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The Indiana Daily Student

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COLUMN: Tom Allen will do great things at IU

IU Director of Athletics Fred Glass and Tom Allen sit at the desk during Wednesday nights press conference following Kevin Wilson's resignation from the football program. Glass named Allen the new head coach of the football program effective immediately.

IU Coach Tom Allen is the perfect man for the job.

Lost in the swirling chaos of the resignation of Kevin Wilson was the man whom IU Athletics Director Fred Glass tapped to lead the program moving forward.

Glass immediately knew he had his man in Allen, the wizard who turned IU’s defense from a laughingstock into the bedrock of the team.

The numbers are staggering. IU’s defense improved in every significant national category this season with nearly the same talent as the year before. The only major difference was Allen.

The players bought into what he was selling from day one. Allen brings a combination of passion and energy into coaching, and you can’t help but get motivated whenever you hear him speak. He’s part preacher, with his message of “Love each other” spreading like wildfire, and part enforcer.

[Culture of fear existed under Kevin Wilson | IDS]

His zeal for coaching is why he will be a good head coach and why Wilson brought him to Bloomington in the first place.

“He believed in me, and he gave me a charge when I came here to be the head coach of the defense, to change the culture on that side of the ball, and that’s what we did,” Allen said. “These players believed. They play with amazing passion and toughness, and they’re relentless. I was so proud of the way they competed every single week in a very 
difficult schedule.”

Allen is going to bring what he infected the defense with to an offense that’s had an inconsistent season and was the reason why IU failed to win more games.

His identification of the problems — scoring in the red zone, running the ball and protecting the football — that ailed the unit is spot on. He just has to figure out a way to fix them.

“I have a vision to create a culture of accountability, toughness and love,” Allen said. “I believe in positive conviction-driven leadership and the power of belief. I challenged our defense to embrace those qualities, and I will challenge our team to do the same.”

[COLUMN: Wilson's resignation points to larger problem | Jamie Zega for the IDS]

This job is extremely challenging because the Hoosiers play in the toughest division in college football, but Allen’s already done things no one reasonably could have expected in a single season.

The way to build a consistent program is to have back-to-back great coaching hires. Wilson was responsible for the heavy lifting and endured the slow growth that it took to get IU to two consecutive bowl games.

[IU football's 2017 recruiting class survives first weekend under Tom Allen | IDS]

Allen gets to reap the rewards of what Wilson started while also bringing continuity to the program.

Allen could even bring IU to heights it hasn’t seen in decades, and when Glass likened it to when Butler hired Brad Stevens, he isn’t that 
far off.

Hiring Allen is still a bit risky. He doesn’t exactly have an exhaustive track record at the Division 1 level, because he’s only been a coordinator for two years. However, he was a rising star in college football, and it was all but an eventuality that he would become a head coach 
someday soon.

“He is a leader of men, which I think will transcend beyond the defense across this team and maybe the missing link, maybe the secret sauce to get us from being close to maybe getting over the hump a little more often,” Glass said.

Allen is more than capable of keeping IU on its ascent.

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