INDIANA FOOTBALL
Mike Miller | The Herald Times – published April 21, 2018
Tom Allen first came to know Terry Tallen decades ago.
Allen didn’t know Tallen personally, but he watched his game closely.
As a young child, Allen and his father trekked from New Castle to Bloomington to attend IU football games. Allen’s father, the longtime football coach at New Castle, had a specific rooting interest in the Hoosiers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, having coached receiver John Boyd in high school.
Tallen, a linebacker and two-time captain, played on those teams, too.
“I came as a young man to those games and vividly remember that,” Allen said.
Now, Allen will see Tallen’s name every day of his IU coaching tenure.
Indiana announced Friday that Tallen is donating $2 million toward renovations of the IU football locker room, a significant gift that will update the bulk of Indiana’s team areas.
“I’m deeply honored,” said Tallen, a three-year letterwinner who co-captained the 1979 and 1980 teams. “It’ll bring Indiana up to that highest level with state-of-the-art facilities again.”
The Terry Tallen Indiana Football Complex will occupy more than 25,000 square feet underneath the west bleachers of Memorial Stadium. It will include the Trent and Julie Green Locker Room, coaches’ locker room, team lounge, recruiting area, equipment room and the Dr. John M. Miller Training Room.
“Every gift matters to allow us to have the type of facilities that we know we need in order to attract the highest-level players to achieve our goals,” Allen said.
Since graduating from IU’s Kelley School of Business in 1982, Tallen has enjoyed success in the business sector. In 2001, he founded Tallen Capital Partners, LLC, a retail and mixed-use real estate investment and development organization with offices in San Diego and San Francisco.
In 2008, he established the Terry Tallen Football Leadership Scholarship, which is given each year to IU’s team captain. That scholarship is currently benefitting left guard Wes Martin.
“Those scholarship that we are given are really life-changing,” Martin said. “Without football and those scholarships, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to go to college. I’d probably still be in Ohio working on a dairy farm or something like that.”
Tallen says he’s simply happy to provide for his alma mater.
“It’s just an honor and something I deeply wanted to do,” he said.
Read the full article on heraldtimesonline.com.