Tom Allen Zoom Press Conference & Transcript

Below is a transcript of Zoom press conference with Indiana head football coach Tom Allen on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Head Coach Tom Allen
Opening Statement…
ALLEN: I want to start off by thanking everyone for joining us today. This is an exciting day for everybody, especially our players and the coaching staff. I want to thank President McRobbie for all of his hard work and the way he has led through this difficult time with all of the question marks and challenges that we have faced. And for Scott Dolson's leadership, coming into this role as Athletic Director at this time is really challenging. His constant communication has been excellent throughout this entire ordeal. I am really happy for our players, coaches and the Big Ten Conference. I know it has been a roller coaster and a lot of things have happened these last few weeks, but I feel like we have a great plan in place and I feel really good about it. We can talk about that here as we go through. We are excited to be back. We had a practice already this morning, it was already scheduled, but it had a little bit different level of energy, understandably so. We are excited to be back, and I look forward to answering some questions.

Q. On the structure of the season…
ALLEN: There were three things that I laid out that I thought were important things for us to come to, and those were just my thoughts. I do feel that as we talked, as the Big Ten coaches and athletic directors talked, it was about those three things. Number one, making sure that it was a good decision to make from a health and safety perspective. When you look at the medical plan that has been put in place, the thoroughness of it is impressive. Obviously, everyone has opinions on certain things. At the same time, I think the daily testing piece, the rapid antigen testing that they are now requiring was a game changer. It has completely changed from where we were at five weeks ago when we did not have that in place and were not planning to have that in place for the season at that time. Being able to have that creates some sort of a bubble of saying that everyone that is around this football team is going to be tested every single day. We will know that we are going to have a clean practice area, clean film rooms, or anything you do with your team in the surrounding areas. The same goes for game day and knowing that the team you are going to play is in the same boat. That is number one and I feel really good about that. Number two, we talked about having a meaningful season. There is no question that there is a restriction in the number of games we can play, but having nine games to play is not a full season, but it is pretty close. I like the structure. Obviously, we are compressed a little bit and we lost the bye week option because of starting the [October] 24th weekend. Having that eight-plus-one, having that ninth game … I have to give Jim Harbaugh a lot of credit as he was the one that came up with that idea. We talked for a long time about how we decide who that ninth game is against, whether it was a blind draw against somebody from the other division, but he came up with the way to have parody in that last game. That is where we came up with the No. 7 plays No. 7, No. 6 and No. 6, 5 and 5, 4 and 4, 3 and 3, 2 and 2, and obviously the top-2 teams from each division play each other from the East and the West. I thought that was a great idea and thought it was a great way to have an equitable ninth game, or whatever that final game was going to be. The Big Ten Championship, the College Football Playoff, and all of the bowl games are in play. Having all of that for your guys, that is really a meaningful experience for them. There are challenges with the compressed season and playing those nine games in consecutive weeks. The last part was not doing anything that was going to negatively impact the 2021 season. I think that by playing it out this way, the bowl games will be when they normally would be, the regular season is going to be a little later, and we still have to work through some of the logistics for playing those last three games in December with the weather up here being a little different than it is in the south, but I think it is a good plan. What is next? We are waiting to get word from the Big Ten on how our week is going to look. Right now, we are in the 12-hour mode, but we want to move to the 20-hour mode here soon, which is what everybody is under when you are playing in-season. We have to be smart. Our guys have not been going full out. As far as practice, we have been doing what we are allowed to do but that is not the same as being out there every single day and practicing. We have to be able to ramp that up slowly. I think that having the start date as the weekend of the 24th of October gives us the time to do that. We have been lifting, running and training as soon as we got word that we were not going to be having a season on the normal schedule. We do not know exactly what it is going to look like next week, but this week will continue to look the same. Tomorrow we will lift, run and have a little bit of time on the field. We will just lift and run on Friday. And we have to give them two days off, so they will be off on Saturday and Sunday. We will start on Monday and we will know by then kind of what that is going to look like, but it is going to be a combination of lifting, running and practicing until we get to the week of [September] 28th.

