Word spread quickly on Thursday that Tom got fired. To you, he is Tom Crean, basketball coach: fired from Indiana after nine years. He is a name, a coaching record, a caricature, a nickname, a salary, funny line on Twitter or at the office. His family does not see him that way, of course. And so, while the rest of the country debated the merits of Crean’s two outright Big Ten titles and two missed NCAA tournaments in the last five years, John Harbaugh thought about a car ride.
It was Feb. 28. John, Crean’s brother-in-law and the coach of the Baltimore Ravens, was in Indiana for the NFL Combine. He watched Indiana lose to Purdue in West Lafayette, and then Tom drove John back to Indianapolis.
They talked about what went wrong in the Purdue game, and what Crean could do to fix it, but then the conversation turned to Crean’s future at Indiana: Specifically, whether he had one. Indiana and athletic director Fred Glass had said many of the right things. But Crean wasn’t convinced.
“He was just going through what he was going through— the administration over the years, the toll it takes on you,” John said Thursday. “This has not been the last four or five days. It’s been the last four, five, six years.
“He just didn’t want to be surprised. He knew in his heart that he couldn’t trust them … up to the end, they led him to believe he was going to be there. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to stay and fight through the inevitable ups and downs.”
As a coach, John understood his brother-in-law was in the middle of a season, and “all you’re trying to do is win the next game.” But as a coach, he also knew what he had seen for the last few years.
And so, when Tom Crean got fired Thursday from what should have been his dream job, John Harbaugh texted him:
“This will be the best day of your career.”
* * *
Indiana had the right to fire Tom Crean. He made millions of dollars, and Indiana will pay him millions more for going away. This is life in coaching, something this family knows well. John’s brother Jim built Stanford football into a Pac-12 power, led the 49ers to the Super Bowl and has quickly restored Michigan to national prominence. The Harbaughs’ father, Jack, was a longtime coach who won the I-AA national title at Western Kentucky.
Jack remembers walking into a meeting at Western Michigan in 1986 and being told by the athletic director that the school was going in another direction. (Jack has turned it into a quip: “I said, ‘Which direction are we going in?’ He said, ‘Well, we’re going in this direction. You’re going in that one.’”) And of course, 49ers owner Jed York and general manager Trent Baalke undermined Jim Harbaugh for months before firing him near the end of the 2014 season.
So they all understand that coaches get fired. And still, they are miffed—not by Crean’s firing, but by everything that led up to it. They are biased, of course. But they are also well-informed. For the last few years, they saw a coach who was running uphill, at a university that seemed to look for reasons to be disappointed by him.
If you know anybody who has been fired, or if you have been fired yourself, then maybe you know: Worrying about getting fired can be even worse than the actual firing. It’s exhausting. And Crean has coached with an axe hanging above his head for several years.
John, who was an assistant football coach at Indiana in the ’90s, says, “They haven’t supported a coach at Indiana since Branch McCracken.”
McCracken retired as Indiana’s basketball coach in 1965. That’s a funny line, but John wasn’t joking. And he isn’t really wrong.
Jim Harbaugh looks at Crean’s Indiana tenure and says, “much like my situation in San Francisco, the people that are doing the micromanaging … when it comes to building a ball team, what they know could not blow up a small balloon. In my case, an owner and a general manager. In his case, an administration. They are so similar in that way. And he still wins two Big Ten championships outright.”
And back to John: “In the end, it was the lack of support that basically takes its toll the most. You want to feel like you’re part of a team and you’re doing it together. It’s about knowledge, loyalty and leadership. This is the merry-go-round that Indiana athletics has been on forever.”
The word “support” is used in many ways in college sports. To Fred Glass’s credit, he did not leak mysterious “other reasons” for firing Crean. He acknowledged Crean followed rules, prioritized academics and rebuilt the program from the ashes of the Kelvin Sampson disaster.
