Indiana Hoosiers Football: Why I am waiting for the other shoe to drop
By Matt Moore
Tom Allen just keeps bringing in more and more talent to this Indiana football program! I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around what this guy is doing. Talent-wise, Tom Allen is taking Indiana University Football to a level I honestly never, in a million years, believed I would ever see. At least in my lifetime. The momentum he has going at IU is almost unbelievable.
"I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."
Don’t get mad at me. Hear me out. When I say I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, it is no reflection on Tom Allen or the job he has done. Hardly. It would be hard to imagine anyone doing what he has done for Indiana. He has certainly earned my trust and my admiration. I want to play for him! But he’s apparently not in the market for a 6-foot, 260lb, 45-year guy with two knee replacements. I even offered to walk on. I could have been a beast…to carry off the field after my first snap.
That paranoid glancing around I am doing–as if some calamity is about to befall me–has nothing to do with Tom Allen. He is amazing.
It has to do with being a casual Indiana Football fan all my life. We’ve suffered a little at the hands of this program. This is still a little hard for me to believe. It’s almost like I have a college football fan form of PTSD.
Yet, Tom Allen seems completely oblivious to the confusion he is creating between my heart and my head. This is a shock to my system. Sometimes I don’t know what to do. I want to believe that Indiana has arrived and now is going to take its place as a perennial football power in the Big Ten. I want to believe in that just like I want to believe that Mike Woodson has miracle-working powers too.
Cam Cameron understood the chaos IU winning would cause. He didn’t upset with the status quo. Gerry Dinardo went out of the way to help keep my hopes down. Terry Hoeppner let me start to dream a little. (RIP, Coach. You made us wonder what was possible at IU.) But all too quickly we lost him. Kevin Wilson. I didn’t like him from day one. He helped me stay completely ambivalent.
Then Tom Allen came along and has taken Indiana places that I never dreamed it could go.
I have always said—to anyone who would listen—that the difference between Indiana and Ohio State on the football field, often was not that big when it came to starters. For many years Indiana could play with the powerhouses of the Big Ten for three quarters. Unfortunately, football games have four quarters.
Where the Ohio State’s and Michigan’s of the league separated themselves from Indiana was, I proffered, depth. The powerhouses had better depth at each position. That’s the reason Indiana could play with them for three quarters and then all of the sudden look like they forgot how to play football in the fourth. That’s called fatigue.
My theory was if Indiana could recruit better depth, they could rise to the upper echelon of the Big Ten. How could they recruit better depth? Win. That’s easy enough, right?
The challenge was to do enough winning to start attracting better talent. How was that ever going to happen with a program that had struggled so much for so long?
"It was going to take a really special leader."
What have we seen since Tom Allen took the helm of the Hoosier Football program? A special leader. Can Coach Allen maintain this momentum? Can he keep Indiana beating the big boys in the Big Ten? I say, yes, he can. He is not going to wake up one day and forget how to be Tom Allen. He is not going to unlearn being a special leader, because that is rooted in who he is. And who he is has been perfect for Indiana.
So, I guess my feeble mind will still worry. Things will still trigger me when it comes to Indiana Football. My butt is still going to be massively puckered every time we play Ohio State or Michigan. But it’s not because of Tom.