When the Kelvin Sampson Saga unfolded just a few years ago, the cry went out from the Hoosier faithful that Sampson had soiled a legacy of compliance at IU. He had destroyed a squeaky-clean image that had taken decades to create.

"Sure, Indiana had that problem in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but IU has been clean ever since!" went the argument from the Hoosier faithful.

More than one IU fan took pause and said, "Yeah! Wait, what happened in 1960?" Or maybe they didn't say that in fear of being ridiculed for not knowing their Hoosier history. Either way, the bottom line is that once upon a time, IU was known as the biggest scofflaw in the NCAA and received the harshest penalty ever handed down on an athletic department for recruiting violations to that point.

One of the sports involved in the scandals was football, a program led by the charismatic coach Phil Dickens. Dickens' tenure at IU was tumultuous to say the least, and his time at IU was marked by scandal. He is remembered by some as a victim of circumstance. He is beloved by his former players, who call themselves the "Dickens Boys," and they will defend him to the hilt. Others remember him as a renegade coach who tried a crazy offense and played loose with the rules.

All of them are probably, to some extent, right.

Still, the story of Phil Dickens is one that feels like it was ripped from the recent past, even though it took place more than 50 years ago. The Dickens name at IU has become synonymous with scandal and rule breaking, but the reality is more layered than just claiming Dickens was a coach who played loose with the rules. After all, he survived not one, but two recruiting scandals, so his story isn't quite as simple as calling him a cheater.

For some of you, the memories might be fuzzy. For others, this may be the first time you're hearing of Dickens. Either way, in the second of our two-part series on the drama that surrounded Dickens' tenure at IU, we look at his coaching days and downfall in Bloomington.

Phil Dickens stood on the sideline looking over his team, and what he saw wasn't encouraging.

A total of 83 players were in uniform for the Hoosiers as they took the field for the annual spring scrimmage in May, 1958, and of those 83 players, at least 52 of them had never played a game of college football. The team was new, but then again, so was Dickens.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. When IU hired Dickens in January, 1957, the Hoosier administration thought it was getting a coach who could inject some life into the moribund football program, someone who could create the kind of excitement that had been sorely lacking since the mid-1940s. Indiana thought it was getting a dynamic recruiter who could finally start to produce some success on the football field.

Unfortunately for IU, the Big Ten didn't appreciate the way Dickens was going about his recruiting, and as we chronicled in Issue 10 of Inside Indiana, the league suspended Dickens for a year for violating the conference's labyrinthine financial aid rules. Despite the rumors that every coach in the Big Ten had been either caught or suspected of breaking the ever-shifting financial aid rules, which included a formula to determine how much an athletic scholarship would be worth on a case-by-case basis, Dickens was the only coach punished by the Big Ten for his actions.

Dickens didn't run afoul of NCAA rules, and he didn't actually hand over any extra benefits to players. The Big Ten decided he had promised athletes more than he should have, and the league felt that was enough to keep him on the sideline for a year. Actually, Indiana officially suspended Dickens, but the school did so under pressure. The Big Ten essentially told IU to suspend Dickens or face the consequences-namely, Indiana would be kicked out of the conference.

Dickens initially was suspended for a year. By the original ruling, he was to have been kept away from his program until August, 1958, one year after the suspension was handed down. But instead of being forced to serve the full suspension, Dickens was reinstated in mid-December, 1957, and more than a few writers of the time believed the early reinstatement was a tacit admission by the Big Ten that Dickens was paying too high a price for something many other coaches had been accused of along the way.

As Dickens stood on the field in May, however, all of that was behind him. He believed the Hoosiers had a bright future ahead of them as long as no other problems arose.

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Dickens had hoped to use the "side-saddle T" offense, a hybrid of the T-Formation offense and the Single Wing, at IU, but he scrapped that plan in the spring of 1958. Instead, Dickens decided that the Hoosiers would use a straight Single Wing offense - the dominant offense of the first 50 years of the century (today's "Wildcat" formation is a variation on the run-first attack). At least that was the plan in the spring. Once the fall rolled around, it became abundantly clear to Dickens that he might have to go another direction.

