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I think it's a net benefit. But a small one. + The athletic dept has leveled up financially. Football is the only sport that can turn a serious profit, and some of that can be used for IUBB. Also, NIL donations have exploded, and while most are for football, some are general donations where some small amount can be chipped off for IUBB. + Indiana's exposure is WAY WAY up. We're actually one of the biggest topics in college sports. While it's not for bball, it helps players hear about Indiana a lot. There is more awareness about IU, which can't hurt. Marketing 101. + Hard to quantify this one, but IUFB has set a standard. It's hard to make excuses. The model of how to do things is across the parking lot. But, since IUFB has got good, IUBB has not gotten any better. So this might be nothing in reality. - The negative for IUBB would be attention. IUBB butt in seat attendance has been declining for a while due to program performance, but IUFB has probably satisfied some fans demand for IU athletics. On average we've got something like another 10-12K fans going to home football games now, and for some that's a replacement of going to IUBB. Eyeballing it, it seems this season AH attendance was down about ~2K people on average (butt in seats, not tickets sold, ticket sold probably only down slightly). At the end of the day, healthy football means more financial resources and exposure that can only help IUBB. But I think it only helps a little bit. At any school, FB and MBB are pretty separate operations with little correlation in terms of results.

Good to hear. If he transfers, that would be a real bummer. First off, he was heavily recruited 4*. Trent could have got a restraining order on Matt Painter he recruited him so hard. But, he committed to IU. Specifically to IU, which is pretty rare. When he signed he knew there was a good chance Woody was going to be gone and his actual coach was unknown, yet he committed to IU. If we can't develop a dedicated actual Hoosier with 4* talent like Trent into some sort of meaningful contributor (not saying he needs to start) by his sophomore year, we're in trouble. We need four year players that form a program foundation and culture and also connect to the fans. If this staff can't do it with him, that's worrying.

Drew got invited to an Elite power lunch. Wow -- huge news! ;-) I had to look this up. It's a networking event.

Sounds grim Dave!

My $0.02, which could be wrong. I see two primary issues here. 1) In order to get an anti-trust exemption that allows rules to be enforced, I think there will need to be collective bargaining. Congress, who does the anti-trust thing, isn't close to agreeing on an anti-trust exemption without one. It's just how it works -- if employer and labor agree on terms, anti-trust can be waived. The last thing schools want to do is collectively bargain. The reason is the result will likely be schools paying the players way more than they make now. A CBA negotiation is going to include (i) players pushing for more comp by citing pro leagues that get a higher % of revenue than college players, and (ii) players becoming employees that get benefits like insurance and retirement, which is expensive (~$25K+ per player). I could easily see this increasing just the football roster expenses by $5-10M+. This is the last thing schools want -- this is the group that fought tooth and nail to not pay players for decades. 2) Schools and conferences all have conflicting interests. Big programs and conferences like the power they have and don't want to give it up. Smaller conferences want things to level the playing field like caps and jointly negotiated media rights. No one agrees on things, so rules can't be formed and schools won't follow them. For those two above reasons, I expect little change anytime soon. A positive I've seen is the one enforceable thing in college sports is contracts players sign with schools. Those contracts are getting better such that they're hard to break. I don't have a solution. If I had to guess what happens, in the 2030's there will be a breakaway super league for football. 60 to 70 schools, a massive TV deal that can fund the expense of collective bargaining, and CFB will have some order. Perhaps something similar is done for CBB too -- with CBB you've got a different pool of schools. Meanwhile, IU is pretty well positioned to operate in the chaos. We're in a powerful conference and we've got money. And it's worked -- we're the CFB champs and king of college sports. I like that!

Cig will be driving the pace car for this year’s Indy 500. Sweet. “Coach Cignetti will have our field in a special victory lap formation as he leads the stars of the NTT IndyCar Series to the green flag at this year’s Indy 500,” IndyCar and IMS President J. Douglas Boles said. “His Hoosiers have been nothing short of remarkable, and their National Championship run inspired our entire state. He’s the perfect choice to drive the Chevrolet Pace Car, and I know his introduction on Race Day will bring out a special roar of appreciation from our crowd.”

Same. It's hard to evaluate assistants, they're mostly behind the scenes and I can't tell who does what. In general, people have mixed views on Drew Adams. Kenny... we've all seen him forever at this point... nice guy but he seems just "okay." And then there is Nick Norton, who is pretty young and I think more junior on the staff. This is the group that helped assemble our less than ideal roster last year. Rod is a key TBD in my book since he was hired after we got our roster together. He's highly regarded. Can he come through and land some key players? We really need him to. And then off course there is Carr as Exec Director. We know he is focused on the roster, but I suspect that means he has some input on the assistants focused on recruiting? We'll see. I also don't think there will be any changes, at least not until after the portal.

On the bright side, for those that don’t like all the portal-ing, this is a good thing. Locks up players on to a team. I think one year deals are most common, but there are some multi-year ones. And these contracts are getting hard to break.

