Tom Allen and Mike Kirschner stood side-by-side at the 2007 American Football Coaches Association Convention.
The Ben Davis High School coaches — Allen the head coach, Kirschner his offensive coordinator — had just finished their seventh year together in Indianapolis with Hall of Fame coach Dick Dullaghan having passed the baton to Allen in 2004.
Kirschner had just broken the news to Allen that he was interested in taking a job he’d been offered elsewhere. But Allen told him to reconsider.
The successor to the legendary Dullaghan was moving on after three seasons and a 25-12 record. Wabash College had offered him a defensive coordinator position.
After 15 years, Allen was leaving high school football.
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Sixteen-year-old John Stansell was moving into Oxford, Indiana, with his family in the late 1970s.
Oxford, a town of less than 1,000 residents at the time, was also home to the Allens — Tom, Janet and their three children Nathan, Christy and Tommy.
The family of five lived across the street, and before Stansell ended his first conversation with Tom, he’d already been asked to play for the local high school football team. The Benton Central Bison were the pride of the Allen family.
Stansell agreed, and that’s how he came to know Tommy, the 7-year-old kid who ran water to players and sprinted along the sidelines to pick up footballs for the officials during games.
Anything to be around his dad and the football team, Stansell said.
Tom was a strong and silent coach who knew how to motivate and teach his players.
“All the players knew when Coach Allen turned his BC football hat around backwards, he was getting mad, and he was about to come into the line and start tackling guys and showing them how to do it,” Stansell said about his coach.
While putting a large amount of time into coaching and teaching, Tom always made sure to spend time with his family. Stansell said he remembers flying kites, throwing a Frisbee and constructing walls in his basement with Tom and his kids.
Tom was a great example as a father, Stansell said, and the Allens were a great example of a good family.
“I can tell based on the interview I saw when Tommy took over the other day at IU that he respects his chance that he’s going to get,” Stansell said about his childhood neighbor. “He will be a great coach for IU.”
In that press conference where Tommy shook IU Athletics Director Fred Glass’ hand to begin his era as IU football’s head coach, Tom was sitting in the third row, wiping tears from his eyes as his son spoke.
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Allen had always wanted to get back to Indiana.
After he met his wife, Tracy, and graduated from Maranatha Baptist College in 1992, the two hit the road from Watertown, Wisconsin, to Tampa, Florida, where head football and wrestling coaching positions awaited him at Temple Heights Christian High School.
After a two-season stint at Temple Heights, Allen was beginning his new head coaching position at Armwood High School in Seffner, Florida.
That’s when he met Dick Dullaghan.
Dullaghan made the trip down to Florida for an annual football camp, and Allen was there, working with linebackers and defensive linemen.
“I saw how enthusiastic, positive and energetic he was,” Dullaghan said. “He wanted to coach fast players, hard-nosed players.”
When it was Allen who approached Dullaghan about open coaching jobs in Indiana, the Ben Davis coach learned he didn’t want to be in the Hoosier state solely for the quality of football.
He wanted to raise his family there, just like his dad.
Allen’s passion for football and love for Indiana kept his face and name lodged in Dullaghan’s mind until a defensive coordinator spot opened up at Ben Davis in 1998.
Allen boarded the ship that was Ben Davis football after one year at Marion High School and won three 5A state titles with the crew.
“It was a marriage made in heaven,” Dullaghan said. “It was no mistake that Tom Allen was the defensive coordinator for those teams. He’s infectious — he had ‘it.’ I always knew he’d go to the college level.”
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Nearly everything Allen has touched in the college ranks has turned to gold.
Wabash was 8-2 the season before Allen became the team’s defensive coordinator and secondary coach. It was 11-2 his only season on staff.
In his two seasons as defensive coordinator at Lambuth in Jackson, Tennessee, he helped push a 3-8 team in 2007 to 8-4 and 12-1 in 2008 and 2009. He even missed five months of pay with head coach Hugh Freeze to aide a struggling Lambuth athletic department.
After Drake stayed put with Allen at defensive coordinator in 2010, Arkansas State saw its record flip from 4-8 to 10-3 with Allen as defensive coordinator. It hasn’t missed a bowl season since Allen’s one season in 2011.
In his three years at Ole Miss, the Rebels went from a 2-10 season before Allen joined the staff to 9-4 in his last season and three-straight bowl appearances.