"We're not going to overpower anyone on the ground, so we'll probably throw the ball a lot if we can," Dickens said during fall camp.

The two-a-day practices were hard during the month of September - the college season for most clubs didn't start until late in the month - but Dickens was happy with what he saw. Finally, Dickens' first game of his tenure at IU rolled around, and the Hoosiers faced a serious challenge. A trip to Notre Dame, the No. 3 team in the country according the preseason writers' poll, was in store for Dickens' squad, and IU showed a lot of spunk.

Heading into the game as a 28-point underdog, IU gave the Fighting Irish all they could handle. Notre Dame scored on an 11-yard run in the second quarter, but the Irish didn't pull away until midway through the fourth quarter when QB Bob Williams scored on a 20-yard run that put the game out of reach. A garbage-time TD made the final score 18-0, and although the Hoosiers were shut out, they gained the respect of much of the football world with the performance.

The first win of the Dickens Era came a week later at Memorial Stadium, where 20,000 fans watched IU pull off a 13-12 thriller. IU led 7-6 in the fourth quarter when RB Ted Smith, a 5-10, 165-pound senior, bolted for a 55-yard TD run around right end to stretch Indiana's lead. It being Hoosier football, however, the extra point was missed, setting up an exciting finish.

West Virginia drove deep into IU territory, and the Mountaineers pulled with in one point when Dick Longfellow scored on a quarterback sneak with 2:04 to play in the game. Instead of going for a tie (remember, there was no overtime rule back then) WVU decided it would try something that was new for the 1958 college season - the two-point conversion. Longfellow's pass to RB Mel Reight was swatted down by IU's Ken Hubbart in the end zone, giving the Hoosiers the win.

The win over West Virginia was notable for another reason, as Indiana took the field in light blue jerseys with red stripes on the shoulders. The win convinced Dickens that the jerseys, which legend has it reminded him of the skies of Wyoming, were lucky, and the Hoosiers would go on to wear them for the rest of the season.

Indiana lost its next two games to ranked opponents - Dickens got in an argument with Ohio State's Woody Hayes during and after a 49-8 IU loss in Columbus along the way - before the Hoosiers came alive. IU wasn't pretty on the field, but it was effective. The Hoosiers ran off four straight wins despite scoring a total of 32 points, and End Ted Aucreman emerged as a star. He helped lead four goal-line stands in IU's 6-0 upset of Michigan State Nov. 8, 1958, and fellow End Earl Faison showed plenty of promise. The Hoosiers closed out Dickens' first season with a 15-15 tie vs. Purdue in West Lafayette, giving IU a 5-3-1 record on the year.

After the season, Dickens basked in the warmth of a job well-done. He was named Big Ten Coach of the Year and finished third in the American Football Coaches Association voting for Coach of the Year behind LSU's Paul Dietzel and Iowa's Forest Evashevski. The feeling was it would simply be a matter of time before Dickens would turn Indiana into a power in the Big Ten.

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The Hoosiers got off to a hot start in 1959, opening 3-1 with wins over Illinois, Marquette and Nebraska, but they dropped two straight at Michigan State and Northwestern to move back to .500. Dickens railed against the officiating in the MSU game, claiming that IU had twice scored touchdowns on the same drive in the closing minutes only to have the officials rule that the ball didn't cross the goal line. Indiana ended up losing 14-6. Then came Indiana's rematch with Ohio State, which again was played in Columbus.

With the bad blood still simmering between Dickens and Hayes, emotions were high on both sidelines. IU used an incredible 23-play, 85-yard drive to reach the OSU goal line in the second quarter, but it being Indiana football, the drive stalled on the four-inch line when FB Vic Jones failed to score on fourth down. The game ended in a 0-0 tie.

