Column: It's time, time for Lynch to go and time for Glass to be the bad guy

LANDOVER, Md. — It’s time.

It’s time for Fred Glass to make a change.

It’s time for the IU athletics director to clean house by firing Bill Lynch and his entire coaching staff.

When the season ends next Saturday afternoon in West Lafayette, I expect to hear that change is going to be made. If I don’t, Glass should be in a fight to keep his own job.

The Hoosiers have gone from bad to worse in a hurry, and if Glass doesn’t pull the trigger now, they will continue to go south.

The players no longer believe in Lynch, and how could they? They hear the same message every week: A signature win will come eventually.

And every week the result is always the same — an “L” on the schedule.

That was the case again at FedExField on Saturday, when Penn State scored 17 unanswered points in the third and fourth quarters to win 41-24.

This was the game that could have saved Lynch’s job, and his team imploded again. What was Lynch’s reaction afterwards? The same reaction he always has.

“They’re obviously a good football team. It was a tough loss for us, but as they’ve been doing all year, we’ll bounce back because we’ve got a great opportunity next week against Purdue.”

No accountability. No fire. No anger. No sadness. Lynch shows absolutely no emotion, and that’s the problem.

If you don’t correct mistakes, those mistakes will continue to be made over and over again.

“It really just comes down to execution,” quarterback Ben Chappell said.

With this IU team under Lynch, it’s always a different area in which the Hoosiers fail to execute.

Three weeks ago, it was a missed field goal by Mitch Ewald against Northwestern. A week later, it was a dropped pass by Damarlo Belcher.

And Saturday it was a blocked punt that turned into a Penn State touchdown when the game was tied at 24.

Well-coached teams execute; IU does not.

I know there’s an argument that Lynch should be the Hoosiers’ coach next year because of the recruiting class he has coming in.

My counterargument: How many of those players will honor their commitments?

It’s only a matter of time before they realize Lynch isn’t a good coach and they aren’t going to win with him at IU. I have a feeling we are going to see several players rescind their commitments in the next few weeks.

Example: Armonze Daniel, a four-star outside linebacker from Avon High School, has an offer from IU and was considering the Hoosiers when I talked to him in the fall.

A text I received from him on Friday displayed his current opinion of Lynch and the Hoosiers.

“I have NO interest in IU or Purdue,” he wrote.

I understand Glass wants to honor contracts, but he has to make the tough move.
Glass likes to be the bright face that represents IU Athletics. He likes to be the nice guy.

In this case, though, he has to be the bad guy and pay Lynch to go away. He has to clean up Rick Greenspan’s mess again, the guy who, in hindsight, stupidly gave Lynch a contract extension in the first place.

Letting him serve as the interim coach when Terry Hoeppner died was OK. Allowing him to stay to lose 21 of his last 23 conference games is not.

As Lynch walked out of the press room Saturday, Glass grabbed him and patted him on the back, like a big brother comforting his little brother after a tough game.

IU fans can only hope that was a “It was a good run” pat and not a “We’ll get ‘em next year” one.

If Glass really wants to send this program in the right direction, he’ll do the right thing and fire Lynch.


E-mail: jmalbers@indiana.edu