The athletic department is the biggest villain in the situation Indiana finds itself in, and not for coaching reasons. Other programs are willing to push the boundaries of the rules, or just ignore them, to find success. Indiana's compliance department would have a heart attack if anyone on the coaching staff or a booster strayed remotely from the exact letter of the law. Indiana's athletic department stood aside in 2020 and let the conference walk all over the football program because "it was best for the conference."
Indiana still treats P5 football like it is just a game and everyone involved are all friends. They aren't, they are competitors. Indiana's motto seems to be "Rules for me, but not for thee, and that's fine." They'd rather be the good guy than actually be good.
Indiana continues to abjectly fail at adapting to the modern reality of college football. Our facilities are atrocious and even with all the media money that's going to be coming in, our AD has basically already said that they aren't going to use any of it on trying to catch up to the rest of the conference. And how about Indiana's NIL program? They're all over it and have the boosters on-board to do what needs to be done for basketball. Great! How about when it comes to football? The infrastructure for it basically doesn't even exist, and fans can't even buy official jerseys with player names on them, the most basic ways of cutting the players in.
How is Allen, or any coach who might replace him in the next few years, supposed to sell a program with no marketability for the players, no history, no tradition, and facilities that would be below-par in the MAC? The athletic department needs new voices with no connection to Indiana University or its sports culture, voices who are from the South and understand that college football is big business, not friendly competition between colleagues. Voices who aren't scared to upset boosters by putting basketball on the backburner and focusing on the sport that actually matters in the modern era for the department financially and that actually brings in the money that makes the success of other programs possible. Until we have that, we'll never have sustained success.
Indiana still treats P5 football like it is just a game and everyone involved are all friends. They aren't, they are competitors. Indiana's motto seems to be "Rules for me, but not for thee, and that's fine." They'd rather be the good guy than actually be good.
Indiana continues to abjectly fail at adapting to the modern reality of college football. Our facilities are atrocious and even with all the media money that's going to be coming in, our AD has basically already said that they aren't going to use any of it on trying to catch up to the rest of the conference. And how about Indiana's NIL program? They're all over it and have the boosters on-board to do what needs to be done for basketball. Great! How about when it comes to football? The infrastructure for it basically doesn't even exist, and fans can't even buy official jerseys with player names on them, the most basic ways of cutting the players in.
How is Allen, or any coach who might replace him in the next few years, supposed to sell a program with no marketability for the players, no history, no tradition, and facilities that would be below-par in the MAC? The athletic department needs new voices with no connection to Indiana University or its sports culture, voices who are from the South and understand that college football is big business, not friendly competition between colleagues. Voices who aren't scared to upset boosters by putting basketball on the backburner and focusing on the sport that actually matters in the modern era for the department financially and that actually brings in the money that makes the success of other programs possible. Until we have that, we'll never have sustained success.