Dickens was livid. Considering what had happened vs. Michigan State just a few weeks earlier, Dickens wasn't in a mood to hold back about the officiating in Columbus. Namely, Dickens believed Jones had scored on his fourth-down plunge, and he called the officiating in the game "sickening." Hayes, meanwhile, praised the refs, saying, "Honestly, Indiana did not earn a touchdown. Jones' head was over the goal line, but the ball was not. I think the game was well officiated."

Something tells us that Hayes' kind words for the officiating may suggest that Dickens had a legitimate argument. Whatever the case may have been, IU was forced to accept the tie. In response to the game, Dickens had a red line painted five-yards deep in the end zone at Memorial Stadium and told his players, "that's the line to shoot for." In December, Sports Illustrated would run a photo of the Jones run, apparently showing that Jones had, in fact, crossed the goal line.

But IU had to move on. Indiana came back to win its next game, beating Michigan 26-7 at Memorial Stadium, but the Hoosiers finished the season with a 10-7 loss to Purdue at home. That game happened to be the final IU football game played at Memorial Stadium, and 35,325 fans packed the crumbling arena to watch the game.

Dickens' first two seasons at the helm of the Hoosiers saw him post a 9-7-2 record, and there seemed to be nothing but bright skies ahead. The program was looking up, a sparkling new stadium was nearly ready just off 17th Street, and Dickens had his team believing it could be great. The decades of losing seemed behind the Hoosiers, and Dickens was just the man to lead IU to some long overdue glory days.

It wouldn't quite work out that way.

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Phil Dickens was angry.

After watching Washington throw a 44-8 whipping on Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, Dickens was convinced that the Big Ten's financial aid program, which awarded scholarships based on the individual need of each athlete, was hurting the overall competition level of the conference. Dickens believed that from the day he arrived in Bloomington, and the Washington win was the game Dickens pointed to as proving his point.

"This is the result of the 'need' program," Dickens said after returning from Pasadena. "The Big Ten no longer can attract the same number of top-flight athletes under its aid program as other schools operating under NCAA rules only. We've set ourselves back with our recruiting rules, and it's going to get worse. Our drop in caliber was concealed in playing against ourselves, and it took a game like this to show what is happening."

But even as Dickens was railing against recruiting restrictions in the Big Ten, his program was coming under scrutiny again for its actions on the recruiting trail. This time, the league wasn't the only entity investigating the Hoosiers. The NCAA was looking into some issues, as well, and it had been for some time. A number of meetings and discussions with people in and around the football program had been conducted for months as the NCAA looked into allegations that IU wasn't playing by the rulebook.

On April 28, 1960, as spring practice was being conducted, the NCAA released the findings of its investigation, dropping a bomb on the IU athletic department in the process. The NCAA's 18-member council on rules accused Indiana of violating recruiting rules in the recruitment of six prospective football players. Under NCAA bylaws, the maximum amount of aid a member school could offer a prospective student was tuition, room and board, books and $15 per month for incidental expenses. The NCAA claimed IU had overstepped its bounds on the recruiting trail. Among other things, the council charged that:

* An alumnus of Indiana, working with IU line coach Roger Jeffers, had offered a prospect from Virginia a bonus of up to $800, plus a monthly payment of $50-$75.

* An Ohio prospect was contacted by an IU alumnus, who provided a fictitious name of "Dr. Palmer," and was offered $74-$100 as a bonus, plus free transportation, to come to Indiana. The NCAA also claimed that a representative of IU later told the prospect that "Dr. Palmer" could be trusted and that what he was offering was real.

* Another prospect was offered free vacation transportation between his home in New Jersey and Bloomington.

* Yet another prospect was contacted by a representative of IU, who had played for Dickens when he was a coach at Wofford, offering the prospect free vacation transportation between his home in Ohio and Bloomington, clothes, $500 in cash and monthly payments of $50-$75.

Other charges that prospects had been offered clothing, cash and extra benefits also were made.

As a result of the investigation, the Hoosiers were handed the stiffest penalty in the history of the NCAA to that point, a 1960s version of the death penalty handed to Southern Methodist University in the 1980s. Indiana was placed on a four-year probation, barring every IU sport - not just football, but every sport, be it basketball, gymnastics, swimming & diving, baseball, whatever -from entering teams or athletes in NCAA championship competitions. The football program would not be allowed to play in postseason games, and the Hoosiers would not be allowed to appear on television during the duration of the probation.

