Many factors contribute to decision on Lynch's future

The number of games remaining in Ben Chappell’s IU football career — bowl or not — can be counted on one hand.

The senior quarterback, now a graduate student in IU’s Kelley School of Business, doesn’t have a sure plan of what his future holds after that final game.

He does have a sliver of clarity in one regard, however.

“I definitely don’t want to coach,” Chappell said.

The hometown quarterback, quizzed further about his non-desire desire in August, made a simple case.

“College coaches — how much pressure they have,” Chappell reasoned. “There’s no job security.”

For an extremely localized reference, Chappell need not look further than the office of his team’s head coach.

Courtesy of a winless five-game stretch to start Big Ten play, IU coach Bill Lynch finds himself in waters similar to several of his recent predecessors. Simply, Lynch’s future as the Hoosiers’ football leader beyond the 2010 season remains very much in doubt.

The fourth-year coach has guided his team to a 4-5 record this season heading into Saturday’s road game at No. 6 Wisconsin. In order to become at least eligible for postseason play, the Hoosiers need to win two of their last three games.

Lynch has a year remaining on a four-year contract extension he signed after the final regular season game of the 2007 campaign. That year, the Hoosiers finished 7-5 and went to the Insight Bowl — their first postseason trip since 1993.

Lynch, a native Hoosier, initially took the job at IU after Terry Hoeppner, hired in 2005, died in June 2007 after a battle with brain cancer. Lynch was Hoeppner’s assistant head coach and offensive coordinator.

The sticking point for Lynch’s future at IU’s resides in the contract. With an exception for rare circumstances, college football coaches typically don’t work in a lame duck scenario that leaves them without a clear future in a program.

The reasoning for the practice is simple: recruiting college athletes requires an element of commitment. Without such commitment, the unknown for recruited athletes can — and often does — turn them toward other schools.

As a result, IU Athletics Director Fred Glass seems to be facing a decision: Should he extend Lynch’s contract or move the program in a new direction?

“We’ve got three games here, and I’m focused on supporting the team and coaching staff to do everything that we can to win each one of those games. That’s what my focus is,” Glass said Wednesday about if he was planning to continue Lynch’s contract.

Internally, though, Glass is faced with a number of factors to be considered for Lynch’s future. In fact, that’s exactly the way Glass wants it, as he said at Big Ten Media Days in August.

“I’m very adverse to setting litmus tests because I think that’s a cop-out,” Glass said then. “That’s what administrators do when they want a safe harbor to say, ‘Well, I’ll put this on automatic pilot. If you hit this, you’re in. If not, you’re out.’ I think that’s dangerous.”

What, then, did Glass say he would analyze?

“We’ll look at everything,” Glass said. “We’ll look at recruiting. We’ll look at retention. We’ll look at progress. We’ll look at wins and losses.”

The final examination Glass mentioned, then seated on the lobby furniture of

Chicago’s Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, is undoubtedly the biggest figure fans and supporters of IU football are scrutinizing.

During Lynch’s run at IU up to last week’s heartbreaking 18-13 loss to No. 15 Iowa, the Hoosiers have been the second-to-worst team in the Big Ten in terms of overall winning percentage. IU’s 18-28 mark over that span just edges Minnesota’s 15-30 record since 2007.

“I’m not a goof. I know that wins and losses matter,” Glass said in August. “They matter a lot to me. They matter a lot to Bill Lynch. But I’m not going to defer to a numerical value or a statistic to make our judgement solely based on that.”

Lynch’s overall record at IU — one that includes a paltry 5-24 mark in conference play — and winning percentage is very middle-of-the-road when compared to IU’s previous four coaches (excluding Hoeppner).

Prior to Hoeppner, Gerry DiNardo led the Hoosiers for three seasons, winning eight times in 35 games for a .229 winning percentage.

Before DiNardo, Cam Cameron won 18 games in five seasons for a .327 winning percentage. Cameron succeeded Bill Mallory, IU’s coach from 1984 to 1996. Mallory coached the Hoosiers to six bowls with his .463 winning percentage.

By comparison, Lynch’s winning percentage at IU is .391.

Several more factors weigh in Lynch’s favor.

Attendance at Memorial Stadium has increased since Lynch took over in 2007. Even during “normal” games at The Rock — games not including traditional near-sellouts against Michigan, Ohio State or Purdue thanks to their large, traveling fan bases — the number of purchased tickets per game has risen 14 percent.

Three times this season alone, still excluding the Michigan game, 40,000 or more fans have filled 52,929-seat Memorial Stadium. In contrast, IU football managed 40,000 or more fans in the “normal” games just once in each of the past three seasons.

Glass has acknowledged that football attendance can be the most significant driver of revenue for the athletics department.

Lynch also has another card in his favor — recruiting.

According to ESPN.com’s rankings, Lynch already has 14 three-star players verbally committed to play for the Hoosiers next season. Ten more three-star recruits are “considering” IU according to the website, as is one four-star recruit in linebacker Armonze Daniel from Avon, Ind.

Eight players in IU’s most recent incoming class fell in the three-star range, including freshman wide receiver Kofi Hughes.

Recruiting, however, isn’t a guarantee of success, Big Ten Network analyst and former NFL running back Howard Griffith said.

“In my opinion, a recruiting class doesn’t mean a whole lot because it’s somebody else’s evaluation,” Griffith said. “It doesn’t mean that players are going to necessarily fit into your system just because a player has a certain number of stars.”

Lynch also doesn’t seem to be on pace to lose a terrific number of starters from this season. Fifteen of the 22 players who have started the most on each side of the football this year have at least another year of eligibility remaining at IU.

The departing players offensively include Chappell, wide receiver Terrance Turner, right tackle James Brewer and running back Trea Burgess.

Defensively, the Hoosiers are slated to loose fewer players, including team captain and linebacker Tyler Replogle, cornerback Richard Council and safety Mitchell Evans.

Two large question marks for the Hoosiers’ offense, however, are in the wide receiving corps. Juniors Damarlo Belcher and Tandon Doss have put together seasons that may make them desirable to NFL teams — meaning they could both leave school early for the 2011 NFL Draft.

However, the returning players — just as the recruits — are no promise of future success.

Instead, they are a part of the tangled web of fan expectations, past performance and predictions of the future that Glass has to work through to determine who leads IU football beyond this season.

“At the end of the day, you’re evaluated on wins and losses,” Griffith said. “But there’s a lot more that goes in to it.”

Justin Albers contributed to this report.