IU Coach Tom Allen welcomed 23 young men to his football program during Wednesday’s National Signing Day.
Twenty-two of them will look to quickly develop a relationship with their new head coach, but one new Hoosier has known Allen his entire life.
Linebacker Thomas Allen, son of Tom, played at Plant High School in Tampa, Florida.
He was one of the first players to commit and sign to the IU class of 2017.
The linebacker has been on campus for the spring semester after, committing in June and signing with IU in December.
For Tom, the recruiting process needed to be fair, the coach said.
He didn’t want any bias or misdirection when it came to his son’s future.
The recruiting process didn’t even start at IU.
It started when Tom was coaching at South Florida.
“They came to me and they said, ‘We want to offer your son,’” Tom said of the South Florida coaching staff. “And I’m like, ‘Alright, go ahead. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I don’t want to recruit him. I don’t want to evaluate him. I want you guys to treat him like anybody else, but take me out of the mix.”
Tom said he wanted Thomas to have a normal recruiting process.
He also wanted his son to feel like he had been recruited by a position coach and a program that he wanted to play for.
He didn’t want his son to be treated any differently from other recruits.
He truly wanted to be Thomas’ dad, not his coach.
That’s why when Plant had advanced to the Florida high school football level 7A state final in December, Tom was there to hug Thomas in congratulations just days after receiving the IU head coaching job.
He wasn’t there to recruit. He wasn’t there to build his new program.
He was there to be Thomas’ dad.
Plant head football coach Robert Weiner said Tom was just a typical father among the others.
Tom grilled at the concession stand and cheered the team on rather instead of trying to coach it.
Tom said he knew those moments were going to be few and far between if Thomas went anywhere but IU, but he knew he would see every game his son played at IU.
The coach consulted Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz, who coached his own son James when James was playing offensive line at Iowa.
He asked Ferentz if the relationship between he and his son would change.
Ferentz assured him he had no problems with the matter.
Tom played for his own father while growing up in New Castle, Indiana.
He understood the line to be drawn between coaches and their sons, but in college, the ties were emphasized a bit, Tom said.
The Allen family weighed the extremes and decided going to IU was what was best for Thomas, Tom said.
“I never dreamed I would be his head coach,” Tom said. “That wasn’t the plan. Obviously this is where we’re at, and he’s going to be treated like everybody else. I say that to our players — he’s a player over here. He’s going to have to earn his way. He knows that, and that’s part of the deal.”
He won’t be the best athlete on the field, Tom said.
However, Weiner said Thomas has the intangibles that make his teams championship teams.
Thomas played in three state championships in high school and lost his last one in 2016.
He was co-captain with fellow IU commit Juwan Burgess.
“Thomas is one-in-a-million,” Weiner said in the days leading up to National Signing Day. “He knows how to get the coach’s message across while still being one of the guys, and that’s not an easy thing to do.”
Weiner said Thomas would shout after his teammates while leaving morning workouts that he better not hear about one of his teammates being a disturbance in class.
That’s just who Thomas is, he said.
Weiner called him the finest young man he’s ever coached.
Now Thomas is a Hoosier.
He will fight for a spot on the NCAA’s most improved defense in terms of yards allowed in 2016.
“You gotta leave it out there and separate it,” Tom said about their father-son relationship.
“He’s in the dorms and a normal student like everybody else,” he said. “Just happens to be my son.”
