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INDIANA UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 16, 2019

Fred Glass

Bloomington, Indiana

FRED GLASS: See you all made it through the wintry mix or whatever it is right now. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it.

As you all know, every day is a great day to be a Hoosier, but today is a particularly great day for this Hoosier. As I announced earlier today, at the end of this year, this academic year, the bicentennial year, I'll be retiring as the AD at Indiana. I won't be retiring totally. I'm just retiring from Indiana and as an athletic director.

Like I said in the comments in the release, it's just time, and being time doesn't mean that I don't love it anymore because I do, still love it, and it doesn't mean that there's nothing left to be accomplished because there's plenty left to be accomplished. It just means that it's time. It will have been almost 12 years for me, and it's an all in, all consuming, every day, all the time job, which is part of the reason I really love it, but now I'm ready to step back and do something a little more flexible, spend a little more time with my four granddaughters and another grandchild on the way in January.

So that's what I'll be doing. At the end, I don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but I know something will come up, and it will be great fun.

So I came here to try to establish a strong foundation for Indiana University Athletics. I really feel like we have done that, and it's time for me to exit stage left. So I will be doing that. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Q. I guess when did you kind of first know that this was the decision you wanted to make? If you can, as much as you're willing to take us through, kind of the steps from that point to right now.
FRED GLASS: Sure. I've been thinking about it for a while. The bicentennial year seemed like a natural bookend. We've been pointing a lot of our efforts and using, in some ways, the bicentennial as a hook to get things done. We'll complete a record shattering bicentennial capital campaign soon. We will complete our bicentennial capital campaign, which has invested, just in the last decade, over a quarter of a billion dollars in our facilities.

So things came together, and I think it was a natural time to reflect on it. I've been thinking about it for a while and talking to my wife Barbara. I think it's sort of a thing to settle yourself with a decision and see how it feels, and this felt really right. I have no regrets and feel really positive about the decision, but giving that some time to stew with me was good.

In terms of timing, my hand got a little forced by the Tom Allen contract extension because I felt it was only right to let Tom know that -- of what my intentions were. I hadn't told anybody until that point. In fact, he actually asked me during those conversations about what my plans were and an interest in me being around. I couldn't quite tell him about my plans until I told the president. So I actually scrambled a late evening meeting with President McRobbie on the Wednesday before the Allen announcement. I think that would be like the 4th of December. So I told Michael that night, and then I told Tom the next day.

I also had a regularly scheduled weekday meeting with Archie. So I told him that day too. So that would be the Thursday before the announcement for Tom. The president told the trustees because, as a matter of happenstance, they were meeting in Columbus. Then we sort of went radio silent until the roll out today.

Q. Fred, when you took this job back when you didn't really have any athletic director experience coming into it, sort of looking back over it all, can you maybe talk about the one or two or three things about this job that surprised you the most?
FRED GLASS: I think everything surprised me. I really didn't know what to expect. I didn't understand the acronyms. I didn't understand what a joint group was, what the cycle was, and I think I paid a price for that learning curve, but at the same time, I think that was more than offset by I was too dumb to know what I couldn't do, and I think we went after some things and did some things that conventional wisdom might have said we couldn't do, but because I wasn't a product of that environment, I think we were able to get some of them done.

I will say, especially in those early days, I felt like I was driving full speed down the interstate with no headlights on because I really didn't know. We were going fast, and I really wasn't sure where things were going, but over time, I think we were able to get some things accomplished in part because we were taking a fresh look at some things.

Q. If you have any kind of favorite memories from the tenure that you've had here, is there anything that stands out, something you're going to look back on more than anything else?
FRED GLASS: I'm sorry. Like a favorite moment?

Q. Yeah, just kind of like a favorite memory, something you're going to look back on in your tenure as the number one thing you accomplished?
FRED GLASS: I'm thankful and fortunate that I really have a chockful memory cabinet of fun things and cool things. Most of them involve interacting directly with the students, which is day in and day out my favorite part. I'll say the eighth National Championship in men's soccer was a highlight, especially with Todd was my first hire as a coach, and to have that success was gratifying.

