Listen, don't ask me who Indiana football coach Tom Allen runs out there at quarterback today. Harry Gonso, for all I know. Babe Laufenberg. Some other relic from IU's exceedingly beige football past.
Here's what I do know: Beige is a damn stubborn thing to wash out of a football program, at least for any length of time.
Not all that long ago Tom Allen had people excited about Indiana football, which takes some doing at a place where football traditionally has been something to do until they roll out the basketballs. He took the Hoosiers to the Gator Bowl and then the Outback Bowl, won 14 of 21 games in a two-year stretch and had his players calling him the best coach in America on national TV.
America fell in love with the guy. LEO (Love Each Other), Allen's mantra, became a thing. Finally Indiana football looked like it wasn't going to be Indiana football anymore.
And then ...
And then the Hoosiers went 2-10 in 2021.
And then 4-8 last year.
And now they're 2-4 with Rutgers coming, and it's almost Halloween and Allen still can't decide on a starting quarterback. He tried Brendan Sorsby and then he tried Tayven Jackson and then he tried Sorsby again, and now ...
Now, who knows. Allen's keeping it a secret until whoever it is trots out to the huddle today.
And Indiana, on his watch, has gone back to being Indiana. The Hoosiers are now 8-22 under Allen since those two semi-glorious seasons, and we're back to the Lee Corso era, the Cam Cameron era, the Gerry DiNardo era.
Since John Pont took the Hoosiers to their only Rose Bowl in 1967 -- an improbable run he couldn't duplicate even though Gonso, John Isenbarger and Jade Butcher were still around for two more seasons -- only Bill Mallory has won with any sort of consistency in B-town. Mallory coached Indiana for 13 seasons, taking them to six bowl games and going 69-77-3. Take away his first season, when he went 0-11 with someone else's players, and he actually had a winning record: 69-66-3.
No one has come close to that since.
And it's not that Indiana hasn't had players, or doesn't have them now. The Hoosiers have always had players. It's just that they haven't had enough of them, and weren't likely to recruiting against Michigan and Ohio State and Michigan State and Iowa and Wisconsin and later Penn State.
Starting next season, you can add USC and UCLA and Oregon to the mix. Which is another way of saying the path away from beige isn't getting any easier.
Allen's managed to lure some talent to Bloomington despite all that, but, again, not enough talent. In the meantime, he's gotten rid of defensive coordinators and offensive coordinators, and the consequence is a program that seems to have no direction -- or at the very least has forgotten what that direction is.
People keep saying a school with the resources Indiana has ought to have a decent football program, and maybe they're right. But when you hardly ever have had a decent program, resources don't mean a lot.
Corporate college football doesn't have much use for tradition these days, but tradition still sells a program like nothing else. And it's damned hard to sell kids in 2023 on a tradition that peaked almost 60 years ago.
So, here we are. Allen's magic has vanished, and he's on his way out like every IU coach eventually is on his way out. The only question is when -- after this season if some moneybags alum ponies up the gargantuan lump it would take to buy Allen out now, or after next season when the lump will be considerably smaller.
And then the search will be on for a replacement. And the talk will be about how crucial it is for Indiana to lure a big name to Bloomington, or an up-and-coming name, or anyone, really, who can finally scrub the beige out of the program for good.
In the meantime, a raucous crowd turned out in Assembly Hall last night for Hoosier Hysteria, Indiana unveiling its men's and women's basketball teams with the usual glitter and hype and a concert by the band Gucci Mane.
So Indiana's still got that going for it.
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