If the USA Today coaching salary database is to be believed (and why wouldn’t it?), Indiana’s Tom Allen is the lowest-paid Power 5 head coach. He and Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith are the only Power 5 coaches below $2 million, and he’s a full half a million bones behind what Rutgers paid Chris Ash.
Combine that with the fact Allen has Indiana off to its best start in decades, and it’s clear he won’t be the lowest-paid Power 5 head coach for long. Either Indiana will give him a raise or he won’t be at Indiana.
Turns out, Indiana is taking care of the former.
“As I publicly suggested before the season and publicly reaffirmed a week or so ago, I expect to do a new contract with Tom,” IU AD Fred Glass told the Indianapolis Star.
Allen has been mentioned as a bottom-tier candidate for the Florida State job, but this is a case of a coach actually earning his raise, not just getting one because the market says he should. He’s basically the perfect Indiana football coach: No one that would want the job could do better than him, and no one that could do better than him would want the job.
The former Indiana high school head coach has won 17 games with five games to spare in his third season, which already makes him the winningest IU coach through the 3-season mark since World War II. And at 7-2 this season, Allen has the Hoosiers a win away from their high-water mark since 1993 and tying the school record for most wins in a season, a mark they have only reached twice in program history.
To put it bluntly, either Glass should get his coach a new contract or he should find himself a new job.