The watch shot was just an instantaneous phenomenon that kind of galvanized the whole campus and was a very exciting moment, and even though it didn't reflect us being all the way back to where we wanted to go, it really reflected Indiana University basketball being relevant again nationally after essentially being wiped out and sort of de facto meted out the death penalty to come back that way. That was a great tribute to Tom Crean, by the way. But very few times is there a moment in time where you were back, maybe not ultimately where you want to be, but back relevant, and that was big.

Then more recently, the win at Nebraska was very gratifying, to go into that environment, beat them for the first time in 60 years was -- standing on that sideline was a really great thing. And then every time we beat Purdue, which has been five times in the last seven years, by the way, that's been gratifying as well.

Q. Mr. Glass, everything you've done has been geared towards this future of IU Athletics. How will you be involved in selecting your successor, and is there a timeline for that?
FRED GLASS: Yeah, I won't really be involved in the selection of the successor. I have provided my confidential counsel to the president and will continue to do that as asked, but that will be his decision. When you move on, you move on. And I've moved on from a lot of cool things, and I think you just don't look back. So I'll be around, as people may ask, but I won't be underfoot.

In terms of the selection process, that will be 100 percent run by the president, and I think he'll have an announcement this week with more details about how he's going to approach that.

Q. At this point in your tenure, basically, what do you feel fulfilled about? What do you feel is sort of the most important accomplishments you walk away feeling like you have? What do you feel not fulfilled about? And what do you feel will be the most important challenges for your successor?
FRED GLASS: In terms of what I feel good about in terms of accomplishments, without getting into the details of specific things, I think they're more global things. So I really felt like I came here at a time when the foundation of IU Athletics needed to be rebuilt, and I think we've done that literally with the buildings and figuratively with rebuilding the culture, and as a lot of you regulars know, it all circulates around the five priorities.

Number one, we're going to follow the rules.

I think we've really instituted a culture of compliance. We've had no major infractions cases during my tenure here. Number two, we want our kids to be well in mind, body, and spirit. I think we've been a nationally innovative leader in terms of programming and personal development programs and care for our kids. I'm proud of that.

Number three, we want to achieve academically. We're graduating our kids at a record rate. We set record after record on our graduation success rate. We want to be excellent athletically. Many, if not most, of our programs are enjoying historically great seasons, and we're proud of that. And all of our sports, I think, have an extremely bright future. I'm extremely proud of the cadre of coaches we have. Herman Wells said, from the university's perspective, it's the faculty that makes us famous, and I've always considered our coaches our faculty. The facilities are important, the programming is important, the culture is important, but really what defines whether you're going to be successful or not are the quality of your head coaches, and I feel we have a great group of head coaches, who are our faculty, which makes the future bright.

Number five, we want to be integrated with the university. I think we have been. We pride ourselves on that point. All the while, we've set records in fund-raising, and not coincidentally, gone on that quarter of a billion dollar facility remake, which wasn't creating luxuries. It was catching up on too many years of neglect of our facilities.

When you take those priorities, I think we've been able to pay more than lip service to those and have documented success in those areas, which, I think, leave the department with a very strong foundation going forward.

Q. One of the things you mentioned when you came was that you wanted to really help football become Big Ten viable. Kind of take us through what do you feel are the key things there, and where do you feel football is right now?
FRED GLASS: It's funny you mention that, Jeff, because I was just talking to someone on the search committee, and part of my pitch to the search committee was Indiana's got to get football right. There's a lot of other things we needed to do.

But for a variety of reasons, we needed to get football to be excellent, like the overall Indiana University brand because, number one, I think it's important for football's sake. Football reflects disproportionately on your school whether you like it or not. Wells said, if we're going to participate in something, we should be excellent at it, and we had not been excellent at football.

