Indiana is not the job it was 40-50 years ago, and it never will be again. Back when Knight was the best coach in basketball, the sport was still somewhat regional and the upper Midwest and particularly Indiana was one of the major hotbeds of talent. Indiana, Purdue, and a handful of other schools ruled the Big 10, and got first pick of the top players in the region, plus they could recruit regionally. Depaul and Notre Dame were the only non Big 10 programs that were major powers in the region.
And with all those advantages, Indiana was considered a blue blood because it had one of the greatest coaches in Basketball history for 30 years. And even with Knight, Indiana was nothing special for most of the 90's. Knight was a relic of a different era, and the program was not strong enough to keep itself a national power after 1993. Mike Davis got Indiana to the Finals in 2002, although he got some help in the brackets with 3 of the 5 teams Indiana beat in that tournament being 10 seeds or worse.
And that was almost 20 years ago. Indiana's tradition only matters to GenXers and older. Indiana thinks it is UNC but really it is Minnesota. Firing Kelvin Sampson over some phone calls was just stupid. I thought Archie Miller and especially Tom Crean did decent jobs if Indiana's administration was living in reality. Indiana is just another rural state school now, and unlike in Knight's era, it has to compete for talent with major conference programs in Indianapolis (Butler) and Cincinnati (Xavier). There are a lot of great mid-majors in the region offering playing time, and national recruiting for basketball is very competitive.
Indiana is not that great a job anymore, and is rapidly becoming a place where promising careers go to die.