Dickens was shocked at the penalty, mainly because he didn't believe his program had done anything wrong.

"It's a dad-burned shame," Dickens said. "We thought we'd done everything possible to avoid something like this. Neither I nor any member of my staff ever made any offer of any kind to any boy, or had knowledge of such an offer. This is the Gospel truth."

Indiana University president Herman B Wells believed Dickens. Essentially, Dickens claimed that nobody involved with the program had committed any violations, and if there were violations, they had come from alumni not officially associated with the football team. With more than 100,000 living alumni, Director of Athletics Frank Allen pointed out that it was impossible to control the actions of overzealous boosters.

Wells jumped to Dickens' defense, denying any wrongdoing.

"I cannot and do not wish to minimize the seriousness of the action that has been taken against Indiana University," Wells said in a statement. "It is a terrible blow and most certainly will affect our athletic program. The Athletic Department and I have spent not merely days and not only weeks but months on the matters involved. We made extensive, painstaking investigations of our own.

"The result was we were unable honestly and objectively to concur in certain assumptions and conclusions on which action has been taken. On this firm basis, we presented our case with the greatest vigor and earnestness, and with the concurrence of the Board of Trustees and the Faculty Committee on Athletics. We still hold to our judgments."

Dickens wasn't specifically named in any of the NCAA's charges, but his program would pay the price. His players were devastated by the news, and they asked Dickens if it would help for them to report to the NCAA all the illegal offers they had received from other schools while they were being recruited. Dickens declined the offer, but the players' love for their coach was evident. Many considered him a father-figure, and most would do anything for him.

"I'll tell you," said one IU player. "If ever I'd go through Hell for a man, it'll be for Coach Dickens. He's the greatest."

Meanwhile, there was a feeling that Indiana was, to a certain extent, being picked on by the NCAA. Neither the NCAA nor IU ever denied that the Hoosier football program was being watched more closely than other programs since the 1957 investigations into Dickens' recruiting practices, and there was a belief that IU was the victim of a power struggle between NCAA executive secretary Walter Byers and Big Ten commissioner Kenneth "Tug" Wilson. Wilson had gone in front of the council to ask for leniency for the Hoosiers, but Byers, the story went, wanted to assert his power over the conference and handed down a harsher penalty than had been planned.

The May 16, 1960, issue of Sports Illustrated featured the Hoosiers' story, and writer Jack Olsen wasn't quite so ready to believe Dickens' version of things. In fact, Olsen wrote that IU wasn't unlike most programs when it came to bending the rules. The problem was Indiana wasn't very good at cheating and hiding its tracks.

"On the hilly, green campus of Indiana University stands a half-completed $4.5 million football stadium," Olsen wrote. "With its naked beams and bare backside, it looks like the Colosseum (sic) at Rome, and, like the Colosseum (sic), it is involved in a decline and fall. Indiana has been thrown - or possibly has jumped - to the lions.

"For four years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association has just decreed, the university may not take part in NCAA championship and bowl games or in NCAA-controlled television programs. This last will deprive Indiana of about $75,000 a year, no small amount for a school that financed its new stadium on a buy-now, pay-later basis. The NCAA edict angered but did not dismay Indiana's jovial president, Herman Wells. Indiana boosters were less philosophical. 'A pretty rough potshot!' cried one. 'A raw deal!' said another. 'A stab in the back!' The mildest word anyone used was 'Inconceivable!'

"Actually, the NCAA's position - inconceivable or not in Indiana - is clear: Indiana and its head football coach, Phil Dickens, practiced too much togetherness with potential footballers; money and expense-paid vacation trips home were promised, and athletes were nursed and coddled on campus. Ergo, Indiana is on probation, and that's that. There is no appeal.

