Tom Allen Wants Hoosier Players to Sharpen Their Axes During the Fall

Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)

Opportunity is what you make of it. As the ACC, Big 12 and SEC prepare to play their fall season through a pandemic the Indiana Hoosiers are trying to find what opportunity lies ahead as their fall football season was postponed on August 11th.

Indiana head coach used an old quote from former United States president Abraham Lincoln during his Zoom conference on Thursday afternoon.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” Lincoln said.

Allen gave his team a charge for this time. “Both our staff and our players we're going to have this clear focus for the next three months to sharpen your axe, that's gonna be our theme and the whole objective for me is we're going to find a way to improve this football team in every way” Allen explained.

The axe in this case are the skills needed to keep building a winning team in the grueling Big Ten East, the sharpener is in the preparation.

Allen want IU to be “improving the tools that you work with and and getting them to the highest level possible so we have, I believe the number one strength coach (Aaron Wellman) in America, leading our strength staff, and so excited about him being able to develop our guys and I want to challenge them all develop, mentally, physically and spiritually over this time.”

While the games have been postponed to an unknown date the Hoosiers can still practice 12 hours a week. They can lift, hold meetings, run drills, hold walk throughs and study film. “They [the NCAA] gave us 12 hours to work with. Within that 12 hours, we have everything I just mentioned. We will not have our normal two-to-three-hour practices mixed in there and even the games count. Usually when it is a lesser week like that in the offseason, we have eight hours in a traditional offseason week with two days off. Now with the 12 hours, it is still two days off that you have to have, but in a five-day window we can have 12 hours with our team doing football-related activities” Allen explained.

While the Hoosiers are not the only team trying to chop down the rest of the Big Ten forest, that includes some of the biggest trees in the nation, Allen is hoping that they have the sharpest axe to help do the job. Just like ol’ Honest Abe.