IndyHutch

  i think that's where this discussion always hits a dead end. There are some who don't think the program is headed in the right direction and there are others that do. From a pure wins and losses standpoint, it would be hard to make that argument. But in terms of getting yourself to a point where you can be competitive in one of the toughest college football divisions in the country can't be completely discounted either. As I've said before, I'm in the camp that I think the program is headed in the right direction despite the fact that we haven't seen the results yet. But I still think IU, at some level, will have success very soon in football -- with Kevin Wilson as the head coach.

  I try not to count anything before all the paperwork is in though. I remember people being pretty optimistic at one point about Guy Marc Michel, too.

That's the problem with eligibility issues like this one. There is no set in stone timetable. Since it sounds like it was a summer school situation, those things are known to take time. i think one positive in terms of learning something though is that my understanding is that this isn't an NCAA Clearinghouse situation but it's something at the university level. You would think people there would do their due diligence to get this done in a timely manner. At the same time, I'm sure everyone wants to sign off on it before anything is official, too.

With football officially getting underway on Thursday at IU with an afternoon practice on the practice fields behind the north end of the stadium, I would hope you’ll start to get a better feel for what we hope to do with the content side of Btownbanners. I started delivering content last Friday and at the same time I posted a thread here looking for people who wanted to contribute to the site. I also sent something out to my 14,000 plus Twitter followers, too. I had really good response. I heard from close to 20 people. I’d like to use everybody (and I may end up using most of them before the season is over) but after going through resumes and looking at some clips of previous work I think I’ve assembled a pretty good group to get us started in the fall. So here is how things are going to play out moving forward with Btownbanners. Our goal is to have new and original content every day. Some days it may just be one story and other days it may be several. Obviously on football and basketball game days, and the day following a game, we’ll have substantial coverage. I’m hoping that the guys I’ve assembled to serve as contributors will be able to do most of the day to day heavy lifting and I can work more in the role of a columnist where I provide opinions and analysis. I’ll also have a game day role though, too, as I’ll be the primary contact that is given a credential from IU media relations for IU football and basketball. Precisely what everyone’s role will be within the content machine is still yet to be determined. As people begin providing content I should know pretty quickly which ones I’ll be looking to use more throughout the year. With all of that in mind, I wanted to briefly introduce you to the guys who will be contributing for us in the fall. I’ve identified four people who will begin by doing football work for us and likely move into basketball season later. There are two others who are exclusively interested in basketball and they’ll get going later. There’s one more person who is going to cover IU soccer for us. First practice for the soccer team is next Tuesday leading up to its exhibition opener against Valparaiso on Aug. 17. Finally, there is one other who will do some recruiting coverage for both football and basketball. The four that will be helping right out of the gate with football include Mike Hutsell, Larry Small, Aaron Johnson and Ryan Palencer. Mike Hutsell spent the first eight years of his career as sports editor at the newspapers in Jeffersonville and New Albany. I think he’s out of the business now but was interested in finding a way to satisfy his writing itch. Larry Small will be a sophomore at IU this fall and has been an active member at this site for a while. For a few years in high school, he was a columnist at chatsports.com covering Notre Dame football where he conducted many interviews with their recruits and provided game analysis. Aaron Johnson is an IU senior majoring in Sport Communication Print. He has worked as part of the Big Ten Student U program and has written for IUSportCom, too. He is also enrolled and taking the sports journalism class that I teach at IU this fall (which is always a plus.) Ryan Palencer is a former student of mine from back in the day when I taught my course at IUPUI. He has been covering high school, college, and professional sports in the Indianapolis area for over a decade. During that span, he has done work as a newspaper reporter and transitioned smoothly to online content. After earning a journalism degree from the IU School of Journalism (IUPUI), he began his writing journey at the Hendricks County Flyer newspaper. Since transitioning into online, he has written general college sports for a blog called "Bloguin." He has also covered the Indianapolis Indians beat for the past two seasons for "Pirates Prospects." Ben Faunce will be helping out with recruiting. Ben is a recent IU graduate and spent last year doing an internship for me at AllHoosiers.com. He is a guy who can watch film on players and provide analysis and a fresh take. I’m looking forward to having him back on board. Brandt Johnson, who lives in Bedford, Ind., will be covering IU soccer for us. He graduated from IU in 2012 with a B.S. in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Sport Communication Broadcast. He has worked as an intern with Indiana Sports Corporation and also worked as the Social Media Manager and blog contributor for HoosierSportsNation.com. Our two people who will be helping in basketball are Josh Wilson and Derek Dant. I’ll provide more details on them when they get started later in the fall. If you expressed an interest in contributing and I didn’t list you here, don’t hesitate to continue to reach out to me and I’ll try to find something that we can get everyone to do in a contributory role with Btownbanners. Thanks to everyone who responded and indicated an interest. One thing that I’m confident with as we get going is that this looks like a pretty solid group. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can make the content come alive on our site.

