southernindianahoosier2

Lol this is what I was saying... Too many hands in the cookie jar that shouldn't have input. And an AD that gets told no and walks away with his tail between his legs. (Granted I love the Cig hire, and I'm sure there's more to the story).

LOL

We might have to throw a Brad Steven’s contract to get literally any caliber coach. I imagine we’d have to pay a premium given the IU dysfunction.

So I guess to answer how did we end up with Woodson: ”old IU guard” props up pushover AD because of perfect timing with no president, then “old IU guard” forces new AD to hire “their guy”.

I believe the last 2 Ads were hired when we didn’t have a sitting president. from what I’ve read on the board, so @Chris007 correct me if I’m wrong… but it sounds like guys like Gonso, Isaiah, Buckner and “blue ribbon” committees over reach and make decisions on who to hire as coach, and who to hire as AD. Meaning there’s too many hands in the cookie jar and decisions are made that benefit these people personally (the non athletic department individuals that somehow have power mentioned above) vs. making decisions based on what’s good for the university. The AD is then essentially a pushover with no real vision. I.e. these individuals prop up a patsy (I think Gonso hired glass), and fans wonder why there is no accountability ever, glass leaves and we hire his assistant, then old IU guard makes the push for Woodson. that’s the theme I’m getting at, is no one in the athletic department is leading the ship

I’m more and more convinced that the last 2 ADs aren’t actually pushovers with no strategic vision, they are simply puppets of some ego driven clueless maniac behind the curtains that is sabotaging everyone

The image of Indiana Basketball nationally is that we’re ******* terrible… Furthering the admins disconnect from reality.

Hypothetically- if we had hired beard instead of woody and let’s say the same incident occurs, we would have been a 2 seed last year in the E8, and to replace him we probably would have hired woody.

Another hypothetical - we hire Beard, he wins a National Championship within 4 years, has the program rolling, but gets in another domestic violence charge on him in year 5. Is anyone going to be “Mad” we hired him?

As a fan, who do I point my frustration towards? Woody, Dolson, Buckner? Who

Not to pile on, but hypothetically if we hired Beard, what would you do? Stop being a fan?

Every time we have a vacancy in the presidents office we then decide to make a change at the AD position. So who is hiring these AD’s? I believe glass was hired by Gonso. Who hired Dolson? Who REALLY hired Woodson? Was it Buckner? I want to point out that this program has dysfunction starting at who ever is making the decisions on hiring the AD, the AD, the coach, even now the players and trickles all the way down to the smallest things in the program. (Why don’t we have script Indiana uniforms? … it’s complete dysfunction even with the apparel and gear… why do 30% of fans wear buffalo related gear yet IU refuses to cash in on that? That’s money left on the table…) This is a complete systemic rot at every level Literally we can’t hire the right AD, because of that we can’t hire the right coach. The university continues to gaslight the fans. It is a complete lie to push the narrative that the fans are the reason a coach can’t be successful here. Show me a program that has hired Mike Davis, Crean, Archie and Woodson in succession and literally anyone who watches basketball would say “ya none of those guys are gonna lead IU to a title” Did you know that there are coaches that have fireside chats that provide transparency to their fans? The lack of Transparency and Accountability within the university and then to deflect and gaslight the fan base…If I’m the AD, I’m telling Mike Woodson to address the fan base on how he’s planning on eliminating ejections and the taking of long 2’s… is that too much to ask for???? this program refuses to listen to the fanbase. They are stuck in their ivory towers with a holier than thou smugness with zero regard to adapting their product to the consumer base. If your customer base says “we no longer want to pay late video rental fees, and would rather stream” and as a business owner you say “our customer's are toxic, we’re not gonna change” then you are blockbuster and you’re out of business….At Indiana you get a raise…

This is bad…

We need a CHANGE AGENT within a leadership role at IU

Conditional hypothetical here: Dusty May has a strong showing in the tournament. In this scenario IU has only 1 chance to hire him, so after this year if don’t hire in the offseason we can never have the chance to hire him again…. Do we want to move on the opportunity?

I had a conversation with someone who's job it is to solicit donations on behalf of IU, that person described the job at the time as sort of a toxic awkward environment because when they would have meetings scheduled or have big donations lined up, they'd have to actively hide it from McRobbie for fear his involvement would lose them the donation. I also believe McRobbies son/daughter worked in that department which led to the awkwardness. Not sure if true, but considering the fact he drained the IU emergency fund for the phallic bell tower, only to be hit with a real emergency immediately after (covid), and that in the height of the financial crisis gave a speech about how parents should sacrifice financially to send their kids to IU because the education was worth it then almost immediately announcing he's giving himself a $1M a year raise after, plus don't think he actually lived in B-town.... lead me to believe that his services weren't highly sought after. Same with Glass, he fired Crean and had a PR tour on how it's a total rebuild for Archie (explain how after being the AD for 9 years you've created a situation for a total rebuild?), then had to pay $10M to fire archie 4 years later does not exude competence. My opinion is that both were severely unqualified for their positions. Were they fired? technically No... Now obviously both individuals did a few things correctly, I just can't speak to what they did.