"It will surprise no realistic student of 20th century college football that beyond-the-rules recruiting goes on steadily and merrily, and not only in the Big Ten. The Southeastern Conference, for example, has been known on occasion to offer small county seats and castles in Bavaria to promising high school players. But within the Big Ten - most insiders agree - Indiana has played the fastest, the loosest and the bravest.

"The Hoosiers' bravery (some call it gall) may be seen in the fact that five of the six NCAA counts against the school go back to 1958, when Coach Dickens was already on probation for similar offenses against the commonwealth. Now that the NCAA has unleashed its thunderbolt, the reaction of Big Ten coaches and recruiters is most interesting for what it reveals by omission. Unspoken but clearly understood is the feeling that just about everybody is breaking the rules, but Indiana broke the rules badly, i.e., Indiana got caught."

Olsen spoke to a number of anonymous recruiters from other schools, all of whom didn't seem to be offended that IU broke the rules. It was the manner in which the Hoosiers went about it.

"Let's face it," one recruiter was quoted as saying. "We all do a little bit for the kids on the side. You almost have to these days if the kid is any good at all. But it's the way that Indiana did it that hurts recruiters everywhere. There was no finesse; the recruiter would just approach the kid, tell him how much he was worth, whip out the bankroll and peel off the green.

"Indiana had to get caught because it didn't use any class. Most places the money goes to an alumnus, and he gets in touch with the boy. That's a hard rap to make stick; the NCAA might catch the boy coming into school on a plane ticket bought by someone other than himself or his parents, but the kid could just tell them it came from a friend of his, and they couldn't prove otherwise. Indiana was dumb enough to buy the tickets for the kids themselves; some of their prospects showed them to me."

Meanwhile, in mid-May, the Hoosiers faced another firing squad. The Big Ten was expected to rule on its investigation into the recruiting behavior of Dickens' squad, and there was speculation that IU would be given a "show-cause" penalty, meaning if the school did not fire Dickens, it would be forced to provide reasons why IU should not be expelled from the Big Ten.

Simply put, the future of Hoosier athletics hung on the outcome of the Big Ten's investigation.

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The snail's pace the Big Ten currently operates at is nothing new. The much-hyped meeting in mid-May didn't return a verdict, and Wilson didn't officially inform IU of any violations until early June when he wrote a letter to Wells setting out the charges and initiating proceedings to determine penalties for alleged recruiting violations. Wells, Dickens and Allen joined Board of Trustees president William Hickam and faculty representative John Mee at a meeting July 11 to appeal the findings.

The Hoosiers were frustrated with the secrecy that surrounded the investigation, and IU maintained the NCAA and the Big Ten had only circumstantial evidence of any wrongdoing, evidence that had been provided by other schools that could benefit from IU being out of the picture or by former students of the university who had an axe to grind. The Bloomington Herald-Telephone reported that testimony came from students who "had dropped out of school because of academic problems, failure to make the team, personality clashes or general dissatisfaction."

Indiana was put in a holding pattern for the next couple of weeks, and Dickens was forced to go about his business not knowing what his future might hold. Maybe worse, the college football world didn't know if the Big Ten was going to be piling on the Hoosiers in the aftermath of the NCAA ruling, which meant that Indiana's recruiting efforts - already hampered by the penalties from the NCAA - were in even more doubt.

Finally, on July 31, the Big Ten scheduled a news conference to discuss the "Indiana situation." At 4 p.m. ET, Wilson announced that investigations conducted by the conference had shown "a widespread practice of offers of illegal financial assistance to prospective students and of the receipt of illegal financial assistance to students once they had enrolled at Indiana University. Significantly, it is a football player who is involved in each case."

Wilson, however, cleared Dickens of any official wrongdoing, going so far as to admit the Big Ten had only circumstantial evidence on the Hoosiers.

"It is submitted by Indiana University that to the extent these practices existed, they were the workings of unknown, uninstructed or irresponsible friends or alumni of the University," Wilson said. "To the extent that I have been unable to identify unnamed persons who in certain cases made promises of financial aid, or in other cases the sources of illegal payments of financial assistance which are acknowledged by receipts, I will concede that I cannot beyond all reasonable doubt contradict this contention."