Welcome aboard!

In the last few days, I've provided a few posts to whet your appetite for what's to come from a content perspective with Btownbanners. Now, here's the plan as we move into football season which officially begins with practice on Thursday. I've assembled a pretty solid group of contributors and I'm looking forward to seeing how they can help us take the content side of this site to a new level.With football officially getting underway on Thursday at IU with an afternoon practice on the practice fields behind the north end of the stadium, I would hope you’ll start to get a better feel for what we hope to do with the content side of Btownbanners. I started delivering content last Friday and at the same time I posted a thread here looking for people who wanted to contribute to the site. I also sent something out to my 14,000 plus Twitter followers, too. I had really good response. I heard from close to 20 people. I’d like to use everybody (and I may end up using most of them before the season is over) but after going through resumes and looking at some clips of previous work I think I’ve assembled a pretty good group to get us started in the fall. So here is how things are going to play out moving forward with Btownbanners. Our goal is to have new and original content every day. Some days it may just be one story and other days it may be several. Obviously on football and basketball game days, and the day following a game, we’ll have substantial coverage. I’m hoping that the guys I’ve assembled to serve as contributors will be able to do most of the day to day heavy lifting and I can work more in the role of a columnist where I provide opinions and analysis. I’ll also have a game day role though, too, as I’ll be the primary contact that is given a credential from IU media relations for IU football and basketball. Precisely what everyone’s role will be within the content machine is still yet to be determined. As people begin providing content I should know pretty quickly which ones I’ll be looking to use more throughout the year. With all of that in mind, I wanted to briefly introduce you to the guys who will be contributing for us in the fall. I’ve identified four people who will begin by doing football work for us and likely move into basketball season later. There are two others who are exclusively interested in basketball and they’ll get going later. There’s one more person who is going to cover IU soccer for us. First practice for the soccer team is next Tuesday leading up to its exhibition opener against Valparaiso on Aug. 17. Finally, there is one other who will do some recruiting coverage for both football and basketball. The four that will be helping right out of the gate with football include Mike Hutsell, Larry Small, Aaron Johnson and Ryan Palencer. Mike Hutsell spent the first eight years of his career as sports editor at the newspapers in Jeffersonville and New Albany. I think he’s out of the business now but was interested in finding a way to satisfy his writing itch. Larry Small will be a sophomore at IU this fall and has been an active member at this site for a while. For a few years in high school, he was a columnist at chatsports.com covering Notre Dame football where he conducted many interviews with their recruits and provided game analysis. Aaron Johnson is an IU senior majoring in Sport Communication Print. He has worked as part of the Big Ten Student U program and has written for IUSportCom, too. He is also enrolled and taking the sports journalism class that I teach at IU this fall (which is always a plus.) Ryan Palencer is a former student of mine from back in the day when I taught my course at IUPUI. He has been covering high school, college, and professional sports in the Indianapolis area for over a decade. During that span, he has done work as a newspaper reporter and transitioned smoothly to online content. After earning a journalism degree from the IU School of Journalism (IUPUI), he began his writing journey at the Hendricks County Flyer newspaper. Since transitioning into online, he has written general college sports for a blog called "Bloguin." He has also covered the Indianapolis Indians beat for the past two seasons for "Pirates Prospects." Ben Faunce will be helping out with recruiting. Ben is a recent IU graduate and spent last year doing an internship for me at AllHoosiers.com. He is a guy who can watch film on players and provide analysis and a fresh take. I’m looking forward to having him back on board. Brandt Johnson, who lives in Bedford, Ind., will be covering IU soccer for us. He graduated from IU in 2012 with a B.S. in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Sport Communication Broadcast. He has worked as an intern with Indiana Sports Corporation and also worked as the Social Media Manager and blog contributor for HoosierSportsNation.com. Our two people who will be helping in basketball are Josh Wilson and Derek Dant. I’ll provide more details on them when they get started later in the fall. If you expressed an interest in contributing and I didn’t list you here, don’t hesitate to continue to reach out to me and I’ll try to find something that we can get everyone to do in a contributory role with Btownbanners. Thanks to everyone who responded and indicated an interest. One thing that I’m confident with as we get going is that this looks like a pretty solid group. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can make the content come alive on our site. [url=https://btownbanners.com/page/index.html/_/football/the-btownbanners-content-plan-r161]Click here to view the article[/url]