But Glass’s comment this week that he had to either extend Crean’s contract or fire him is disingenuous. He could have extended him last year after Indiana won the Big Ten title, which is standard practice in the industry. And last week, Glass declined to host an NIT game against Georgia Tech because of optics; Indiana was on spring break, and Glass didn’t want a half-full Assembly Hall on TV. Whatever happened to, you know, giving your team its best chance to win the game?
It was Feb. 28. John, Crean’s brother-in-law and the coach of the Baltimore Ravens, was in Indiana for the NFL Combine. He watched Indiana lose to Purdue in West Lafayette, and then Tom drove John back to Indianapolis.
They talked about what went wrong in the Purdue game, and what Crean could do to fix it, but then the conversation turned to Crean’s future at Indiana: Specifically, whether he had one. Indiana and athletic director Fred Glass had said many of the right things. But Crean wasn’t convinced.
“He was just going through what he was going through— the administration over the years, the toll it takes on you,” John said Thursday. “This has not been the last four or five days. It’s been the last four, five, six years.
“He just didn’t want to be surprised. He knew in his heart that he couldn’t trust them … up to the end, they led him to believe he was going to be there. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to stay and fight through the inevitable ups and downs.”
As a coach, John understood his brother-in-law was in the middle of a season, and “all you’re trying to do is win the next game.” But as a coach, he also knew what he had seen for the last few years.
And so, when Tom Crean got fired Thursday from what should have been his dream job, John Harbaugh texted him:
“This will be the best day of your career.”
* * *
Indiana had the right to fire Tom Crean. He made millions of dollars, and Indiana will pay him millions more for going away. This is life in coaching, something this family knows well. John’s brother Jim built Stanford football into a Pac-12 power, led the 49ers to the Super Bowl and has quickly restored Michigan to national prominence. The Harbaughs’ father, Jack, was a longtime coach who won the I-AA national title at Western Kentucky.
Jack remembers walking into a meeting at Western Michigan in 1986 and being told by the athletic director that the school was going in another direction. (Jack has turned it into a quip: “I said, ‘Which direction are we going in?’ He said, ‘Well, we’re going in this direction. You’re going in that one.’”) And of course, 49ers owner Jed York and general manager Trent Baalke undermined Jim Harbaugh for months before firing him near the end of the 2014 season.
So they all understand that coaches get fired. And still, they are miffed—not by Crean’s firing, but by everything that led up to it. They are biased, of course. But they are also well-informed. For the last few years, they saw a coach who was running uphill, at a university that seemed to look for reasons to be disappointed by him.
If you know anybody who has been fired, or if you have been fired yourself, then maybe you know: Worrying about getting fired can be even worse than the actual firing. It’s exhausting. And Crean has coached with an axe hanging above his head for several years.
John, who was an assistant football coach at Indiana in the ’90s, says, “They haven’t supported a coach at Indiana since Branch McCracken.”
McCracken retired as Indiana’s basketball coach in 1965. That’s a funny line, but John wasn’t joking. And he isn’t really wrong.
Jim Harbaugh looks at Crean’s Indiana tenure and says, “much like my situation in San Francisco, the people that are doing the micromanaging … when it comes to building a ball team, what they know could not blow up a small balloon. In my case, an owner and a general manager. In his case, an administration. They are so similar in that way. And he still wins two Big Ten championships outright.”
And back to John: “In the end, it was the lack of support that basically takes its toll the most. You want to feel like you’re part of a team and you’re doing it together. It’s about knowledge, loyalty and leadership. This is the merry-go-round that Indiana athletics has been on forever.”
The word “support” is used in many ways in college sports. To Fred Glass’s credit, he did not leak mysterious “other reasons” for firing Crean. He acknowledged Crean followed rules, prioritized academics and rebuilt the program from the ashes of the Kelvin Sampson disaster.
But Glass’s comment this week that he had to either extend Crean’s contract or fire him is disingenuous. He could have extended him last year after Indiana won the Big Ten title, which is standard practice in the industry. And last week, Glass declined to host an NIT game against Georgia Tech because of optics; Indiana was on spring break, and Glass didn’t want a half-full Assembly Hall on TV. Whatever happened to, you know, giving your team its best chance to win the game?