Q. On not having fans…
ALLEN: We do not really care. There is no question that we would rather have a stadium full of people, that is ideal, but we knew that was not going to happen. Having 20-25 percent was what I was expecting to have, but obviously this announcement said we will not have any fans. I do not know how that is going to look like with families, but there will be minimal fans. It is going to be different. I have talked to some coaches that have played already and they say that its kind of has that Saturday scrimmage vibe to it when you go out there and no one is out there. That is a different feeling. I saw that Bill Belichick interview the other day where he was asked how he could describe it and he just said 'practice.' It was kind of humorous, but at the same time, he is right. That is probably the best thing you can compare it to. They are going to pump in crowd noise, but I do not know how loud that will really be. I have heard some people say that it is not that loud, but they will try to make it, but it will not be the same. That is just part of it. Like I said, we do not care. That is one piece that we have no control over. That might change throughout the course of the season. They might add more during the season, but who knows, it might not change at all. We cannot control any of that, so we are not going to focus on any of that.

Q. On the practice schedule and hitting schedule…
ALLEN: That is a great question. I think that is something that we are still working through. I have been in contact with some of the guys that have been practicing and asked them and gotten their feedback, and I have watched and known how teams have done it a certain way. One thing that is different, before there was a huge concern with your players having contact with each other. Now, we will know that when we are out there practicing that all of our guys are negative. They will not be allowed to practice [if they are positive]. It is a daily test and results will be back in 15 minutes. If they have a positive test in the morning before practice, they are not going to be out there. That makes you feel better about that contact with your guys. The other part of it that you have to really, truly balance is how much is too much? No matter how you look at this, everyone has had a modified preparation. It has not been full months of training like you have usually had. The injury piece is what you are really trying to balance. How much hitting is too much? You do not want to beat yourself up and lose guys for games because of that, but if you do not have enough, your kids are not ready to play a Big Ten football game. I do not know who our first opponent is going to be, but we are going right into a Big Ten opponent. From the first game on, you have to be tackling Big Ten running backs and wide receivers and blocking Big Ten defenders. That is going to be tough. We have to balance that out. We have been really creative in trying to find ways to tackle, block and get our bodies ready for that without going against live individuals. That is just going to be a challenge that we all have. Some guys have talked about doing mire walk-throughs than ever to get the mental reps, and I can see that being the case. We are going to have to do more of that to get those mental reps. We will do more in 'spider mode', which is a mechanism you wear under your jersey instead of shoulder pads that are about an inch or two thick of padding that you wear to protect your collarbone and shoulder area. There is really no contact when you wear those, but you can tackle bags, hit sleds, have 7-on-7 and tag periods where you are not hitting anybody. But, how prepared can you get when you do those? We have to be a great practice team and we have to be able to tackle extremely well without taking anyone to the ground. It is going to be a challenge, but we welcome it at this point. We are just glad to be back.

Q. On playing in normally hostile road environments without fans…
Allen: I think there's no question that's going to be a variable because that's a huge advantage those teams have when they 100-plus thousand fans in attendance. Just the energy you get from that as a home team, there's no question it makes it really hard to play there. To be able to execute – the call, the communication and all those kinds of things you run into. It makes it harder; it makes everything more difficult. I think it will be a variable that will help the teams that are playing in those environments. Per the schedule we do have to go to Ohio State this year, to Michigan, those kinds of things are unique and different. I know just in talking to other teams who have played in those situations, its kind of taken away that strong homefield advantage you usually get for those teams that have such large stadiums and they usually are full when you play against them. I think at every level though it's all relative to that so everybody's kind of experiencing it right now. But you just have to be mentally tough. You have to bring your own juice to those situations and be able to play and be physically and mentally tough. That's what everyone's going to have to do. It's an equal playing field for everybody.

Q. On how the team reacted to the news…
Allen: Due to social media, they already knew. Matter of fact, I got the phone call from our administration to say we're back online and it was already on my phone that we were going. They gave me all the facts on social media. It's crazy how these leaks get out there. The players already knew but they cheered, they were excited and there's definitely different juice out there today. We've had these practices before but you could tell pretty quickly there was a different bounce in their step so their just excited. It's just hard to be training for something that you're not really sure what that is as far as the date. Was it going to be November, was it going to be even as late as January? Was it even going to happen at all? So, the October piece just kind of came into play these last few weeks. I just think they're relieved. They've worked really hard and it's been a hard several months, there's no doubt about it. It's been hard on everybody. But it is also relative. We're blessed and our kids are healthy. We've got some guys who have been battling the virus and all. I've had friends and people who have lost family members and this has been a tough time. So, we're just talking about playing football here. It's exciting and we're excited about it, but when you kind of look at the big picture of things. We have one of our players who lost two parents during this whole time period. I had a long, long meeting yesterday just talking about life. It's football, it's fun, it's exciting and we're definitely thrilled to be back, but it is just a game.