Wanted to add some more context since this is in the Coaching candidate thread: The university's strategic vision for years was to de-emphasize sports. That's seen through upgrading any facilities from the 70's until finally we built a practice facility in 2009, etc. Dysfunction continued up until 2021 when Glass and Mcrobbie were both let go. Although their goal wasn't explicitly to de-emphasize sports under that administration, winning didn't seem to be a priority for them, and instead the focus and vision seemed to be "to do things the right way". This is seen through the lack of accountability falling on the AD from the president, and lack of accountability on the coaches from the AD. Losing programs are okay with this attitude, winning programs are not. Have things changed in the administration? Gonso, Shoulders, McRobbie, and Glass are all gone. However, Dolson may have been hired by the old IU guard, and I'm not sure Dolson is the change agent needed for a dramatic turnaround. If any board insider feels different please share. I feel the frustration of the fans, I myself am frustrated. If we had to democratically select the next coach based purely on votes from members of this board we would have never hired Davis, Sampson, Crean, Archie, or Woodson, which is telling of the disconnect within the admin. An analogy is: We're blockbuster, a once great brand that was on top of the world, we had the opportunity to buy netflix multiple times, and now we're failing in a world dominated by streaming. If the fans are the employees in this scenario, we're worried about losing our jobs and desperately asking how our brand is going to get out of this and recover. And leadership is not publicly address any of the issues and providing a vision, they're disconnected from reality in their ivory towers with a holier than thou smugness making decisions based not on winning, but self preservation and what benefits them. Short term gains compiling over 30 years for the longest term losses. Until this changes IU will always be a losing program. For me, that is why I want a coach with some transparency on his strategic vision. I'm high on coach Cig just based on his transparency via tweeting on how he envisions the IUFB program. What I want in a coach is: 1. A change agent who's not afraid to tell the truth 2. Transparent in his strategic vision 3. Someone who wants to build a championship level program 4. Someone who embodies "How you do anything is how you do everything" 5. Someone who's willing to address every single aspect of the program. Meals, Game Day Experience, Uniforms, (not just X's and O's) 6. If all 5 of the above are present, I have no doubt that he's a winner.

Also, I said on this board that we should have hired beard if Stevens said no. But was told the admin wouldn’t touch him with a 10ft pole. That’s why I changed my avatar 3 years ago to Beard. Instead we hired woody. Reggie miller said he ran the best practice he’s ever seen. Remove his domestic dispute and he’s the one of if not the best coach in the NCAA, and he could be hired. If anyone can argue he’s not a top 5 coach in the ncaa, WITHOUT bringing up the domestic dispute I’m all ears. Please, I’d love to hear your reasoning. also side note. Do other schools have to have boosters pay half the coaches salary?

In the 80’s Harry Gonso led a blue ribbon committee that hired Tom Ehrlich as IU president, the relationship with the university and basketball program soured to the point of Bob knight threatening to leave…. The administration was humiliated and held meetings on how they could actively de emphasize the basketball program in favor of academics. It’s the revenge of the nerds Plotline for 15 years. And they’ve never changed in the other direction. As far as the Mike Davis years, I analyzed every coach that made it to a national title from “afterglow” Davis, Kevin Ollie, Tubbie Smith, Bruce Weber. On average those coaches stayed 6 years. So we aren’t out of the norm. The issue is the firing of Sampson, and thus power vacuum That was filled by another blue ribbon committee by Harry Gonso which hired the likes of Fred Glass and Tom Crean. McRobbie could have held things accountable but he was so bad that the people who solicit donations at IU actively had to hide big donations from McRobie out of fear he’d interject and lose them the donation. So the dysfunction goes back to the 80’s and infected all the way up to the BoTs

There’s 20,000 alcoholics in Bloomington he’d fit right in.

Haha true as he can go straight to the distillery, or just have a whiskey barrel rolled into his home. If May makes noise in the NCAA's this year, I'm all in for him, if he flames out, I'm all in for Beard. Maybe he can live in the apartments above the tap or at Upland.

If IU pulled a UCLA, we'd offer every coach who was looking for a raise, hiring our 7th choice lol. My 7th choice would be the Muss Buss, which would make for an interesting few years haha. @Chris007 do you think we'd ask B*** S****** again, or would we go straight to May?

Let me Edit...*Fred Glass extended Crean by 2 years inclusive of a $10M buyout, boxing us out from making any moves on Stevens or anyone else, outbidding no-one (literally only ourselves) in the process, only to fire him, and Crean not being employed by any of the 360+ D1 programs within 5 years of his firing. Then hiring a second coach to never make an NCAA tournament, then having to pay $10M to fire him. He also forced out his football coach who went to b2b bowl games only to hire a coach that we had to pay roughly $15M to fire. In all, after accounting for final numbers, the university and boosters paid roughly ~$24.5M to have his coaches no longer work for the university.... Under his watch IU missed 8 of 12 NCAA tournaments and never won a bowl game, and paid $24.5M to make his hires go away... He then wrote a book titled "HOW I REBUILT INDIANA ATHLETICS"..... How is that not what serious programs do?

True true. I get worked up some times because the product has been bad for so many years that I'm trying to make sense on how this even happened in the first place and continues to happen. I searching for a glimmer of hope that things will be better.

How are we not serious? We signed Tom Crean to a $10M buyout when Brad Stevens was available. Then after paying a cumulative $24.5M to fire both his football and basketball hires, our AD wrote a book titled "How I rebuilt Indiana Athletics" Imagine reading this statement as someone who's not an IU fan.