I think football is also important for the department because it can be a huge revenue generator not only to reinvest in football, but to reinvest in our other sports as well, and we have inventory. We have opportunity to generate more money. I've often said that, if we just filled the small stadium that we have, we'd get $7 million or $8 million to drop to our bottom line, which really makes a difference on our budget. So it is really important for the department.

Finally, beyond being important for football and being important for the department, it's important for the university because I believe that, if as an undergrad, going to games as part of your experience, you're more likely to be connected to the university, and maybe you make a gateway contribution to the foundation, or maybe you're on the dean's advisory council of whatever school you were in. So I think the stakes are very high, and that's why we really have focused, and I think not at the expense of neglecting other important sports, all of our sports, but we've really focused on the football investment and closing in the two end zones, and most recently, the Terry Tallen Indiana Football Complex and investing in an unprecedented rate in coaches, assistant coaches, offensive coordinators, strength and conditioning coaches, et cetera, I think is really important, but you've got to slog at it every day and have consistency.

As you know, Jeff, my thing was football will improve, and we have consistently excellent leadership and consistent investments in the program. You keep chipping at that rock, and eventually it cracks, and I think we had a little bit of a crack this year, which was sort of like an overnight sensation ten years in the making.

Q. From when your time started here, you talked a lot about academics being so important. Why was that so much of an emphasis for you, and how happy are you to see the numbers and the graduation rates and stuff like that have gone up?
FRED GLASS: You know, when I came here, I came here because we had a major infractions case where our most prominent coach didn't prioritize athletics, let's say, and broke the rules. It's not a coincidence that my two number ones -- my number one and number three priorities are following the rules, and then only after the wellness of the kids, academics.

That sounds super pedestrian, but if you have those basic rules in order, they are super helpful when you're in a situation -- a budget question, a crisis, or whatever -- and you say, if academics is really our third priority and it's ahead of athletics, then we're going to do this and not that. So we're an educational institution. I think it should be patent that academics should be preeminent. It is to us, second only to playing by the rules.

I'm really gratified that we went from a graduation success rate shortly after I was here that I think was about 74 percent to one that, as we sit here today, is 91 percent, and in those intervening years, we tied or set seven straight records. I guess, Dustin, if we were going to look at particular things to be proud of, I'm particularly proud of our graduation success rate.

Q. You discussed basketball being kind of in a dire situation when you took over. How do you evaluate just the basketball program during your ten years here and kind of the future, where it stands now, and where you see it kind of going?
FRED GLASS: As we sit here today, it's hard to think about even how bad it was when I got here. We were getting pitchers off the baseball team to dress and play. It was really, really bad, and I give Tom Crean tremendous credit, through his will and perseverance, to bring us back to, I think, being relevant again. Two outright Big Ten titles in, I think, four or five years is nothing to sneeze at, and I think he deserves immense credit for that.

I am also very excited about where we are with Archie Miller, and I think he's going to be a very, very successful coach and here for a very, very long time. Look at recruiting. He said he was going to be inside out. All the kids that we're getting from Indiana, the kids that I can't comment on that he's on now from Indiana, back to back Mr. Basketballs for the first time in 21 years. Recruiting is the life blood, and he's doing it.

Developing players. Look at Rob Phinisee, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Armaan Franklin. I mean, he's getting these kids, and he's developing them as well. Then I think increasingly we see this team taking on the personality of its coach with mental toughness and the ability to make plays at winning time.

And I know some of our fans wish it would have been a little better, easier against UConn and maybe a little easier against Nebraska, although I think the Purdue loss took a little bit of the edge off of those comments. But I always saw those games as the glass half full because, yeah, maybe he could have done better and I hate seeing the back cuts where guys do layups, but when push came to shove, our guys are tough. They're mentally tough. They make the plays you need to make to win, and that's Archie. That's why I'm super optimistic about the men's basketball program, and I think the sky's the limit there.

