosier2 said:

I want to say that people gave me crap on here for years because I said in order for IUBB to be a national championship caliber program, we would have to analyze every single aspect of the program: From uniforms, to music, to concessions, to practice facility etc.

It seems like Cignetti embodies what I was preaching for years. Glad we have him, and hope Cig opens everyone's eyes on how to build a championship caliber program by being hyper vigilant at every aspect of the program.

 

Yeah, cignetti built a winning program by looking at concessions.

[Hovadipo]

17 minutes ago, RaceToTheTop said:

Yeah, cignetti built a winning program by looking at concessions.

He looked at the concessions, saw a line that runs from the 20 yard line to the goal line and intersects with a 100 yard long bathroom line, and said “eh, think I’ll pass.”

[southernindianahoosier2]

24 minutes ago, RaceToTheTop said:

Yeah, cignetti built a winning program by looking at concessions.

Open your Third Eye

[cthomas]

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Fred Glass, he was a major player in developing Indianapolis in to a major player in hosting sporting events. And, he is still doing good work in the city. I might add that none of the other ad's before him did much to enhance the football program. I love Coach Cignetti and think he is arguably the best coach in college football. But, even he could not have resurrected the corpse of IU football without the portal and NIL.

[southernindianahoosier2]

19 minutes ago, cthomas said:

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Fred Glass, he was a major player in developing Indianapolis in to a major player in hosting sporting events. And, he is still doing good work in the city. I might add that none of the other ad's before him did much to enhance the football program. I love Coach Cignetti and think he is arguably the best coach in college football. But, even he could not have resurrected the corpse of IU football without the portal and NIL.

Didn't Indianapolis hosting the Pan Am games before him? and didn't every NFL team that built a new stadium get a Super Bowl? 

Rick Greenspan did a great job of enclosing the north Endzone in Memorial Stadium. 

And probably agree with you on Cig. Without the Portal and NIL it would have been harder. But I still think Cignetti could have done it

 

[cthomas]

I don't really have a dog in the fight but I I know that Glass has been a prominent part of the group of people who made Indianapolis what it is today in the sports world. Like I said, Cignetti may be the best coach in college football but even he could not have turned this around so quickly without the players. And a significant number of them came from the portal. I'll go one step farther and say that without Mendosa, we would be a three loss team and looking at a lesser bowl game. Coaching matters, but so do players.

[Pagoda]

I’m confused, per his book he rebuilt Indiana Athletics!  

;-)

[str8baller]

I appreciate the early morning hot take. I was never a big Fred Glass fan. He did get credit for raising a lot of money. That’s not nothing. Honestly if you look at the string of past ADs we had it drives home even more what Dolson has done and I say that with the jury still out on men’s basketball. 

[Pagoda]

I'd give Fred a grade of D, maybe D+.  He came in with no AD experience (classic IU hire) and it showed.

Negatives:
- Excluding media rights increases he had nothing to do with, he didn't increase our athletic dept revenue much
- Didn't do well with the FB and MBB coach hires/fires/extensions

Unfortunately, those two things are most of, if not almost all of, what matters when grading an AD.

Positives:
+ Facilities: Shook down Cindy for the AH renovation, which was a pretty well done project.  Got the south endzone done, which was a C- design, but still better than nothing.  Other facilities were improved: Wilkerson, baseball, softball etc.  Media rights $ helped him (the whole conference upgraded facilities too), but he still did a good job fundraising for these projects and getting them done.
+ Made some good coach hires in the non-rev sports
+ Added the big flag pole at Memorial Stadium.  A gamechanger.

Final thing I'd note is in some fairness to him, he had to deal with McRobbie, who was a nightmare for athletics.  And I suppose Fred probably unknowingly taught Scott some lessons in terms of what not to do.

He's a nice guy, but he didn't do very well as AD here.  Another interesting and disappointing chapter in IU athletics past.

[LamarCheeks]

I'm not qualified or smart enough to accurately judge Glass' tenure as AD. 

I think, though, that my biggest disappointment was how he handled things after he fired Kevin Wilson. When he trotted out Tom Allen during that presser, I thought for sure he was gonna say "And while we sort through things and determine what's next, Tom Allen will be our interim coach." 

Instead, he announced that he'd given him a six-year contract as the new permanent HC. No search. Nothing.

Granted, Allen did go on to have a couple decent seasons -- but one of those was the bizarre COVID year, which turned out to be a real outlier. But IMO -- that's no way for a major university to make a major hire. You gotta do a national search. Fred always struck me as a guy willing to put his nose to the grindstone, but geez -- he sure took the path of least resistance in that case. 

I'll give him this, though -- he did hire Teri Moren. I was vehemently against that at the time (shows you what I know. LOL). 

[mamasa]

11 hours ago, southernindianahoosier2 said:

I want to say that people gave me crap on here for years because I said in order for IUBB to be a national championship caliber program, we would have to analyze every single aspect of the program: From uniforms, to music, to concessions, to practice facility etc.

It seems like Cignetti embodies what I was preaching for years. Glad we have him, and hope Cig opens everyone's eyes on how to build a championship caliber program by being hyper vigilant at every aspect of the program.

 

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back....

[TheWatShot]

10 minutes ago, LamarCheeks said:

 

I'll give him this, though -- he did hire Teri Moren. I was vehemently against that at the time (shows you what I know. LOL). 

I think he got lucky with Moren. 

 

Archie Miller was another path of least resistance hire. He let the media do his homework for him on that one. 

[Hovadipo]

41 minutes ago, mamasa said:

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back....

Patting himself on the back for what exactly though?

