Indiana Football: Hoosiers ‘right there’ according to Big Ten foe

One Big Ten coach expressed his belief that the Indiana football program resembles his team just a couple of years ago.

Tom Allen has made the Indiana football program ‘relevant’ again. And by relevant I mean just good enough to get all of this attention from fellow Big Ten coaches, but not good enough to break through.

Despite two straight 5-7 seasons, Indiana is winning on the recruiting trail. Now, they just need that success to spill over onto the field.

After Jim Harbaugh had praise for Allen and the Hoosiers, another Big Ten coach took to the mics to speak about the upswing Indiana is on.

Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald sees a lot of himself and the Wildcats in Allen and Indiana a couple of years back, right before making their most recent successful run.

He spoke upon that at Big Ten Media Day.

"“I look at Tom (Allen) right now at IU,” Fitzgerald said on BTN during Big Ten Media Day.  “They’re right there, right?  They’re right there.  I lived that as a player.  We were right there.”“Once you have that break through, Gary Barnett (the 1995 Northwestern head coach) gave that analogy of priming the pump.  You keep priming that pump and priming it, you don’t know how close the water is, but if you stop that water goes all the way back down.  But once you get that water flowing you can move it with your finger.”"

Up until 2015, Fitzgerald’s tenure starting in 2006, the Wildcats reached five conference wins just three times and were always right around .500 on the season. Ironically, that’s exactly what the Hoosiers have been the past few years. Since 2015 however, Northwestern has gone four straight seasons of Bowl Games, three of which they have won, a 26-9 conference record, and three seasons of nine or more wins.

For Indiana, as mentioned, they are following along the same path and need that one breakthrough season to get over the hump. This season has that potential, and sooner rather than later they need to be the team that performs, and doesn’t just have the potential.