Wilson wasn't about to let IU completely off the hook.

"I must say, however, that I have grave doubts any such practices on the scale suggested by the cases at hand could possibly have been carried on without the knowledge, and, indeed, the approval of the coaching staff," Wilson said. "It is only because I cannot bring myself to employ circumstantial evidence in so serious a matter as one involving a person's livelihood that I do not, in the present circumstances, cite Indiana University under the provisions of Rule 7, Section 15 (the show-cause clause)."

The Big Ten handed down a penalty of one-year probation, plus IU would not be allowed to share in the league's television revenue, a penalty that amounted between $75,000-$85,000 of revenue lost for IU. Also, Indiana's football games would not be counted in the league standings, even though they would still be played. IU was given the option to appeal the decision, but in an effort to put the sordid mess behind it, Indiana decided to accept the ruling.

"I am authorized and directed by the Board of Trustees and the Faculty Committee on Athletics to say that the University, though in disagreement with your conclusions, bows to your decision," Wells said in a letter to the Big Ten.

Wells added that IU would accept the ruling "most reluctantly" and for two "overpowering reasons." First, Indiana wished to remain a member of the Big Ten and would abide by the Conference's decisions "even disadvantageous though they may be." Second, the administration simply wanted to move on. For more than a year the Big Ten and the NCAA had been investigating the athletic department, and Wells said the investigations had occupied "a major portion of the time and energy of many of the University's administrative officers, some of its faculty and the athletic staff.

"We must now get on with our job, which is teaching, research and public service," Wells said.

With an eye on avoiding any potential problems in the future, IU appointed former Indiana and Stanford baseball and basketball coach Everett Dean as a special assistant for athletic-alumni relations. Basically, Dean, who was president of the "I" Men's Association at the time, would be given the job of making sure alumni and friends of the athletic programs were apprised of the rules and adhered to them in the future. Specifically, Dean would meet with IU's alumni and Varsity Clubs and help Allen and the coaches make sure everyone was on the same page.

Dean was considered one of the most honorable men in the IU family and carried the kind of reputation that would force alumni to pay attention when he spoke.

Hickam, the president of the Board of Trustees, still railed against the Big Ten, saying that the Board "throughout and now disagrees with the validity of the evidence produced by the Commissioner and questions his conclusions." Hickam did concur with Wells that it was in the best interest of all involved if IU simply took its medicine and moved on.

The "Indiana Situation" was finally resolved.

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The immediate reaction the day after the decision was announced may have been one of acceptance, but it didn't take long for rumors to start to swirl that IU was let off somewhat easily by the Big Ten because if the show-cause penalty was invoked, the administration was poised to essentially burn the conference to the ground. A source described as being "close to the university" told reporters that had the Big Ten ruled that Dickens needed to be fired and/or IU was expelled from the conference, Indiana was ready to expose recruiting violations committed by the other nine league schools. IU was said to have more than 100 documented cases of violations that it was ready to unleash should the Big Ten try to play hardball with the Hoosiers.

Meanwhile, there was a feeling among many writers in the Midwest that the Big Ten opponents who had blown the whistle on the recruiting violations did so to nip Dickens' progress in the bud. IU had put together back-to-back .500 or better seasons, and Dickens was actually starting to move into the recruiting territory normally reserved for the other conference teams, who were happy to let IU have the remaining players after the other league schools had stripped away the top talent in the area. As long as Indiana was happy with the scraps, nobody was upset.

"But Phil Dickens doesn't operate that way," Jim Smith of the Indianapolis Times wrote. "First thing you knew he and his staff had gone in and picked off a couple of Ohio boys that Purdue and Ohio State were after."

The belief was that after Dickens' success, the other Big Ten schools rose up, thinking, "Let's keep the doormat right where it was. Otherwise, one of us will be it."

Big Ten opponents, however, weren't happy with the portion of the penalty that said IU's games wouldn't count in the standings. See, it wasn't just that game results wouldn't count for Indiana. It wouldn't count for anyone. It would be the same as if the teams were having a scrimmage.