  Perhaps I should clarify things here.   I probably shouldn't have referred to the other ones as "real jobs."   As a friend of mine called it the other day, I just have a lot of different pots boiling at the same time.   1. I teach a sports journalism class at IU, something I have done for close to forever. I'm hoping to expand that role, too. 2. I write books, mostly on IU sports. I've written five books, provided a updated version of another, and I have two more books on IU basketball coming out this fall. 3. I do some freelance writing. 4. I'm in the radio booth for IU football where I keep stats for Fisch and Buck, again something I've done for close to forever. 5. And I'm the content provider at Btownbanners.    All you need to know is that I'm 100 percent committed to helping Btownbanners get to wherever it wants to be. If that takes me 40 hours a week, so be it. It it takes 80, that's what I'll do. But the bottom line is that I'm here to make this work.   If you look at my profile at LinkedIn I think you'll find that it lists Btownbanners and my teaching as my two primary jobs so that really says it all for me.   Hopefully I clarified that.

  I think you make a lot of really good points.And what you say about the strength of the division is spot on, too. And sure, if and when IU is looking for a new coach again I would think the range of candidates would probably be very similar to where it was the last time when, as you say, IU picked up a OC from an elite program. But in many ways that's another reason why I wouldn't be in a hurry to move too quickly here. It's not as if there's an elite level coach out there who is chomping at the bit to become the next IU football coach. I suppose that's a possibility but that would surprise me.   I would agree it's an important season for Kevin Wilson and his staff. I'm still not ready to say, however, that it's bowl game or bust this year that will determine his future at IU.

  Creepy.   My guess is that when he moves into a new neighborhood he has to register with the local authorities.   He just has that look.

Of course they're free. You didn't think I was selling it did you?

Folded up?

I can always get more. I'm in Bloomington 3 days a week

Send me your address ... But it might come folded in an envelope

  Truthfully, this should "free me up" to make some money in my real jobs.  :wink:   But the reality is that breaking news doesn't mean what it used to mean.   Breaking news has a shelf life of about 5-10 seconds.   And then it has been Tweeted and ReTweeted to death.   Back in the day, breaking news meant something. I can still remember surveying all of my opponents' website to see if they had a story I had in The Star. But that was long before Twitter/Facebook and other social media.   It's a different world.

  No actually, Andy Graham has never won the award from the national association. I'm actually tied with the great Corky Lamm who was with the Indianapolis News in the 50's, 60's and 70's.   Bob Collins, the longtime sports editor of the Indianapolis Star, won it four times.    The first time I won it I was at the awards presentation which is held annually in Salisbury, N.C. and Hammel was actually there because a buddy of his was been enshrined in the Hall of Fame. I've known Ham's for a long time and after the evening I asked him if we could have a picture together. He obliged and later whenever I would show that picture to anyone I would just casually say, "Yeah, between the two of us we've won that award 18 times.''   I wasn't telling a lie.

  I may have picked up a couple of extra. Stop by and pick one up.

I was in the IU Athletics office on the second floor of Memorial Stadium in the north end zone Tuesday and the posters were sitting on the coffee table in the waiting area. Two sizes, too.

Virtual reality is one of the big things the Cuban Center will be involved with I met with Jeremy Gray Tuesday at IU and he was just coming from a meeting he had with Coach Wilson on the topic.

I like Eamonn Brennan and since he went to IU and I knew him when he was a student it has been fun to follow his career.    And yes, it is too early but it's getting closer.   I think that's probably a fair spot for IU to be in and if the Hoosiers want to move up they will certainly have the kind of competition that could give them that jump with facing teams like Duke, Notre Dame, Creighton and whomever comes up in Maui, all in non-conference play.   My beef with the list is just something I've come to learn over the years and that's that you just can't count out Bo Ryan and Wisconsin. I don't care who they lost (and they did lose a lot). Give him his due. He's a great coach and he always has a team in contention. I feel the same way about Tom Izzo. And because of that any time I see a preseason poll that has them either toward the end or not in at all, it just makes me stop and take pause.

