Tom Allen had been set on fire. But he wasn’t thrilled for the reasons you’d expect, even on the day the College Football Playoff committee screwed up Indiana – yes, I said screwed up – by not including the Hoosiers in a New Year’s Six bowl game.
Sunday night, we asked him over and over about his feelings about the fate of his team – performing at the Outback Bowl against a 4-5 Mississippi team that didn’t get a single vote in the AP Top 25 – and over and over, he pouted his lips and said, “This is not the time or the place.”
Instead, he did what good leaders do, showing why he was the Big Ten’s Coach of the Year: he swallowed his anger, frustration, and disappointment, and spent the better part of half an hour extolling the virtues of Mississippi , the Outback Bowl, and the chance for IU to win its first bowl game since 1991’s Copper Bowl over Baylor.
See, you can create a cohesive …