Wherever Allen has gone, success has followed.
Former Ole Miss defensive coordinator Dave Wommack said it’s because of Allen’s honesty and transparency with players and coaches as much as it is about his football intelligence.
“With his mind for the game, everyone knew he was going to be a star in this profession,” Wommack said. “But he’s as sincere of a man there is. Everything he says and does comes straight from the heart.”
That’s a common recollection when his former colleagues talk about Allen. What you see is what you get.
Hugging assistant coaches on the sidelines, pumping his fist so hard his headset falls off, throwing his fists in the air after every successful defensive play. That’s just him, Wommack said.
He coaches to lead a team of men, Westfield High School coach Jake Gilbert said. He strives to build relationships with his players to the point where his players play for him and for each other. They don’t want to let him down. He’s their coach.
Gilbert, who coached with Allen at Ben Davis and Wabash, said the way Allen coaches — with a “love each other” mentality — is viewed by some as soft and not the way football should be coached.
“But nobody wants to win more than Tom,” Gilbert said. “He just chooses to coach through love rather than through fear and intimidation.”
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The change happened quickly. Unexpectedly fast.
After earning back-to-back bowl bids for the first time since 1990-91, IU Coach Kevin Wilson resigned Dec. 3, following allegations of player mistreatment.
The man who brought Allen to Bloomington in January was gone.
“Transitions in this profession are hard under any circumstances, let alone this,” Allen said in his press conference with Glass. “My heart breaks for him. I never expected for this to happen.”
Allen knows about transitions. This is his 13th position change in 25 seasons as a coach.
But this transition — a transition that will leave his program in the shadows of allegation throughout his first offseason as head coach — is something he hasn’t experienced. Not at this level. Not ever.
Yet it was Allen that sat next to Glass before the media, as the most unfamiliar with IU football among the coaching staff, speaking about a friend and a colleague who had been at the helm for six seasons.
“He believed in me,” Allen said, “and he gave me a charge when I came here to be the head coach of the defense, to change the culture in that side of the ball, and that’s what we did.
“I wish Kevin Wilson nothing but the best.”
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It only makes sense that Tom Allen would take over a program spiraling into bowl season because of allegations of player mistreatment.
The man knows how to treat his players, Dullaghan said. He makes them believe in him, in each other and in themselves. The 25-year coaching vet makes lesser players better players.
That was obvious when Allen came into Bloomington to take over a defense that dwelled in the cellar of the Big Ten and made the biggest statistical turnaround in the nation. He did it with mostly the same players former IU defensive coordinator Brian Knorr had at his disposal in 2014 and 2015.
“You don’t move up in the ranks as quickly as he did without being a special person and coach,” Dullaghan said. “He gets his players playing fast with a belief in each other.”
He preached “Love Each Other” to the IU defense in 2016 and appealed to his players’ psyches by making them say “takeaways” rather than “turnovers.” It’s more aggressive, he said in preseason.
Those are the kinds of things high school recruits look for in a coach, Kirschner — who won a 6A state title as Ben Davis’ head coach — said. That’s also what high school coaches look for when helping their athletes in recruiting.
Kirschner said he wants a coach that will tell him and his players if they’re good enough for the program, not a coach that will string players along and cause them to miss opportunities elsewhere.
“He was in our shoes,” Kirschner said, referring to Indiana high school coaches. “He was one of us not too long ago. He knows what our kids can do and the quality of our players. I know everyone is very excited that he is taking over at Indiana.”
The wide range of areas from which Allen has recruited — Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and other states in the Southeast and Midwest — will only add to his advantages as a recruiter, Dullaghan said.
Combine that with Allen wearing his emotions on his sleeve, putting his ego aside and selling himself by his actions, Allen is an effective recruiter, according to multiple coaches with whom he’s worked.
It won’t take long for the recruits to know the real Tom Allen. It never does take long.
That impression has spilled into his other jobs as well, as he’s gained the trust of many coaches and players in the football stratosphere.
That’s something he uses to his advantage in football and in all facets of life.
“There are three ways to influence people,” Dullaghan said. “Example, example, example.”
Allen is that example for a program that needs good examples at the moment, Dullaghan said. He’s a good husband and father, doesn’t curse and can teach.
“He’s a great example of how to be a good person,” Wommack said about Allen. “He’s one of the best I know, and he really puts an exclamation point on that when it comes to his players.”