Q. You talked about when you took over, it was like driving a car with the headlights off. What advice would you have for somebody, whoever it is that steps into your role, of what you wish you knew when you stepped into the job that they might not expect to be looking for?
FRED GLASS: I just think I need to be real careful about gratuitous advice for whoever succeeds me. It's going to be their agenda. It's going to be their vision. I'm really proud of what we've accomplished over what have been the last 12 years, and I hope a lot of the commitment to being a values based organization, a student centered organization, committing to their personal development as much as we commit to their academic development and their athletic development -- I hope those stay, but every person faces new challenges and different challenges, and I think it would be presumptuous for me to set an agenda or give advice to whoever comes next.

Q. What do you wish you knew?
FRED GLASS: Other than like anything and everything? That's hard to tell. Those early times were sort of a blur at this point.

Q. Fred, obviously, there's so much of a spotlight on the decisions you make with men's basketball and football and such, but can you talk a little bit about the pride you feel as you're leaving now with kind of where women's basketball and soccer and baseball and such stand as well under your watch?
FRED GLASS: I appreciate the question because I understand the weight that football and men's basketball have and how justifiably important they are and sort of their preeminent stature, certainly in our fans' mind, but we are 24 sports, one team, and I'm thrilled about the coaches that we have.

When I look across the board at Shonda Stanton in softball, Jeff Mercer in baseball, Steve Aird is really getting it going in volleyball, Angel Escobedo in wrestling. I inherited Ron Helmer and Ray Looze with the great jobs those guys are doing with those terrific programs. Todd Yeagly, the first person I hired. Ervin Van Bennekom, who's coming up on the women's soccer side. I look back, we have 19 coaches that coach our 24 sports, and I hired 15 of them.

To a person, I think they have the potential to be really excellent in their programs, and I'm really excited about that. I probably left somebody out.

Q. Teri.
FRED GLASS: Teri Moren. That was one of the hardest conversations today because I think Teri and I share a special bond about the way she was hired under challenging circumstances. It might have been August or some ridiculous time, and to see them beating the 2017 National Champion South Carolina, the highest ranking ever, really realizing the potential of women's basketball at Indiana. I feel a special pride in her and a connectivity really because of the way she came in.

Q. I know you said you didn't want to give, like you said, gratuitous advice to whoever your successor may be, but do you view it as an obvious challenge for the next person, or do you feel the foundation has been set and there's not necessarily one thing or a few things that stand out? It's just a question of keeping it going. Do you see something obvious that the next successor will have to tackle?
FRED GLASS: I think it's a fair question. I think finances are a challenge everywhere, but particularly here. We compete in the Big Ten, and we get a full share of the media money, and that's awesome, and that helps us compete, but because we have a small football stadium that we don't fill, we're at a huge economic disadvantage with those that we compete against. I think the last year for which records were kept Indiana had the least amount of ticket revenue in the Big Ten at $6.5 million, and Michigan had $58 million. Half the league had $20 million or more in ticket revenue. That matters. That matters when you're hiring coaches and investing in things.

So that's part of the reason we've been so aggressive on fund-raising to try to level that playing field a little bit by getting extra dollars, but that will continue to be a challenge. That's part of the reason I'm so appreciative to the president and the Board of Trustees for their support in helping us make the investments that we've made in football.

One of the things I emphasized to Tom when I told him that I was moving on was that the commitments we've made to football are institutional commitments. They're not Fred Glass commitments. They're not even athletic department commitments. They're commitments that have gone up to the president and the Board of Trustees in terms of the size of his compensation, the evergreen nature of his term, and all the things that I think indicate real support for him. So I think finances are a challenge, but I'm appreciative of the way the university is supporting us there.

The other thing is just the whole landscape of intercollegiate athletics is dramatically changing. It's dramatically changed since I've been here, and there are even more dramatic changes on the horizon with name image and likeness, pay for play -- you know, what's that going to mean? I think there could be dramatic changes, and I think that will be a big challenge for whoever comes next.