  I would think most people do. But then the expectations for the basketball program are at a completely different level than football. And if they aren't they probably should be. Until Indiana has had any kind of sustained level of winning in football, it's just hard for there to be any kind of lofty expectations. The "hope" for Indiana football for a long time has been to find a way to get to six wins so that the potential for bowl eligibility would be there. It's all about baby steps. Basketball is a different animal. And it likely always will be.

  You were in my top 20 though.

We're going to hit the ground running on Thursday. Check out the Content Plan I posted in articles a little bit ago that should give you a taste of what we'll have.

Myself, I happen to think Kevin Wilson is a pretty good coach. When you're around someone and you hear them talk about football, you get a pretty good idea to make that assessment. But being a good coach doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be able to step into a struggling situation and quickly turn it around. And if you don't have immediate success, you're always going to have someone at your door thinking that you need to move on or the university needs to let you go. I just think that's a short sighted view. The follow up question to that is always, "So how many years should he be given to turn something around?"  And unfortunately, I don't think there's a set answer to that question. I think every program is different. And I think a program that has had as little success as this one in the last two decades in clearly different in a multitude of ways.

We’re probably still about a month away from Indiana releasing its complete 2015-16 basketball schedule. That usually comes out some time in August. Once in a while it will move into September. But here’s my question: If you could have one dream opponent that Indiana was able to lock into a home-and-home series with either for a two-year, three-year or four-year deal, what school would you like that to be? Some will automatically say Kentucky and there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re looking at a dream scenario. But unless there’s a major philosophical change there I just don’t see that happening any time soon. The reality there, however, is that IU-Kentucky could never get old. To those of us who experienced “The Border War” for countless years, I think the general consensus was that IU-UK was good for both programs and it’s good for college basketball. Lately though the shift when talking about IU playing a school from the state to the south has been Louisville. Back in February, Louisville coach Rick Pitino said on his weekly radio show that he and IU coach Tom Crean had been talking about starting up an annual rivalry game. Pitino said the negotiations at that point had IU and Louisville playing one season in Bloomington, one in Louisville and one in Indianapolis at a neutral site on a three-year rotation. At the time, Pitino had said the schools were talking about having that first game as early as this upcoming season in Indianapolis. "We are negotiating to play Indiana next year in Lucas Oil Stadium, where we split 35,000 tickets each," Pitino said on his February radio show. "If we can't get Lucas Oil on the date, we'll go to (Bankers Life Fieldhouse) and split 10,500 tickets or whatever. It'll be half going around behind our bench and half at mid-section, going around their bench." Anyone who remembers the old neutral site matchups with Kentucky at Freedom Hall or in Indy where the court was split right down the middle will embrace that concept. It was actually a really cool idea especially when you had two rabid fan bases basically split right down the middle. As far as I know nothing new has been discussed on that front, at least not publicly, but again this would be something we probably wouldn’t hear about again until the schedule is set in stone and released in the next month or so. And so maybe Louisville turns out to be that non-conference annual rivalry that fills the void. But are there any other programs that you would like to see Indiana play on an annual basis? If something gets done with Louisville, for example, I’m not sure other similar contracts would be set up as well given IU’s other set agreements (ACC/Big Ten Challenge, Crossroads Classic, Gavitt Tipoff Games) but you never know. Myself, I would like to see Indiana and UCLA set up a series. Especially as long as Steve Alford is the Bruins coach. I just think a rivalry like that one would bring instant intrigue as well as pitting two basketball rich programs against each other. How about IU-Kansas? There’s already a chance the two schools will meet this year in Maui and next year in Pearl Harbor. But maybe a few years down the road the schools could meet in an annual series. Even though it wouldn’t be a big series on a national scale, I would still like to see another series along the lines of the Crossroads Classic that would set it in stone that IU would play a select state school or two every year. Perhaps you get on a rotation where every year you play two games against a pool of Indiana State, Ball State, Evansville and IUPUI. Maybe IPFW and Valparaiso get in the mix, too. I’m just a believer that games like that are good for basketball in general. It just promotes that in-state excitement a little bit more. I’m sure there are other obvious rivalries, too. Are there any other rivalries that you would like to see come about involving Indiana basketball? @IndySportsHutch

Thanks. Technically I'm still eligible for No.6 but it tends to be out of sight, out of mind. Six would be fun though as I'm tied for second all time in Indiana circles. Number 1 (Bob Hammel) is unreachable. I think he had 17. Yes we will do recruiting on top of the great job cc General does for us. Hoping to have two people assigned to do just that. Any time you have suggestions, fire them my way. Thanks