Q. On if student-athletes have been on campus much since the start of the semester…
Allen: In regards to the classes, I don't know if it's 50-50 percentage wise but it's a pretty good mix. A few guys go to class a couple days a week. There's nobody that has every single class that's in person. But we do have a few that have every single class online. There's no question that there's a lot higher number of guys that have online classes. Some of those online classes have varying ways of being organized. Sometimes the professor's up front doing a Zoom call like we're doing right here. If I'm the professor I'm teaching the class to you guys and they have to be on there at a certain time and they're listening just as if they were sitting in the class. Sometimes they're true online classes where you just follow your syllabus, you have due dates and may have some things you listen to and presentations you listen to. But you're not on there altogether. So that kind of varies in a way with how online classes look. There's a lot of that going on. There's some where you go and sit in a class and you sit socially distanced. You have your mask on and there's some interaction with individuals going to class. The biggest thing to me is the challenge of them staying away from large group gatherings. That's where it has to be disciplined. We've been very straight forward about that. If they care about this team, they care about wanting to have a season, they care about wanting to be a part of a great 2020 football year then they're going to have to make some sacrifices. They aren't going to be able to go parties, aren't going to be able to go to gatherings, not going to be able to be around people they don't know if they've been tested or not. They have to stay six feet apart and they have to be socially distanced, mouths covered up and wash your hands and all those kinds of things. That sounds great and these are young kids and that can be a challenge. But at the same time, there's a lot at stake. A lot has been invested, there's a lot of money that's been invested in the testing of all this and having players test on a daily basis. Nothing's free in this world. They have to understand a lot of people are doing a lot of things. A lot of time invested. The medical staff has invested so much to help them have an opportunity to play this season. They need to honor those individuals by doing what we ask them to do. We're very strict on that. We're very up front and straight forward with it with our guys, but that's the biggest challenge. With the daily testing, we're going to know. If you're around a player, you're around this facility, you're practicing with us, you're lifting with us, you're doing everything here – you're going to be 100 percent protected. But when you leave the facility, you got to make good choices.

On how it was challenging to watch other football last week…
ALLEN: Well, first of all, it was extremely difficult. I enjoyed watching the games because I enjoy watching football, but man just to be able to watch people play, especially local high schools and Notre Dame plays in our own state, it's just frustrating. It was probably more frustrating than I was expecting. It was kind of depressing, to be honest with you, watching and just knowing that we're not playing and at that point, I didn't know when we would be playing, so I was optimistic that we might be able to figure it out but I wasn't for sure. But then again, it was good to watch football, I will say that, and I was texting our coaches to talk about this situation, that situation, it's like we usually do if we watch other teams play. Bottom line is that you basically control what you can control and I had nothing to do with any of that and we just had to try and take it on the chin. I don't really think that I'm being naive about this, from the very beginning of this, I would hope that – here's the reason why I'm saying that because the reasons we gave as the Big Ten for not playing was because of health and safety of our players and testing issues and contact tracing issues and the issues that they couldn't answer on some of the hard hitting things that were out there, so to me, that was the reason we weren't playing. To feel pressured to play, just because others are playing, to me, I hope that wasn't the case. I feel like I was in all these calls and all these meetings and I really do think the plan we have in place is extremely thorough and you've seen it all, there's a lot of pieces to it and there's a lot of thoroughness into it and I thought the doctors did a good job of coming together because they had their concerns and therefore their concerns became the president's concerns when they presented it the first time. How that all came to be, I don't really know all of that for sure, but I do know there were some specific things that I know even I had some concerns about. We were having challenges here with testing and contact tracing and different issues with some of our guys, so that to me, those have been answered with the daily testing, the protocols are in place and are so much more detailed than they were before. I think that it's a very professional sport model, it's kind of how I looked at it and that's kind of how I viewed it by testing every single day and creating a clean bubble of people that you're going to be exposed to as a player and a staff member around our team. I do feel like it was more about trying to get it right than it was because everyone else was playing. There's no question, some teams if you've noticed that they've played and they've had postponements, they've had cancellations and different things because not everyone is testing everybody every single day. I think that creates a whole different element for us and it was a game changer in this process.