That didn't sit well with IU's opponents. Inexplicably, every team in the Big Ten didn't play the same number of conference games. During the 1959 season, Wisconsin won the league crown and the right to go to the Rose Bowl by finishing with a 5-2 record in the league. Michigan State, meanwhile, finished in second place with a 4-2 record. With IU's games not counting in the standings and some teams not even playing the Hoosiers, the teams that didn't play Indiana during the 1960 season were at an advantage over those that did.

"I think the ruling is unfortunate for both Indiana and the Conference," said Murray Warmath, Minnesota's long-time head coach. "The punishment seems to circumvent the whole purpose of the penalty. It seems to me that if a team should beat Indiana, it should count even if an Indiana victory didn't. The way it is now, those team that don't play Indiana this year certainly have an advantage."

Big Ten opponents would appeal to Wilson to change his ruling during September, but the Commissioner turned them down.

Back in Bloomington, Dickens was simply happy that he emerged from the scandal with his job intact.

"I've been as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs," Dickens told the Bloomington Kiwanis Club in early August.

Dickens took the time to address the charges against Jeffers, the assistant coach who was at the heart of one of the NCAA's accusations. Jeffers had left the program just prior to the NCAA's ruling, timing that was "unfortunate" according to Dickens, but he said Jeffers had accepted a business offer months before the ruling.

"It's a shame," Dickens said. "Because Roger is a fine young man, and such a charge is completely unfounded."

In the aftermath of the ruling, the support of the University, students and alumni remained squarely behind Dickens. With the four-year contract Dickens signed in 1957 coming close to an end, the Indiana Daily Student called for the coach to be given an extension. The Herald-Telephone agreed, saying that IU had to stick by the man who had put together back-to-back solid seasons with mostly players who had been part of IU football since the days of former coach Bernie Crimmins. With solid results under his belt and a new stadium with which to woo players, Dickens was considered one of the pieces of a solid foundation for Hoosier football even with the restrictions placed on it.

Bouncing back, however, wouldn't be so easy.

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The 1960 Hoosiers would be the first to play in what was then called 17th Street Stadium, but the team didn't look good. No fewer than 19 lettermen either graduated or left the program, and by the time IU took the field for its first game vs. Illinois, only 16 players remained from the 1959 squad. The results were predictable. Indiana won just one game - a 34-8 win over Marquette at home that saw the Hoosiers score more than seven points in a game for the only time all year - and the Hoosiers finished 1-8. The team averaged fewer than 26,000 fans in its mammoth new stadium, and IU Allen's hopes that the lost revenue from the television penalty would be replaced by better ticket sales never materialized.

Despite the struggles, IU rewarded Dickens with a four-year contract extension at the end of the season. The move was shown as a vote of confidence in Dickens and served to allow IU to thumb its nose at the Big Ten powers-that-be by making it clear Dickens would be around for a while.

"I'm gratified at this expression of faith in me and my staff by the University and its administration," Dickens said in a statement. "We have a big job ahead of us, as everyone knows, and we must think in terms of the future rather than of the past. My confidence is unshaken that by all pulling together - student body, alumni, faculty and administration, and all friends of Indiana University - we can get the job done."

Allen praised Dickens for staying focused on the task at hand.

"We feel that Coach Dickens has done a remarkable job under often difficult conditions and that a good start has been made in developing a sound football program at IU," Allen said. "I most certainly share the feelings of the University administration, the University family and the many friends of IU that the future of Indiana football is in good hands."

Over the next couple of years, however, the program suffered under the weight of the probation and all that had happened since Dickens took over the program. Indiana went 2-7 overall and 0-6 in the Big Ten during the 1961 season, scoring more than eight points just three times all season, and the Hoosiers posted matching 3-6 overall and 1-5 records in the Big Ten over the next two seasons.