Why was the hire "lucky"? Cig had been sitting there for a number of years and all of P4 CFB missed him. I'm not saying there was no luck, but there was definitely some good judgement. And by the way, when all the big prestigious football programs came calling for Cig, Scott kept him at IU. Not an easy place to keep a top coach in CFB. Cig signed those new contracts faster than any other coach being targeted in the coaching carousel. That was impressive. And lastly, IUFB is actually more or less a top-10 program in player and staff spend in 2026. An incredible transformation.

So our only good recruiting assistant is Rod? Yikes. We've got to hope Rod and Ryan Carr the Roster Czar* are enough support for CDD. Hmm... *h/t Jeff Flabjohns for that one

After Dusty saw Trent drain that shot from the balcony above Five Guys during Hoosier Hoops on Kirkwood, he started tampering...

Yea, it's always messy with this stuff. Even looking something as basic as athletic dept revenue gets tricky because sometimes one-time loans from IU are in there and large donations can be recognized over time etc. As for why IUBB's opex is so high, it could be Woody's buyout like you said -- we paid that five days after he left. Or it could be how IU allocates athletic dept overhead, my money would be on this being part of it. I have no way of knowing, but something is up. Obviously, you can do a lot with accounting... But yea, the end result is spend to results that makes one cringe. It's pretty stunning, I mean we changed out the whole program this past year -- players/staff/offensive-defensive styles. Cost $6.5M to get rid of Woody, $6.3M to WVU for CDD, $10M for players, and our all new staff is large and expensive... yet the same result. Insane.

For better or worse the only sport that really matters in college athletics in terms of revenue and influence.

Yea. The conference even sees the reality of tampering.

No question we spend a lot, but it looks like there are differences in accounting and reporting (such as classifying certain expenses to bball or one-time expenses). For example, our bball operating expenses are not 50% higher than UK. Or MSU. But, the point stands. I’m pretty sure our normalized operating budget (excluding players) is top-10 and we obviously get a crap ROI. Same for our spend on players (which is around #15 or whatever in the country). Anyways, I’m not trying to be pedantic I just think there is more to these numbers than this dude on twitter is able to present.

Yep. I can’t wait for this crop of PU seniors to go. They will of course replenish them over time with new annoying players, they are an annoying player factory, but getting rid of these guys will still be nice.

Even worse for Maryland they lost all their ACC rivals. Heck, I miss watching them play in the ACC -- their home games used to be nasty and it was very entertaining, especially in the Cole Fieldhouse days. They should have renovated that arena vs. building new. Now they're in the empty Xfinity Center playing a bunch of teams that don't care about them and they don't care about. It's too bad. As for the players, we've definitely got that issue too. Most of our team this season was here for 10-11 months and they're gone. Overall, very little time to build a connection. And a primary reason for most of our guys selecting IU was money. I don't blame them, it's how it works now, especially in a mega portal rebuild. It could get better. If we get more two to three year guys the connections with the fans can still form. But we've got to get out of this roster turnover spiral, I'm pretty disappointed in how little progress we made with that this past season.

Louisville was cancelled before he got here. I guess you could cite cancelling the UVA home/home, but part of that is money related (home games are worth $4-5M) and CFB is just different from CBB — losses are far more damaging, more wear and tear in P4 games, etc. IU does gain something by playing UK. A program has to have some pride and try and beat their rival, who by the way isn’t exactly amazing right now. We were beating them by 7 at half at their place this season. They’re beatable under Pope.

I generally agree with your walk before you run position, but for me it’s going a little too far to suggest ducking UK at Lucas Oil of all places. If we want to do that, what’s the point of even having a team. We’ve got to have some ambition and guts and pride when we spend $10-12.5M on players and spend a ton on coaches.

Another award and another great stat.

@BA47591 has a lot of interesting posts I was way too dismissive of. I think he was the first to point out the issue on how long it took to get a staff in place. I hope he’s right because at least that is fixed this year.

Fan Duel released win totals for 2026. We’re at 10.5. Love it. Here is the rest of the B1G and SEC: Big Ten 10.5: Oregon, Indiana 9.5: Ohio State, Penn State 8.5: USC, Michigan 7.5: Illinois, Washington, Iowa 6.5: Wisconsin, UCLA 5.5: Nebraska, Minnesota, Northwestern 4.5: Rutgers, Maryland 3.5: Michigan State, Purdue SEC 9.5: Georgia, Texas 8.5: Alabama, Texas A&M, LSU 7.5: Oklahoma, Ole Miss 6.5: Florida, Tennessee, Missouri, Auburn, Vanderbilt 5.5: South Carolina, Kentucky 4.5: Arkansas, Mississippi State And other schools: Link to Odds

And therefore on top of college athletics. CFB is king.

It's probably the beginning of the end for the Clearinghouse. Some Nebraska NIL deals were denied and now they're going through the process to challenge the rulings. Not too surprising. It's very hard to stop players from getting paid what people are willing to pay them.

Rumor is Louisville is involved, and he's from there. Could be a kid staying local/close to home story, on top of money of course.