On level of optimism to play this season and what he likes about the team…
ALLEN: First of all, I think with all the challenges that everybody has faced and all we've gone through, and like you said with starts and stops, I believe in what we're doing. There's no doubt that everyone is kind of in the same boat. The team that's able to manage that the best, the mentally toughest team. We have a maturity about our team, we've got a lot of guys who have played a lot of football that are playing for us this season, to me, that gives us an advantage. We've got continuity in our staff and the scheme that we are running. While we have a new offensive coordinator, we didn't change our system, so I think those continuities. Even though we got a limited number of spring reps, a start-stop in the fall that we've all dealt with, I think that helps a team that has more experience and more guys back that have been playing in the current systems and even the bowl practices we had. Those are looming even larger than ever with every passing practice that you miss, that time that we had. We've got a lot of guys who are good football players that are back. Keeping them healthy, that's going to be, we said from the beginning whoever can stay the healthiest is going to be the last man standing and that's probably not going to be any different now even though we delayed the start. We've now compressed the season so now there's not a lot of wiggle room, if there's a postponement or cancellation of the game, you probably won't be able to play that game because of running out of time. It's definitely going to create some challenges, but the team that can manage this the best, shows the most maturity and is able to stay the healthiest is going to have the best season, so we've got to be that team. That's our challenge and I really love our football team, I love the toughness we have and I love the way the guys have responded and stayed together and just kept believing. Guys have not chosen to opt-out, that's not something they've been thinking about and they believe in what we're doing and there's obviously, people have individual reasons for doing that, but it hasn't really been something our guys have come to me and really talked about much, just only a couple of guys have had some discussions about some things. At the same time, all we can control is one thing, getting ready to play game number one and we play our best football week number one and do everything we can to start this season out 1-0.

On when the rapid testing begins…
ALLEN: Here's what we're going to do and this is where our university has really stepped up and with our leadership with Scott Dolson and President McRobbie's support, we are going to start our rapid testing tomorrow. We will have daily testing beginning tomorrow, so all of our guys will be tested daily with a test provided by the university that we will use up until the end of the month and then once the end of the month gets here, then the Big Ten test will kick in. We will have, starting tomorrow, consecutive daily testing from now until the end of the season. That was huge and that was something Scott Dolson and I have been working on. He's done a tremendous job working on that and I just give him so much credit for his work and it's just been a tough few months to be coming into your job in these situations and he's been great with his communications in a very, very clear and concise way and very open and honest with me about everything. To answer your question, that testing will start for us tomorrow and that gives us a ton of confidence in the fact that we can begin this preparation process in the way it needs to be done and be able to keep a clean, healthy field of guys that we are going to be around every single day and it will definitely bode well for our future.

On if anyone has opted out...
ALLEN: We've had some conversations with our guys because in the beginning guys were just like 'Coach what is this going to look like'. They knew they hadn't gotten a great preparation like they usually do or wanted to going into their senior season so a couple of those guys came to me and we talked it through and at that point let's just see how this is going to play out. No one ever came to me and said 'Coach, I'm not doing this'. You never know, I am not saying that to criticize those who have chosen to do that, I understand everyone has personal reasons for why they have or haven't in other places. We haven't had anyone here. I think our guys are pretty locked in and believe in what we are doing and they're excited about being able to spend time with our strength staff because they haven't had that in a consecutive way like they have here recently and they're excited to play together and now we're excited to get that chance.

On being eligible for bowl games…
ALLEN: It is. For us right now, all I know is that for us by starting on the 24th and having our season conclude on Dec. 19, we will be in play for all the bowl games that are out there for our conference and who knows, there may be more opportunities because of some other conferences not playing in the fall. I'm not really sure what that's going to look like because of us starting here in October, we are going to have an opportunity to be eligible for bowl games and that's big for our conference. I know our players are excited about that and taking it one week at a time.

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