Entering Year Three, Tom Allen's 'Five-Year' Plan for IU Football is Starting to Take Shape
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Indiana head coach Tom Allen leads his players into Memorial Stadium Image: Sammy Jacobs Hoosier Huddle
]Written by: TJ Inman (@TJHoosierHuddle)
Nearly every successful individual, organization or group has a list of goals and a timeline for when they would like to accomplish them. Often, the timeframe set for a long-term plan is five years. This type of planning began as an economic development program first appearing in the late 1920s in the Soviet Union and it has been adopted in basically every industry and organization since. While we won’t be discussing something quite as important as economic development, Indiana University head football coach Tom Allen definitely has a “five-year plan” for his Hoosiers and as he enters Year Three, he discussed his goals for the program and, more importantly, the things they need to do to get there.
“You know to me, a lot of it has to depend on where you are at as a program and what you’re trying to do,” Allen told Hoosier Huddle in a one-on-one interview. “For me, this is going into year three. It’s probably taken, I knew it would take some time to kind of get the staff structured in a way you want. In terms of, the staffing part of it, obviously on-the-field coaches is set, but in terms of the personnel off the field. Recruiting is kind of the biggest thing. That was, when I first took over, you obviously have goals you want and you try not to be too specific maybe necessarily on the field things, you have broader goals, but at the same time you need to know where you want to be.”
His plan for improving the roster via recruiting was set in place quickly as he focused heavily on the state of Indiana and treating Florida like a local area. Allen knew the types of guys he had to bring in to begin competing at the level he desires.
“We had to change our roster. We had to get more depth, we had to get big, strong guys up front and more speed on the perimeter. That kind of just was the emphasis. So to me, getting recruiting right was big. We have kind of gone through and it’s taken a couple different years to get to the point where you have the personnel in those positions to where you feel like we’re now able to do what I want to do and when families come on campus this is the kind of experience I want them to have. To me, that is kind of where it started.”
The efforts have paid off in the recruiting rankings as Indiana’s classes have improved in each year of Tom Allen’s tenure and the caliber of player being brought to Bloomington is rising. Allen knows though that big-time college football is a bottom-line business and patience is not a virtue you will see a lot of. “No one is as patient as you wish they were and I am not either,” Allen said. The improved recruiting has created a deeper roster that looks well-positioned for success in the not-too-distant future but the Hoosiers head coach sees no reason they cannot begin accomplishing some goals now.
“The bottom line is we want to win the Big Ten. It doesn’t happen overnight. That’s a long-term goal that we are working towards and obviously step number one for us is to get to a bowl game and win our bowl game. That is just kind of what you set down as what you want to accomplish.”
IU won’t go from having the nation’s longest streak of seasons without a bowl victory to competing for a Rose Bowl in a short period of time. In fact, many feel it cannot be done in the current Big Ten East in Bloomington. Tom Allen and his players believe they can accomplish their goals and he can see a path being built to success: “So for me, the five-year goal, the five-year range, this is going into year three. The next step is to get to a bowl game and win the bowl game and after that it is about every single year I want to be a relevant team in this conference. I want to be a team that is competing to win our division and ultimately go play in Indianapolis to go to the Rose Bowl,” Allen told Hoosier Huddle.
“Those are things that you are stepping towards and I see other programs doing the same things. Those programs that are doing things that we want to be doing, it’s taken time to get there. So to me, that is kind of the way I look at it. I don’t necessarily put a year on every single one of those things, but you know you look at our roster, you look at our guys and you think about year five after we have taken over, that is going to be a big chunk of your guys. That is your team, that is the way you mold it, that’s the way you build it, that’s the way you use guys you’ve developed and recruited and sat in their living room and so to me that’s the group, we have our current guys when they mature and are older that’s when that is going to be that type of timing of it all. Then you just start, when that all happens, it’s about continuing to develop, to recruit and just keep stacking classes and just keep growing and developing expectations about how you are going to play and what you are going to do and the results that you want.”
The Hoosiers very likely won’t compete for a Big Ten East title this season. They probably won’t come close to a major bowl game. However, the work is being done to accomplish those first goals: get to a bowl game and win in the postseason for the first time in more than two decades. Tom Allen and his staff are following a plan and laying down the foundation to take Indiana football to a level it has not been since the days of Bill Mallory. Now the progress must begin to be seen on the field so that Allen’s program stays on the path to national relevance.