Indiana's Tom Allen in Top 20 in CBS Sports' Ranking of Every Power 5 Head Coach
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — With less than 100 days until the start of the 2021 college football season, CBS Sports ranked all the head football coaches from the Power 5 conferences.
No coach made a bigger jump in this year's rankings than Indiana coach Tom Allen. Last year, he was rated No. 46 among Power 5 coaches. Following a 6-2 season in 2020, Allen was ranked among the best in the country. He was listed at No. 20 in the rankings, which ranked sixth among Big Ten coaches.
Allen took over as the head coach for the Hoosiers in 2016 for one game and lost 26-24 to Utah in the Foster Farms Bowl. In his first full season leading the program, Indiana finished with a 5-7 record in 2017. The team finished with the same record the next year.
Since then, Allen has Indiana football on the upswing. The Hoosiers are 14-7 over the last two seasons, including 11-5 in the Big Ten Conference. The team appeared in bowl games in each of the past two years, too.
The Hoosiers earned an 8-5 record in 2019 and a trip to the Gator Bowl. It was the program's first bowl appearance since Allen took over at the tail end of the 2016 season. However, Indiana suffered a 23-22 loss to Tennessee.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Indiana football's only regular-season loss was to the eventual Big Ten Champion Ohio State Buckeyes en route to its second straight bowl appearance. Without starting quarterback Michael Penix Jr., the team fell to Ole Miss 26-20.
Ahead of his fifth full season, Allen said it's time for the Hoosiers to compete for a Big Ten title. The program hasn't been crowned conference champions since the 1967 season. Under Allen, the team will also continue to search for its first bowl victory since 1991.
Here's the list of all the Big Ten football coaches and their rankings:
- No. 4: Ryan Day, Ohio State
- No. 8: Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern
- No. 13: James Franklin, Penn State
- No. 17: Kirk Ferentz, Iowa
- No. 18: Paul Chryst, Wisconsin
- No. 20: Tom Allen, Indiana
- No. 23: Jim Harbaugh, Michigan
- No. 25: P.J. Fleck, Minnesota
- No. 34: Greg Schiano, Rutgers
- No. 42: Bret Bielema, Illinois
- No. 47: Scott Frost, Nebraska
- No. 53: Jeff Brohm, Purdue
- No. 57: Mel Tucker, Michigan State
- No. 61: Mike Locksley, Maryland
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