LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The insiders at ESPN, CBSSports, The Athletic and other college football outlets don’t agree on many things. They do agree on this:
Tom Allen’s 6-1 Indiana football team has earned a spot in a New Year’s Six bowl game. In fact, every outlet made a more specific prediction:
Indiana in the Fiesta Bowl against USC.
Stewart Mandel wrote that Tuesday for The Athletic. Mark Schlabach endorsed it at ESPN. So did Jerry Palm at CBSSports. So did the experts at College Football News, 247Sports, The Sporting News and another insider at ESPN.
Seven projections. Seven calls for Indiana in the Fiesta Bowl. Will the College Football Playoff committee and the bowl honchos agree or listen?
Allen won’t know until next Sunday when the four playoff teams and bowl pairings are released. He’s not a coach who will politic extensively, at least not through the media.
“It’s like I told our guys,” Allen said. “Let your play do the talking.”
Allen has other items on his To Do list:
He said 28 IU players or Level 1 staff members have tested positive for the novel coronavirus since Indiana defeated Wisconsin on Dec. 5.
That led to the cancellation of the IU-Purdue game that had been rescheduled from last Saturday and was supposed to be played Friday night in Bloomington.
“It’s serious, and it spreads fast,” Allen said.
Indiana head coach Tom Allen celebrates after Indiana defeated Penn State in overtime of an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020, in Bloomington, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Those individuals remain in quarantine. Allen said the plan was for cleared players to resume practice Monday with the goal of accelerating preparation for the bowl game.
A year after Allen lost Offensive Coordinator Kalen DeBoer to the head coaching position at Fresno State, he applauded South Alabama’s hiring of Defensive Coordinator Kane Wommack to run that program.
“That’s what you want,” Allen said. “You lose good people. That’s called building a program.”
IU receiver Ty Fryfogle arrived in Bloomington in 2017 ranked the No. 245 receiving prospect in America by the 247Sports recruiting gurus.
Fryfogle will leave as the winner of the Richter-Howard Receiver Award, which is presented annually to the top receiver in the Big Ten. Draw a line under his name, because Fryfogle is the first IU player to win that one.
Allen did not mention this item, but it should not be buried: He was named one of five regional Coach of the Year winners by the American Football Coaches Association.
On Thursday, Allen is expected to be named Big Ten coach of the year. He’s a solid contender for national coach of the year, considering the extensive list of achievements his team delivered.
Eight consecutive weeks ranked in the AP poll for the first time at IU since 1945; first ranking in the College Football Playoff poll in program history; beating Michigan, Penn State and Michigan State in the same season for the first time in program history; ending a 10-game losing streak against Wisconsin, and doing it in Madison; and joining Alabama and North Carolina as one of three programs against wins against three Top 25 opponents this season.
“I’ve seen the list and it’s really, really long, of all the things that this team has done,” Allen said.
There are two things left for Indiana to achieve:
Earning an invitation to the school’s second New Year’s Day bowl and then winning a bowl for the first time since … the 24-0 victory over Baylor in the 1991 Copper Bowl.
“Our one loss was to No. 4 Ohio State, at their place and we lost by a touchdown,” Allen said. “We had the ball twice in the fourth quarter to go down for the score and eventually the win. But we didn’t do that.
“But at the same time, that’s what we put on film. We won the rest of our games …
“If you notice, I didn’t make any statement or Tweet anything out (after IU was ranked 12th in the college football playoff poll last week) … I told our guys to follow my lead on that. We’ll handle it the right way. You basically want your play do the talking …
“When we get that opportunity (in a bowl game), this is a very motivated (team). This team, this program has a chip on its shoulder and something to prove.
“So whoever picks us for their bowl game is going to get a highly motivated, highly prepared team that is going to play our best football on that day.”
And that opportunity should be in the Fiesta Bowl against USC.
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