Uniforms: we wear the same combo home and away every game. It’s a clean look, but we’re still down the pecking order with Adidas and our template sucks. 

Music: LOL, can’t hear s**t in Memorial, PA system sucks, and…what exactly are we looking for here anyway? 

Concessions: they improved the food selection I guess, but if you aren’t there an hour before kick good luck getting anything without missing an entire quarter.

Practice Facility: we lipsticked the pig. Woo!

 

Not a single one of those things has ANYTHING to do with why we’re currently the best team in the country. Self-back-pat is not accepted. 

[southernindianahoosier2]

1 hour ago, Pagoda said:

I'd give Fred a grade of D, maybe D+.  He came in with no AD experience (classic IU hire) and it showed.

Negatives:
- Excluding media rights increases he had nothing to do with, he didn't increase our athletic dept revenue much
- Didn't do well with the FB and MBB coach hires/fires/extensions

Unfortunately, those two things are most of, if not almost all of, what matters when grading an AD.

Positives:
+ Facilities: Shook down Cindy for the AH renovation, which was a pretty well done project.  Got the south endzone done, which was a C- design, but still better than nothing.  Other facilities were improved: Wilkerson, baseball, softball etc.  Media rights $ helped him (the whole conference upgraded facilities too), but he still did a good job fundraising for these projects and getting them done.
+ Made some good coach hires in the non-rev sports
+ Added the big flag pole at Memorial Stadium.  A gamechanger.

Final thing I'd note is in some fairness to him, he had to deal with McRobbie, who was a nightmare for athletics.  And I suppose Fred probably unknowingly taught Scott some lessons in terms of what not to do.

He's a nice guy, but he didn't do very well as AD here.  Another interesting and disappointing chapter in IU athletics past.

Love this! - But I would argue that there's about 5-6 more negatives we could put on here. The main theme being not doing anything groundbreaking or bold, except when it came to the student athlete bill of rights, which no other college in the US adopted (for a reason)

His football and basketball hires Tom Crean and Tom Allen were very similar individuals. Big Rah Rah motivational guys that had 1 flash in the pan season only for it to be realized that there was no structure in running a consistent program.

I would honestly give him a D- or F. Because when you compare how Dolson hired Cigneti vs how Glass made his hiring decisions is very apparent Glass had no idea what he was doing. Dolson studied all historical basketball first schools that had sustained football success, and found a formula, then applied it and found Cigneti. Glass on the other hand.... I don't know if there even was a thought process.

 

[southernindianahoosier2]

7 minutes ago, Hovadipo said:

Patting himself on the back for what exactly though?

Uniforms: we wear the same combo home and away every game. It’s a clean look, but we’re still down the pecking order with Adidas and our template sucks. 

Music: LOL, can’t hear s**t in Memorial, PA system sucks, and…what exactly are we looking for here anyway? 

Concessions: they improved the food selection I guess, but if you aren’t there an hour before kick good luck getting anything without missing an entire quarter.

Practice Facility: we lipsticked the pig. Woo!

 

Not a single one of those things has ANYTHING to do with why we’re currently the best team in the country. Self-back-pat is not accepted. 

Curt Cignetti has meetings with the DJ at memorial stadium on what to play more of, what to play less of, when to play it. etc. He at least noticed the small things in the torn banners and 1980's office. Those are just EXAMPLES of his approach.

You're missing the forrest for the trees here. What I am saying, and have been for years on this website is in order to run a championship caliber program, you need to root at complacency at every level, no matter what aspect of the program it is or how small the detail. This attitude helps get everyone on board working together towards a common goal. It's what IUBB has been lacking for 20+ years. 

[jermhoosierfan]

1 hour ago, Pagoda said:

 

Final thing I'd note is in some fairness to him, he had to deal with McRobbie, who was a nightmare for athletics.  And I suppose Fred probably unknowingly taught Scott some lessons in terms of what not to do.

The biggest problem in the last 20 - 30 years has been the Administration of the university than the AD.  Sure, the AD has made some really questionable hires, but the Administration got jealous of the attention that Knight got.  They didn't think athletics should be the most popular thing of the university which put a lot of problems on the AD.  Whitten putting an emphasis on Football will benefit the university more than just about anything the previous Presidents of the University has done in 30 years.  

[southernindianahoosier2]

For more context. From 2009-2020 compare Glass to all other basketball first schools.

Duke, Kansas, UCLA, Kentucky, Louisville, UCONN, Butler, and just compare the results. IMO he ranks last here. And when you compare him to the rest of the big 10 weighting for legacy premier sports, he also ranked last. 

Some questions to ponder: Had Fred stayed another 10 years, what would the records of the basketball and football teams look like? Why wasn't he hired by any other school to be their AD? Why did he go to Berbouf a school that costs more in tuition than IU and then write a book about making your own luck? Why was he so focused on Equity in non-revenue sports vs focused on revenue generating sports? 

[southernindianahoosier2]

9 minutes ago, jermhoosierfan said:

The biggest problem in the last 20 - 30 years has been the Administration of the university than the AD.  Sure, the AD has made some really questionable hires, but the Administration got jealous of the attention that Knight got.  They didn't think athletics should be the most popular thing of the university which put a lot of problems on the AD.  Whitten putting an emphasis on Football will benefit the university more than just about anything the previous Presidents of the University has done in 30 years.  

Agreed. How many Presidents were hired and then fired because of the basketball program from 2002-2009? Left a power vacuum. Didn't McRobbie run the data center before becoming president? It's truly amazing how he was ever president, and president for so long. Both him and Glass made decisions that we so far disconnected from reality.