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.