Many Thanks to Scott Dolson
- Thread starter Lucy01
- Start date
Give the President some credit too. I remember reading she was heavily involved in it.
Yes Dolson and Whitten are playing with house money.
Scott should have fired Allen 3 years ago! No matter what it would have cost.
Then he wouldn’t have got cig. Look at twitter today, the entire country is talking about IU football. Scott hired the best coach IU has ever had it looks like.
You should gladly take an extra three years of loving each other for this. Sure looks like something special that a brewing in btown.
Real question is does he die or get caught looking like diddy first? IU can’t have nice things.
Coming off two good seasons and bowl games? Yea right.
The extension was reasonable, only thing one could question in the extension is the buyouts were a bit much.
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I credited Whitten during last season saying IF they released Allen, she'd be the force required to see it done. And I thought there was a good chance.
But she credited Dolson for handling the search and many other things. Seems I was wrong about him. (I hated that huge buyout extension for Tom Allen. Reminds me now of the Bears trading up so no other team could leap them for Mitch Trubisky. )
Good job Scott!
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But she credited Dolson for handling the search and many other things. Seems I was wrong about him. (I hated that huge buyout extension for Tom Allen. Reminds me now of the Bears trading up so no other team could leap them for Mitch Trubisky. )
Good job Scott!
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Allen wasn’t the reason for the two good seasons. He was in over his head. Him and Crean would make better cheerleaders than Coaches.
Saw him in Pasadena and thanked him for hiring CCC. At the walk yesterday my wife and I saw him again, stressed to him how thankful we were that he hired CCC again. I got the feeling he was hearing a lot of accolades from the fans. Go Hoosiers!
I remember first time hearing Coach Cignetti...on one of those game day shows at JMU, and I said to myself that he would be a guy who could make things happen. Unreal that he's leading our program and anyone who played a part has my utmost gratitide.
I've been attending games since 1976 and as I get older, this just feels surreal...'all aboard ah ha ah ha'
Get your tickets to as many games as you can folks, get in the stadium well before kickoff, and stay afterward to enjoy the wins with the team and other fans.
I've been attending games since 1976 and as I get older, this just feels surreal...'all aboard ah ha ah ha'
Get your tickets to as many games as you can folks, get in the stadium well before kickoff, and stay afterward to enjoy the wins with the team and other fans.
in hindsight, it's insane we had DeBoer, Wommack, competent Sheridan on our staff. at IU. crazy
I remember when she was hired/assumed her post that several articles noted her interest (dare say passion) in football.
Although I used to complain about him all the time, in retrospect I don't have any issues with Crean anymore. He did better than the guys who came after him. Woodson is still working on getting to the top half of the Big Ten. Allen on the other hand started with a bowl team.
But neither Crean nor Allen had the resources to work with or admin support that the current coaches have. It wouldn't have taken Crean all those years to put a team together if you could pay transfers and there was no rule about sitting out a year.
Cig is looking like the best hire in a very long time but what he's doing this year wouldn't be possible before NIL rules or all the NIL $ he had to work with, IMO. He would end up being successful but it would take more time.
And don’t forget Saban took our whole strength/nutrition room. It’s insane how many ex-IU staff is at Bama.
The same was said about Herbert, and he's the reason we hired Samson.
I think what Whitten has done is give Dolson a free hand to do what he's needed to do and done whatever she can to assure he's got the resources necessary.
Unlike Herbert and the trustee(s) back then that pushed Sampson, or the current BoT President that probably pushed Woody, Pam and the BoT seemed to support the AD and left him alone for the FB fire and hire last year.
There is a lesson in there that is also management 101. Hire an AD you trust, let them do their job, and if the results are bad change the AD. Meddling and getting political with the AD's job of hiring/firing coaches will often create problems. The people meddling usually don't who to hire, it makes it hard to know who is accountable for the hire, it's not clear who the coach really reports to, and it's just an overall mess.
Whenever we hire another bball coach, hopefully IU just supports Scott and lets him make the call.
There is a lesson in there that is also management 101. Hire an AD you trust, let them do their job, and if the results are bad change the AD. Meddling and getting political with the AD's job of hiring/firing coaches will often create problems. The people meddling usually don't who to hire, it makes it hard to know who is accountable for the hire, it's not clear who the coach really reports to, and it's just an overall mess.
Whenever we hire another bball coach, hopefully IU just supports Scott and lets him make the call.
I don’t think Allen should have been hired in the 1st place but I also think he was replaced at the exact right time.
I think Allen was a good hire at the time and it should be noted that he's the guy who hired DeBoer and Womack. The results the first few years did not suggest at all that he was a bad hire. The problem was pretty simple it seems to me. He botched most of the hires he made in replacing those two. And he failed to replace Hiller when it was apparent to the rest of the world that the guy was incompetent. One of the primary jobs of a head coach is to find good assistants, especially coordinators. If you fail at that, you fail as a head coach. But hindsight is 20/20. I agree that the buyout was terribly structured and I never thought that it was necessary to keep Allen. He loved IU and would have stayed even if the buyout had been results-based ( as all buyouts should be). Some guys are just not head coach material.