Q. So, obviously, 10, 11 years doing this. When you came in, did you ever think you'd be doing this this long, and why do you think you hung in for so many years in this job?
FRED GLASS: I came with the intention of trying to stay for a long time. I was the fifth athletic director in eight years when I was hired. So just let that sink in a little bit, five athletic directors in eight years. I can't even imagine how long it takes you to get to certain things and sustain initiatives and get things done, and I think that had created, frankly, a lot of dysfunction and morale challenges. People thought that was normal. It's not normal.

And I thought to myself, I may not be the best AD ever, and I may not know what I'm doing, but I can be here. Woody Allen said 90 percent of life is showing up, and I think there's a lot to that. I think the longevity would be helpful. I wanted to stay for a while.

I didn't have a preplan of whether this was the last thing I was ever going to do or not. I thought maybe it might be, but as things developed for me -- bicentennial year, capping off some of our initiatives -- I mean, my oldest granddaughter is 5. I didn't have any grandchildren when I started. My kids were grown. I felt like I was sort of through that. Now I feel like I'm coming back through, and I don't want to miss that stuff. I want to have the flexibility I had when my own kids were little.

To answer your question, I didn't have a preconceived notion of how long, but I felt I owed it to the university to make it a good long tenure, and I feel like 12 years fulfills that commitment.

Q. I guess, as you do talk about challenges, in terms of kind of on field success -- I don't want to put words in your mouth -- but the one area you've kind of fought with more than others is men's basketball. Again, without wanting to push the advice thing too hard, what do you think kind of your successor and maybe the department maybe more generally needs to do to keep kind of pushing that program forward into the next decade?
FRED GLASS: I'm confident that we'll continue to make all the investments that need to be made. It's undeniably our premier program and a source of great attention, and I think we've respected that by the investments that we've made. I think your paper is written about where we rank on investments in recruiting and travel and so forth, and it's way at the top, which I'm actually proud of that.

So I think we need to continue to make those investments, and I'm confident we will, and I think we also have to be a steady hand on the helm. I think people in my job need to be the steady hand, the adult supervision, don't swing with the highs and the lows. I haven't walked away from tough decisions that have to be made. I don't think I'm Pollyanna about that, but I think giving things time in all of our programs, doing it the right way, not getting impatient -- like Kipling said, treating success and failures as the imposters that they are day to day, and sort of keeping your eye on the horizon, I think is a good quality for all of our sports.

Q. Fred, there's that sign on the door of your office that says, you can be interrupted every time for a student-athlete to come in. So in your decade plus of kind of dealing with student-athletes here at IU, what did you learn they wanted from their athletic programs, and how did you try and foster the relationship between the athletic department as one giant entity and making that a personal relationship with those athletes as well?
FRED GLASS: Well, thank you for knowing that about the sign on my door. By far, my favorite part of this job is interacting with students, particularly the students that engage in intercollegiate athletics, but I also enjoy and accept every invitation I'm given to speak on campus and classes. My assistant's here somewhere. I had a parade of two dozen kids come in to do their sports media interviews of me because I figure, if they've got enough nerve to ask me, I'll always say yes. So I enjoy seeing the kids on campus as well.

In terms of what they want, I think they want to be heard. They've got perspectives. We've made SAC, the student advisory committee, really a third leg of how we run the department -- engage them, giving them real estate, giving them offices, giving them stature. I get to know those kids generally very well, and it's a cross-section of people. We started the Athletic Director's Council on Diversity and Inclusivity three or four years ago as those tensions in our country were, I think, kind of pulling people apart. We wanted to have a forum where we could kind of bring people together.

So I think in terms of what they want, they would like to be heard and like to be respected, and for me that's awesome because that's my favorite part, interacting with them. I will say never put a sign like that on your door if you don't expect them to drop in and expect to be seen, which I had my eyes wide open about that, and they drop in, and we talk.