Meanwhile, the administration was changing around Dickens. Allen resigned as AD in 1961, and he was replaced by Bill Orwig. The most shocking change, however, was the 1962 decision of Wells to retire to become University Chancellor, a post he held until 2000. Wells was replaced by Elvis J. Stahr, President John Kennedy's Secretary of the Army, and Stahr quickly embraced Dickens' efforts.

The poor records didn't seem to bother the IU administration, and Dickens was given another contract extension in September, 1964, just after the four-year probation from the NCAA expired. This deal, however, wasn't for a set length of time. It was an open-ended extension and provided that Dickens couldn't really be fired as head coach. He could only be reassigned to the administrative staff of the University at his own request or that of the athletic director, and at a salary not less than two-thirds of what he would receive as head coach.

Extension in hand, Dickens didn't get off to a good start. The Hoosiers dropped three-straight conference games - although they were competitive in all of them - before beating Michigan State and Miami (Fla.). That battle vs. the Hurricanes is notable because it was IU's first night game in 11 years, and Indiana used an airplane owned by Purdue to fly to Florida for the game.

The wins were the last ones of the year for IU, however, as the Hoosiers dropped four straight to close the season. Dickens and Indiana finished 2-7 on the season and 1-5 overall in conference play, but there was some reason for optimism. IU's seven losses came by a total of 55 points, and five of the games were decided by eight points or less.

Dickens, however, was disheartened by the lack of success, and he made the shocking decision in late December to tender his resignation.

"It is with a feeling of deep personal regret that I should like to ask that I be relieved of my responsibilities as Head Coach of the Indiana University football program and be reassigned to other responsibilities which you feel would be most appropriate for me and consistent with the University's needs," Dickens wrote in a resignation letter to Stahr. "As I am sure you know, the coaching staff and I have given every ounce of energy and dedication to rebuilding football at Indiana University since our arrival in 1957.

"This, of course, has been a very trying period for all of us and our families. We have been dedicated to a program of building a winning football program consistent with the aims of the University. These years have not, however, been totally filled with disappointment.

"There have been some bright lights; our freshman squad this year is the best in my time and our recruiting machinery is better organized than ever before in history to carry on this important year-around function. By and large, though, our efforts have not yielded the results which we had hoped for and which I am sure the University, the student body and our loyal alumni and friends throughout the State have also hoped for. But I assure you that we have tried with every resource at our command to get the job done.

"It seems wise for me, therefore, although I am most reluctant to take this step, to provide you the opportunity to search for new leadership for the football program."

With that letter, Dickens' career as head football coach at IU was over. In fact, Dickens, who posted a 20-41-2 record at IU, would never coach a football team at the college level again.

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The 49-year-old Dickens was reassigned as the general manager of the university's off-campus physical facilities. Starting February 1, 1965, Dickens became manager of the Crooked Lake biological research station in Noble County, the Bedford Woods outdoor education area in Morgan County, the Lilly Woods in Brown County, the Montana Geological Field Station and the developing research and training site at the then-new Monroe Reservoir, among other duties.

Indiana quickly moved on. Yale's John Pont took over, and that freshman team Dickens praised became the nucleus of the IU squad that reached the Rose Bowl in January, 1968. Pont ran into his own problems at IU - that's a story for another time - and Dickens watched the football program from afar until he retired at IU in 1980. Three years later, on November 16, 1983, the 69-year-old Dickens died following a lengthy illness.

Dickens may have been gone, but his legacy lives on in the players he coached. They call themselves the "Dickens Boys," and they can be spotted at IU games wearing light blue Indiana caps that match the jersey's they once wore. They were the players who battled through the worst of times at Indiana, and although they didn't enjoy much success along the way, they showed the spirit Dickens instilled in them every time they took the field.

That is Dickens' biggest impact at IU. He helped the Hoosiers dream big, and although he ran into trouble along the way, it was his work that laid the foundation for some of IU's greatest triumphs. "The Man from Laramie" may not be a celebrated figure by most IU fans, but he's far from the villain some would make him out to be, and he will always be known as the coach that allowed IU to stand up and never back down to the big boys in the Big Ten.

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