Mike Davis on Tom Crean’s firing: Indiana is a top five job in the country

There’s perhaps no man who knows today how Tom Crean feels more than Mike Davis.

Ahead of his Texas Southern team’s matchup with North Carolina, the former Indiana coach vouched for the quality of Indiana job after Crean’s removal today to ESPN’s Jeff Goodman

It’s an unbelievable job, I think it’s a top-5 job in the country. Always on TV, always sold out, players in your state. It’s unbelievable. You can go anywhere in the world and they know Indiana. Whoever you bring in has to win.

People get confused. You don’t have to win the press conference, you just have to win games. You have to win, and you have to win every year. That’s just the way it is. You can’t take it personal. You have to embrace it. When they pay us the money they pay us, they have the right to fire us. When you are not getting it done, there’s no grace period.

It’s rare effusive praise of a former job locale from a college coach that’s been fired, but such romanticizing about Indiana isn’t anything new for Davis. When he spoke to me back in 2014 about returning to Bloomington, much of this sounds familiar.