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We are in the classic summer IUBB hype cycle. I’m curious if Burton is just very good… or is bad defense part of it? On the football side, we usually hear how the offense struggles against the D in spring and fall camp. Different sport, just an observation. Of course we won’t know until the season starts… I just wonder what the defense looks like in these scrimmages.

The GOAT is 5’7”. It’s pretty cool how forwards in soccer can have very different body types.

They did this for Ronaldo last year. Also, “FIFA sources insist White House influence could not affect the decision due to the powers contained in Article 27 and the independent nature of the disciplinary panel.” Do I believe the decision was independent? I don’t know. No comment. It will be interesting when FIFA answer questions on this and if Belgium has any effective recourse.

Good update here for Wiltfong, who is pretty close to the program. With respect to Monshun, he expects an announcement date soon and he still predicts IU. So, we’ll see.

Thank you Infantino :-)

1,000%. Sports books give us about 50/50 for the Belgium match. It’s much tougher without Flo but we can beat them.

Students getting the north bleachers back was a sign. I assume the alums there were reassigned to good sideline seats that opened up.

Poch is awesome. Unlikely but it would be so so nice to have Flo’s red card suspension overturned. It would be good for FIFA so do your shady thing Infantino.

Fan Duel has a line out already. I guess that’s how much people are looking forward to this game. IU -1.5 O/U 48.5 So… there is that…

Did Boy Wonder lose his fastball? Yeesh. Got a podcaster for JB. On the bright side Bill Simmons is gonna hate this.

A few thoughts for fun: - $18M for last year's roster honestly seems too low. We at least put something like $14M rev share to FB, so just $4M NIL on top of that? Seems a little light... not a lot, just a little (I thought $21-22M seemed about right). But hey, maybe I am wrong, and regardless, Scott is countering the silly "bought a title" narrative, which is nice to see. The fact we went 16-0 and won it all beating teams with 50% to nearly 100% more spent on their roster than we did is just the most amazing thing I've ever seen in college sports and likely will ever see. - Cig said in a recent interview that we're top third of the B1G in resources now. Which is pretty darn great considering some of the big boys in the conference. IU's roster budget is way, way up from 2025. - The article says 3-5x increase for HS talent... that seems a bit of an exaggeration. Though I'm sure it's up quite a bit. - Something to keep in mind with our class is we don't know what IU is paying our commits. This is obviously very important and I suspect with all we can offer, we don't have to be the highest bid (as in if the money is equal, we'll get a player over a lot of other programs). If some school is blowing a lot of budget on high school kids who generally won’t contribute much for a year or two… well then enjoy the ranking on On3 or 24/7… but I doubt that’s a wise way to spend. - Rev share deals can have performance incentives, NIL does, as it technically cannot be tied to playing, even though it's pay for play. But with the rev share fixed at $21-22M, I kinda doubt there are a ton of incentives… makes it hard to budget. What I think happens is when a player does well more NIL opportunities flood in. Here is an example NIL agreement the B1G uses. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26460883/uw-nil-agreement.pdf. I haven't seen a rev share contract.

Football is helping definitely helping our AD revenue... though it's still only been one year of increased revenue we can benefit from. I think IU like many other schools is dealing with soaring player costs in FB and MBB. 2024 the roster cost for those two sports was a little over $10M. For 2026 it's $50M+. For right or wrong, I agree it appears baseball isn't a priority. Maybe IU should find a way to do more with baseball. But then again, there are trade-offs, do you want a sweet portal player in FB or a new baseball coach? I'd take the player.

Getting to pens is a bummer, but I do enjoy the immense pressure and the mix of calm performances and huge choke jobs.

Reasonable pricing for an exhibition! How about that. Nice.