For Fred Glass, Indiana Is Poised For A New ‘Golden Age’

There’s a lot going on in college athletics. Coaches are being fired and hired and, in Matt Painter’s case, wooed.

Oh, yes. There’s a little thing called the Final Four set to start in Houston this weekend.

At Indiana, it’s a little quiet from the national perspective, but athletic director Fred Glass wants to change that. Yes, football and basketball have struggled, but prospects are promising. The football team has a new coach with a new approach and, perhaps, a formula for winning. Tom Crean is on the kind of recruiting roll that produces the hope championships are coming.

Those hopes are what Glass envisioned when he took the AD job a couple of years ago after a long, successful run as an Indianapolis attorney and community leader. He wants the Hoosiers to thrive as they haven’t in a generation.

He believes it’s coming, sooner rather than later.

“We have a bunch of micro metrics on where we want to be in terms of facilities, but the bottom line is, and this is why I came to Indiana to do this job, I want to be part of a Golden Age of Indiana University athletics. When I was a student here and looked around, maybe you didn’t have a sense of it at the time, but you had these amazing coaches here. You had Jerry Yeagley, Bob Knight, Bill Mallory and Sam Bell and Hobie Billingsley and Doc Councilman. That was a golden age. I’d like to be part of another Golden Age. We’re acquiring and maintaining the kind of coaching talent to make that a reality. We’re on the launching pad of doing that.

“There’s a general feeling that the athletic department is going in the right direction. That’s at a time when the basketball program isn’t winning, football isn’t winning. We put ourselves in a position to win there. Baseball, men’s soccer, volleyball, track and field, swimming and diving beat Michigan for the first time in 13 years. I think we’re on the cusp of entering a new Golden Age of Indiana athletics. My goal is that in five years that’s more apparent by Big Ten championships, national championships, and so forth.”