Ask the average member of the American workforce what their biggest concern of the past three years has been and you’re likely to hear the term “job security” about as often as you did the word “change” in the 2008 US Presidential campaign. Just ask President Obama and he’ll be sure to tell you that unemployment was at its highest levels since the Great Depression around the time he took office.
Luckily for Tom Crean, job security is just about at the bottom of his list of headaches since inking his contract at Indiana University almost three years ago. If there was any doubt among the IU community that Crean was “our man”—namely, the guy we will put our faith in to bring us back to perennial contention in the NCAA tournament—it was erased when the university extended Crean’s original eight year contract to 10 before he coached his first IU game.
The contract, worth just under a whopping $18 million before incentive bonuses such as Big Ten regular season or tournament wins and NCAA tournament berths and not including perks—Crean can receive 60 lower level tickets to all home games upon his request—includes stipulations that create a scenario in which it would take some colossal disaster to make either side ending the relationship early foreseeable:
• If Crean were to resign from Indiana in the next two seasons, he would owe the university $2 million
• If he were to depart in the final five years of his contract, he would still owe IU a $1 million fee
• If the university were to terminate Crean without just cause, which essentially amounts to proof of NCAA recruitment violations by Crean or his staff, it would be forced to pay him a buyout in the lesser amount of either $3 million or the total of the base salaries ($600K/year) of his remaining years.
Neither the university or Coach Crean are in a position to nonchalantly toss out seven figures, so none of these scenarios are desirable for either party. Essentially, unless Coach Crean disgraces the IU program Kelvin Sampson style (highly unlikely) or five years from now the student body still feels inclined to storm the court at Assembly Hall after a win over #21 Illinois (also unlikely, though it was worthy this time around), Bloomington will be Crean’s home for the better part of this decade.
If IU’s first win over a nationally ranked team of the Tom Crean era earlier this week is any indication of the direction of the squad, Hoosiers may well be happy to see him here long past the end of his tenth season. As for now, there’s no question, Crean’s our man.
