IU football can't afford Tom Allen's buyout, but can it afford the program bottoming out?
IU football coach Tom Allen is waffling again about his starting quarterback, and you wonder if anyone is waffling about Tom Allen. No, you don’t wonder about the fan base. The fans have decided — they’re done with Tom Allen — but when it comes to football the IU fan base is not, shall we say, impactful.
Without enough alumni making enough noise (like this was IU basketball), the Hoosiers are right where they’ve been for a few years: Not good enough at quarterback, not good enough at offensive coordinator, not good enough at defensive coordinator, not good enough at head coach.
Not good enough.
The Hoosiers are on the hamster wheel again, where they’ve been for the better part of forever, leaving the IU administration stuck between an overmatched coach, disinterested fan base and increasingly unforgiving Big Ten Conference.
Firing Tom Allen after the season will cost IU a buyout of about $20 million, a ludicrous sum that goes down to the more reasonable $8 million neighborhood after the 2024 season. That’s a difference of about $12 million, so let’s look at it that way: Firing Tom Allen after this season will cost the school about $12 million.
What will it cost to keep him?
You wonder if the IU administration is doing that math.
Who is IU's QB? We're in Week 7, and we don't know — and neither does Tom Allen.
'It is hard right now.' IU players confront tough realities after Michigan loss
Pick a QB already!
Tom Allen was a great idea, once. Former coach at Ben Davis, former defensive coordinator at IU, excitable and energetic. He replaced Kevin Wilson in late 2016 and was recruiting at a high level and then winning at a high level and finally getting paid at a high level because the one thing IU could not do — after decades of searching for a great coach — was lose him to another school.
Allen’s career arc was unmistakable in its direction upward, with a pair of 5-7 seasons followed by 8-5 and the Gator Bowl in 2019, then 6-2 and the Outback Bowl in 2020. IU was ascending and you wondered just how high it could go. Three years later we have the answer: 6-2 and the Outback Bowl in 2020.
Now the arc is unmistakable in the opposite direction: 2-10, 4-8 and whatever becomes of the 2023 season, with the Hoosiers 2-4 and unlikely to be favored in any of its final six games. IU is descending and you wonder just how low this can go. This year, next year, the school faces the inevitable decision to write the inevitable check and send Tom Allen on his inevitable way back to defensive coordinator for some school in the South.
For now we breathlessly await a resolution to another inevitability at IU football: a quarterback quandary.
2017: Peyton Ramsey replaced Richard Lagow in midseason.
2018: Days before the season opener, Ramsey wins three-way QB race with true freshman Michael Penix Jr. and Arizona transfer Brandon Dawkins.
2019: Days before the season opener, Penix wins job over Ramsey before being hurt in midseason, and replaced by Ramsey.
2020: With Ramsey gone to Northwestern, the job is Penix’s.
2021: Penix is the clear starter, but when he gets hurt IU careens from Utah transfer Jack Tuttle to true freshman Donaven McCulley, with a dash of walk-on Grant Gremel.
2022: Days before the season opener, Missouri transfer Connor Bazelak wins job over Tuttle, then loses it eight games later, then gets hurt. Dexter Williams starts, then gets hurt. Back to Bazelak.
2023: Days before the season opener, Allen still can’t decide between sophomore Brendan Sorsby and Tennessee transfer Tayven Jackson. Sorsby starts the opener and Jackson the second game before Allen settles on Jackson as the starter the rest of the season. Or not. He’s currently deciding between Jackson and Sorsby for the right to start Saturday against Rutgers, unless he gives the job to Williams, who is close to returning from the injury he suffered last season.
It has been chaos at quarterback, with the exception of Michael Penix, who’s so obviously good that he’s the Heisman frontrunner at Washington and a possible first-round pick in the 2024 NFL draft. And even with all that ability, Penix lost one QB competition at IU (in 2018) and went to the end of preseason practice before winning it in 2019.
Makes you wonder why Tom Allen can’t make a decision when the choice is obvious. Or even when the choice isn’t obvious.
Makes you think: If this is how he handles the most important position on the team, how badly is he mismanaging other positions — and staff positions — we don’t follow as closely?
Donaven McCulley's position switch was a sign
The problems with IU go well beyond quarterback, but that position offers a glimpse into a program with no sense of who it is, or even who it has.
In 2021 the Hoosiers signed a home-grown, four-star quarterback of the future in Lawrence North's Donaven McCulley, who needed just one year on campus to decide he wanted no part of this position at this school. McCulley switched to receiver — his decision — in the spring of 2022. This was after Penix had already transferred to Washington. This was with only Tuttle and Bazelak his competition for the starting job. McCulley took a look around and said: Nope.
Doyel last year: Behind Donaven McCulley's sudden switch from QB to WR
This is a complicated topic, so pay attention: What if Tom Allen had replaced Kalen DeBoer, his only good hire in four attempts at offensive coordinator — the jury’s out on No. 5, Rod Carey — with someone worthy of the role in 2020? Maybe McCulley would’ve seen what was happening on the practice field and in the meeting room and on game day and decided to stick with the position he’d played his whole life.
I mean, McCulley jumped off that ship fast. Why? What did he know, and is it what we’re starting to see?
Every answer comes back to Tom Allen and his inability to make quality decisions, assuming he makes a decision at all. Seven years into his tenure, he has had five offensive coordinators and six defensive coordinators. Two coordinators were so good they left for head coaching vacancies, but some were fired for incompetence, some left just to get the hell out, and some are still here.
Allen is no better at filling staff positions than he is at picking a quarterback. Hiring an assistant coach comes down to intangibles and judgment, and keep in mind Allen spent six seasons at three schools with Hugh Freeze and had no idea of Freeze’s true character. In 2017 Allen said he was “shocked” at the scandal that cost Freeze his job at Ole Miss. Really? Listen to Freeze talk for 10 minutes and you can see something’s wrong there. Unless you care that he wins games, which allows weak people and schools to see what they want.
Hugh Freeze is Auburn’s problem now.
Tom Allen is IU’s problem. He's a coach who has won only with a generational talent at quarterback and two future winning Division I head coaches as coordinators. DeBoer won 11 games at Washington in 2022, Kane Wommack won 10 at South Alabama, and Allen won four at IU.
No, IU can’t afford Allen’s $20 million buyout after this season, and the school won’t exactly have $8 million lying around to fire him after next season either. The only question, though — and it’s inevitable — is this one:
How far does IU football have to fall before the school decides what it really can’t afford is another season of Tom Allen?
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana football can't afford Tom Allen's buyout, so descent continues
