Before becoming IU athletic director, Fred Glass was a lawyer.
That showed in Thursday’s press conference when he announced the resignation of former IU Coach Kevin Wilson.
For nearly an hour, Glass discussed the reason for the resignation, without ever giving his logic, beyond a difference in opinions about leadership between the pair.
Glass nimbly sidestepped any questions about that difference and why that precipitated the departure of IU football’s best coach in decades. However, he did leave one small crumb when discussing what new head coach Tom Allen brings to the program.
“He is demanding and has a very high standard but is not demeaning,” Glass said. “He cares about his players, and they care back.”
This could be construed as a thinly veiled shot at Wilson.
The rumors have churned since the news broke of a few players alleging improper actions by Wilson. However, Glass completely denied these were the reasons why Wilson resigned. Glass repeatedly discussed the fact that there was no single event that led to this moment.
“There’s no smoking gun or single precipitating event that led to where we are today,” Glass said.
He repeated this line four times.
However, there is smoke surrounding the program now and enough allegations with former and current players that something must have happened that culminated in Wilson’s departure.
Differences of leadership don’t result in firing the most successful coach in recent IU history. Wilson led IU to back-to-back to bowl appearances and was on the cusp of breaking through with this program.
You also don’t hire an external law firm to investigate a philosophical difference between a head coach and an athletic director. Just the simple fact that the firm was hired signals something was significantly amiss with the program.
After last season’s Pinstripe Bowl appearance, Glass inked Wilson to a six-year contract extension. If there were really lingering concerns about Wilson’s leadership, why give him such a lucrative contract?
“I felt very confident that going into the extension Kevin and I were on the same page — there weren’t the leadership issues that led me to my most recent concern — and that the issues we had been successfully put behind us,” Glass said. “More recently, it came to my attention that those differences in leadership approach were maybe back.”
What happened in the interim between affirming your coach so visibly and deciding that Wilson was not the right guy to lead IU? What happened that led to Wilson concluding that leaving millions on the table was his only move left at IU?
Glass has good intentions — he wants the best for IU and desires to run the program the right way.
“So what might be OK at other places, what might be OK in an industry, isn’t necessarily OK here,” Glass said. “That doesn’t make me right or wrong, but I can tell you that I came at this earnestly and with the best interests of Indiana University at heart. And I’ll tell you that I’m proud to be part of an institution that puts doing what it thinks is the right thing ahead of competitive success, and I think we’ve had competitive success the last couple years in football.”
This is the way you want to run an athletic program, but in not identifying what went so wrong with Wilson, he leaves room for rampant speculation to continue on.
Glass could have put that all to bed. Instead, the rumors will continue to swirl in Bloomington.
aphussey@indiana.edu
@thehussnetwork