Q. You mentioned you had a private meeting with Archie to kind of break the news to him. What was his reaction to that? You mentioned you like what he's done recruiting, but are there other things he's doing with the program that you're really kind of happy with?
FRED GLASS: As you mentioned, Archie was very even when I told him, and then very immediately, congratulations. Happy for me. We've gotten to know each other well, and I'd like to say enjoy each other. I certainly enjoy him. So it was immediately sort of congratulations and good for you and very even. Tom, similarly, was very positive about it, and I thought that was very good of him given where we were in the conversations about the contract. If he wouldn't have brought it up, I would have. I couldn't imagine going to that process and sort of telling him that afterwards, but it did sort of accelerate things a little bit.

The president was awesome too. I told him late at night before he was getting ready to have a two-day trustee meeting, which was not good timing, but he was very positive about it. I will confess to have been a little bit nervous about telling him, but he was great.

Q. Here at the end of the line now, when you look back at the beginning of the line, 2008/2009, and not having a lot of athletic directing experience, do you think about kind of the doubts that you might have had that you kind of eviscerated? Or how did you kind of see yourself grow into the position maybe as a person as well?
FRED GLASS: That's a great question. As I was considering whether or not to take the job, I had considerable doubts because I didn't know anything about it and it hadn't been my background. But once I concluded that I thought I could do it, that I thought I could take my experience from public service and really apply them to be an athletic director, I felt like I could do it and I'm -- this is kind of corny, but one of my favorite moments in history is the Cuban missile crisis and all the lessons that came out of that.

There's this great part in this movie where Kevin Costner is the chief of staff to JFK, and this is happening. They don't know what's going on, and they're new and everything. So they bring in this Averell Harriman, this like old time diplomat, and ask him what to do, and it turns out that he just is kind of a clueless gas bag, and they're looking at each other like, oh, my God. Then Costner goes to JFK -- whoever he was, I forget -- you don't get it, do you, Jack? There's no wise old men. It's just us.

And I always remember that because you can't look at somebody else to tell you what to do. You've got to have confidence in your own abilities and make the best decision you think you can and do what you think is right because, like Eleanor Roosevelt says, you'll be criticized no matter what you do so you might as well do the thing you think is right. Don't try to placate the mob. Don't try to avoid criticism. Do what you think is right and if it turns out not to be right, at least you were trying to do the right thing.

Q. Probably the riskiest move you had to make during your time here was hiring Tom with no college experience and such. How good does it make you feel that three years later it looks like you'd made the right choice there?
FRED GLASS: Well, I'm glad for the kids, and I'm glad for Indiana football. Validation is sort of like criticism. It's a phantom thing to have somebody else tell you to do a good job or have somebody else tell you you're doing a bad job. I think you've got to kind of judge it yourself.

If the ball had bounced the wrong way a few times and we ended up at 5-7 this year, I think I'd still think Tom is the right guy because he's the same guy in terms of recruiting and building and all that. Thank God he's 8-4. That's awesome. Makes the day a lot better. But I'm not sure the fundamentals would have been different in a few things had changed.

But I believed in him from the beginning, and I'm really not surprised that we are where we are with him.

Q. You said that you're retiring from this job but not retiring generally. Do you have any ideas of things you want to do or kind of waiting to figure that out?
FRED GLASS: You've got to take it one step at a time. So I'm retiring from Indiana University, and I'm retiring from being an athletic director. I have no interest in doing that anywhere else, but I'm not retiring professionally. I'll return to Indianapolis and see what makes sense. My guess is it will be something similar to what I was doing before.

I think I'm fortunate that I had this life before and I have a trade, I'm a lawyer, and had a practice, and I can go back to that. I think it makes it easier for me to disengage and sort of go back than maybe some of my other colleagues who may not have that luxury.

Thanks for coming. Be safe driving out there. I appreciate it, and go IU.

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