Pudman

It’s Karoline Striplin the Tennessee transfer. She’s big. Saw her at Dicks Sporting Goods the other day in Bloomington. Really, really tall.

This 100%. I offer all of my student extra credit if they stop by, in part to normalize and encourage stopping by office hours. I had over 100 come by in the first three weeks this semester, and then lots and lots of repeats. It beats the hell out of me, and my wife says I should reconsider the extra credit, but honestly it’s worth the exhaustion.

As a faculty member at IU, I see this all the time with students. I invite all my students, 600+ a semester, to my office hours and tell them they can come talk about anything. I average around 8 students per office hours. Distressed students come often saying that they don’t want to study computer science or business or whatever but feel like they have no choice. There’s also a lot of basketball and music chats too :)

I am in India for an IU trip and have been meeting with IU alumni here. They are amazing and so gracious. I had a lot of great conversations about IU basketball! One asked if I was excited about Rice! if any of you come to India, you should definitely meet with the IU alumni here!

Well, I'll be rooting for Purdue to win it all for my father-in-law. He is a diehard Purdue fan, who probably hasn't missed but a few games since 1968. Sadly, he is missing this tournament. He had a mental breakdown, which could be Alzheimer's, and is in a hospital that won't allow him to watch TV, and we don't know when he'll get out, or if ever. I missed getting his texts during the game. I kept checking my phone out of habit, just hoping to see his thoughts come across my screen. Sigh. Well, I hope they win it all for him. I am not a praying man, but I'd sure love some good vibes sent my father-in-law's way!

This 100%. Sports and basketball aside, Bucker is liked by the Governor and the IU Administration, and has the respect of many IU Faculty. I don't see him stepping down or going away anytime soon. One thing that surprises me, or perhaps doesn't, is that the IU faculty have been mute regarding IU athletics in general. Honestly, most are pretty apathetic to it, which I think is really unfortunately. I sure wish that my colleagues would care and see the value that it brings to the institution, when we have strong teams. As a faculty leader, I was surprised how many simply did not care when Scott Dobson gave the annual athletics report to the Bloomington Faculty Council. There seemed to be zero interest during his report. During that report, I really wanted to chime in and ask about the state of IU basketball, e.g. Woodson's tenure with IU, but I imagined that it would have been batted away, and my faculty colleagues would have seen my response as a nuisance. One interesting thing that Dolson mentioned was that IU was focused and committed to improving football, and even said that roughly 85% of athletics revenue across the US comes from football. This seems to be quite true, especially when you see that IU is consistently at the bottom of the Big10 for athletics revenue. So, folks, looks like we might be becoming a football school. Sigh. Good thing for revenue, but a sad thing for a fan like me that prefers basketball. But, I must ask, why can't we be both!?!?!

Regardless of the outcome, this team is fun to watch. The wife and I haven’t missed watching a game this year. So enjoyable.

Since there have been some conversations here about the role of the Board of Trustees this post is hopefully relevant. Indiana Senate bill 202 just passed the Indiana Senate today and is being sent to the House. Regardless of whether you agree with the content, one provision could substantially impact athletics on our campus. Right now, 7 trustees are appointed by the governor and 2 by alumni. The bill proposes that alumni will have no say. Instead those 2 appointees will be made 1 by the Senate and 1 by the House. I could see this being a bad thing perhaps for athletics, and allow substantially less flexibility where decisions about hiring and firing could be made. Just some food for thought.

At least there’s IUWBB to root for this season. I’ll still watch and root for the men’s team, but the women…hot dam, the know how to hoop.

Now that I am in my 40s, I figure it’s about time to stopping using my parents cable to watch IU basketball. Not to mention the fact that they moved, and their cable service won’t show me games not in their region for some channels. Anyone got a favorite out there for watching college basketball and which has BTN? Hoping to subscribe to one service to catch all then IU games, except for Peacock, which I’ve already got. Was thinking Hulu with live TV.

I got season tickets last year after being on the waitlist for one year too. I hadn’t built up any priority points at the time. This year, I had about 90 points and was in the 90th percentile for point total, so I got the exact same seats as last year. But, I also bought football season tickets, which will add an additional 125 points starting next year. That would have put me in the 70th percentile. So I suspect next year I’ll have closer seats, but who knows. Seems like it takes a lot of time, or donation money, to really move up. This year, for example, I donated 500 bucks, and that was only worth 50 points. So, football tickets give a big boost, but it’s too bad they didn’t apply to this years total!

Interesting...well, we've done much better generating revenue over the past few years. I created this report a few years back up until 2019 using data from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. I just haven't got around to updating it - https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/chamccoy/viz/NCAARevenues/Conference-Year. I teach a class where students make Tableau visualizations, and we use these datasets to create a similar report.

I was at the Illinois vs IU game, and the row directly behind my seats this year is the start of one of the student sections. Just before tip off, the video with Isiah Thomas played. A student behind me said, “I’ve always wondered who that guy is?” Without skipping a beat, her friend said, “duh, that’s Calbert Cheaney, one of the best IU basketball players of all time.” She said it so confidently that I didn’t have the heart to correct her.

Where can you watch it?

Thanks so much! My wife has been reminding me to donate for months now, and I figured I'd missed the chance. Thankfully I haven't.