When IU goes after its next basketball coach in the very near future, Dolson should use the same template he did for football: look at the elite basketball schools and see what criteria they used.
Former alums who never coached college basketball need not apply.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I like many or at least some on here were disappointed that we hired an assistant with only hs head coaching experience. Allen was given a team with some of the best overall defensive talent behind the line (lbs and dbs) that I remember. After those players left the defense struggled under Allen. He also took over a team that had been to 2 bowls in a row and it took him 3 seasons to return to a bowl.
I don’t think Allen had a clue about offense so his offensive staff was critical to his success or failure. Hiller and Bell were terrible choices to begin with and even worse to stay with. His inability to evaluate adequate offensive coaches and his stubbornness to stick with them proves at least to me that he’s not head coaching material and a poor choice.
What people don't seem to understand about the situation is that IU was not looking for a coach when Tom Allen was hired. He was given the job to keep him from leaving. Had that not been the case, Kevin Wilson probably would have been retained ( though it's unclear for how long). Allen had decided to leave, presumably to return to Ole Miss as DC. Fred Glass did not want to lose him, so he fired Kevin Wilson in order to create the vacancy for Tom Allen. I'm not sure why folks aren't clear on this. To clarify further though, at no time did Tom Allen suggest or even hint to Fred Glass that it was a "him or me" situation with Wilson. Allen was not particularly a good fit on Wilson's staff given their polar opposite positions on relationships with players and appropriate decorum. Allen had informed Glass that he was leaving and Glass, believing that he would probably have to fire Wilson at some point in the not-too-distant future , decided to pull the trigger and convince Allen to stay by offering him the HC position. Wilson had already been fired before Allen was asked to stay on as HC. There was no search because the whole point of removing KW was to keep TA at Indiana.
I don't think anyone would argue that the hiring of Tom Allen worked out well. I certainly wouldn't. I'm only making the point that at the time he was hired, his record of turning the IU defense around and the support he had from the players made it appear that he could elevate the program. What Allen accomplished in 2019 and 2020 seemed to confirm that. Only after things began to unravel in 2021 did it begin to appear that he might have caught lightning in a bottle with DeBoar and Womack. And given the departure of Ramsey and another injury to Penix, it didn't seem like a bad season was entirely Allen's fault. It wasn't until after another disastrous year in 2022 was it really apparent that he was not going to be capable of righting the ship. At that point, given the financial situation left by covid, and the fact that the buyout was prohibitive, it was understandable ( at least to me) that TA was given one last opportunity in 2023. It's pretty easy to see clearly in hindsight, what might not have been so obvious at the time. It's also worth noting that some of the things folks are posting presently about the program-changing abilities of Coach Cignetti and the absolute necessity of keeping him here were being posted here ( probably by some of the same people) about Tom Allen in 2019 and 2020.
I'm not making any argument of the sort that Tom Allen turned out to be a good hire. I'm simply arguing that those who want to make the case that it was a terrible decision to hire him in 2016 are not being completely reasonable about the situation at that time. Not a single soul on this board can credibly say that they believed in December of 2020 that Tom Allen was a bad hire.
This is silly. If this was the case, why did Wilson chose to "resign" rather than be fired without cause and get a big payout?
The described is even worse.
"I am likely to fire this coach. I'd better get started on a full professional search and get the hire right this time. Oh wait, the defensive coordinator is going to leave? @#$#! I'd better act now and offer him the job!"
"I am likely to fire this coach. I'd better get started on a full professional search and get the hire right this time. Oh wait, the defensive coordinator is going to leave? @#$#! I'd better act now and offer him the job!"
I didn’t like the Allen hire and never thought he was a good head coach even in 19 and 20. I didn’t like his sideline demeanor or his in game decisions. I thought he was in over his head from day one and didn’t improve. If I was looking for a Sunday School teacher I’d hire him, but for a coach…no.
Look it up!
IU football might win more games than IU men's soccer this year. Football is 5-0 and soccer only 2-3-4 heading into October. Who would have ever thunk that!
I have heard the pres knows football, hope that is not just a rumor.
I'm getting a little tired of hearing about all these great football minds
that have left IU, ugh, hope we are not going to add to the list
in the near future.
You mean IU South? Geez, they even wear our colors. Wannabes.
Good post. Also, important to acknowledge none stayed long.
And the strength coach
I could be wrong, but I wrote this right after we hired him.
If he coaches here 8-10 years, he will re-write the IU record books & set a mark at a major college.
Given his slow start to D1 power 5 football, as crazy as it sounds, our terrible history is appealing in many ways. If he turns us around for 8-10 years, he will be a football God in D1 football. He will get a statue for sure.. Where else is he going to get that treatment?
At the time DeBoer left, someone on this board actually posted that we let the wrong guy go/leave. Obviously wasn’t as clear at that time.
However, I would say they were right.
DeBoer and Wommack got head coaching jobs. Can’t blame them for leaving.
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