IU athletic director Fred Glass to retire

For the last decade-plus, Fred Glass has served as IU’s athletic director. Now it seems as if he’s ready to step down from the role as on Monday it was announced that Glass will retire at the end of this academic year.

“It’s time,” Glass said in a press release. “It’s an all-in, all-consuming role, and I’ve loved it, but I’m ready to step back and do something that keeps me closer to home with more time with my granddaughters and the rest of my family. I’ll finish up the Bicentennial Year and give President McRobbie enough time to select a great successor.”

Glass’ tenure has been highlighted by some pretty impressive highs—a national championship for the men’s soccer program, 28 individual national championships, 23 team conference championships, 195 individual conference championships, and 588 All-American honors are just some of the things that the athletics department has accomplished as a whole with Glass at the helm.

He also made many facilities upgrades during his tenure. The IU baseball program moved out of Sembower Field, may it rest in peace, and into Bart Kaufman Field under Glass. That move helped to solidify IU as one of the most relevant programs in the conference, possibly THE Big Ten baseball program of the last decade.

Other examples include the construction of Wilkinson Hall, finally bringing the volleyball and wrestling programs back to campus, Andy Mohr Field, and the ongoing renovation of Bill Armstrong Stadium. In 2016 IU renovated the south end of Assembly Hall as well.

One thing about the Glass era of IU Athletics that could be most notable is the development of the football program. After years of fans hollerin’ about how IU “doesn’t care about football,” IU seemingly started caring.

Glass hired Kevin Wilson and though that didn’t end on a great note, Wilson still got the Hoosiers to back-to-back bowl games for the first time since 1986 and 1987. After Wilson departed, Glass made a move to quickly promote then-defensive coordinator. That move wasn’t exactly received well because of the lack of a real search, but look at how it’s turned out.

IU also recently closed in the south endzone of Memorial Stadium, upgrading the facilities available to its student-athletes in the process.

Now in one of his final acts, though we didn’t know it at the time, Glass extended Allen long-term after the program had one of its most successful seasons ever, winning eight games and earning an invitation to the Gator Bowl.

This is all just part of what Glass’ IU tenure consisted of and, at best, just a brief glimpse at each thing. Over the Summer we went a bit more in-depth in looking at the Glass era hire-by-hire. You can check those posts out here.