Pagoda

I hate to belly-ache, but IU needs to get off their @$$ and move this Saturday championship celebration into Assembly Hall. It's going to be 10* with a -5* windchill. Doing this outdoors is ridiculous. We need to assemble a lot of people to celebrate. We have a great big hall for that. Use it.

Our fans are fine. They're a net positive. They still support the program pretty well despite all the decades of struggles. The crowds are still decent and will cheer anything positive. They're usually desperate to cheer for something. And the fans still produce revenue via gameday sales and donations that fund the program and the staff/players enormous salaries. In the real world, our coaches and players are treated like royalty around Bloomington. I've seen it for years. Even in Woody's lowest moments he could walk down Kirkwood and no one would say a bad thing to him. Midwest nice. Nothing like UK or some of the nasty pro sports markets like Philly, Boston, and NY. And our media only asks softball questions. IUBB people have a great life here. Since our fans still care, they do notice things. We've had a lot of struggles, and frustrated players and staff will sometimes lash out when IUBB supporters notice they're struggling. I've just got no sympathy for that. It's a cop out, it's a lack of accountability/ownership, and it's a lack of gratitude towards the group of people who fund and support what you do. We absolutely have some overboard fans and that stinks. But IUBB has a fanbase of something like 2M people, and a group that big will have some bad apples. Some may not even be IU fans, just trolls. At the end of the day, if someone within IUBB can't appreciate the IU fanbase and/or handle what IUBBFan42069 and RMK768187 say online, they have basically zero chance of succeeding in CBB. Anyways, hopefully CDD can get this thing turned around over the next year.

Apparently you can just almost instantly become the best and win literally everything. Lol. I obviously didn’t know the season would play out like it did, but when we beat #9 Illinois 63-10 while pulling our starters in the 3rd quarter, I kept wondering what the reaction would be if a big name program did that. And if everyone was selling IU short. Turns out they were (me included).

This is a very cool watch of old Cig clips.

Final total viewership for the whole season (I just add up all the TV ratings): 2023: ~10M (pre-Cig) 2024: ~33M 2025: ~118M Pretty amazing. What was the exposure value ("earned media") for this past season? I wouldn't be surprised if estimates were $100M+. This is one component of the value of getting good at football.

One more huge viewership number for the season.

Honestly I’m struggling to see the resource issue. $10M for the roster is around #15 in the country and it was enough to entice CDD to come here. Our staff budget is huge. Plus IU paid $6.5M to buyout Woody and $6.2M for CDD’s WVU buyout. If CDD starts doing well the resources would increase even further too. AH crowds are down a bit this season, but it’s not a ghost town. The Nebraska game was a pretty good showing and atmosphere. While this thread exists, I doubt many IU fans want CDD fired. This seems like a staff issue. Roster construction has proven to be off as everyone has said. And quotes about player fatigue and not buying into the offense are alarming. I dunno. I get your point on our fans being finicky sometimes, but I’m just not seeing them as the main problem here. Maybe I’m wrong. Hopefully CDD figures it out. Tough start.

You’ve been posting this point since CDD was hired. I dismissed it, I thought it was normal for the staff to take a few weeks to hire. However, now I’m wondering if you were right. The staff wasn’t in place soon enough. And maybe we hired one or two of the wrong guys, we know who that would be… It’ll be interesting if we make any staff changes after this season.

Man I hope so. That would really put Miami in a pickle, which would be funny. I mean, they seemed to have screwed up their QB recruiting and now they want to buy their way out of this problem. Perhaps they cannot…

I think it probably will for the next six months, maybe longer.

Ha, probably. I can't believe what some people will pay for parking passes. On that note: If IU ever wanted to add a justifiably pricey tailgate option, I think Woodlawn Field (10th and Woodlawn) would be a great tailgate spot. It's a little disconnected, but that's probably the best view of campus there is and some folks like a more quiet tailgate. Would need to add some ingress/egress, but that's a nice spot one can get to with minimal traffic.

Here is Fernando spending hours having genuine interactions with fans. What a person.

Well, I hope they keep the ticket price increase to 5% or less. Last year was a big increase plus a reseat, and while I know many people didn't like it, I think was fairly understandable given the improvement in the team. But don't do two big increases in a row. 3-5% per year adds up fast anyways... We're about seven months before the start of the '26 season. As discussed in another thread, it wouldn't take very long to jam another 500-1,000 seats in the SEZ. I think some seats can be added in the lower corners, but that would be maybe 100 tops and it's unlikely the AD sees that opportunity like I do. Aside from that, I doubt we see any other changes before the '26 season. I'd love to see a few more rows added to the top of the East side, but that's probably not happening in the next six months. I'm no construction expert, but the concrete supports and stuff would take a while. The big question is when the AD finalizes and has the funding for the next renovation that will be press box, suites, and probably a few more seats. Maybe Pam can somehow creatively direct some university capital budget to help get this going ;-)

Where do you think we put our championship banner or similar in Memorial? Maybe above the SEZ Jumbotron? On the outside of the SEZ so everyone driving by sees it? I have no idea…

It was so dramatic with the situation, the uncertainty when he takes off running, the determination, the violence, the outcome, and the impact on the game.

UM win probability was low because IU was constantly leading.

If the game was longer UM doesn't probably win. UM never led and they were down by two scores in several instances. We can't just extrapolate UM's best moments and our worst. Look at the win probability chart (more or less the live odds) -- it was a tough game, but the trendline was in our favor the whole time. Nothing like say the Iowa or PSU games.

One other point on this game. Some people are saying Miami almost had it or whatever. That's not right. - First off, we never trailed - While Miami got some things working in the second half, it's a 60 min game, and we owned the first half - Sure UM made some mistakes, but so did we - Credit UM for some counterpunches, but our win probability never dipped below 70%, and at the end it was 90%+

4th down, scramble, get hit, stay on feet and spin away, then dive for the endzone and get hit again for the TD... it's like a movie ending. This is so good. I'd move that south of Memorial statue of non-descript athletes high-fiving (that feels Old Indiana to me) somewhere else and put something that looks like @Brass Cannon's AI render in it's place.

Here is Cig's view of the final CFB rankings. Interesting. He thoughly pretty highly of ND, Texas and Iowa compared to others. Not so high on TTU.

Spot on. This is a surprisingly bad start. I can’t disagree with the criticisms being levied at CDD this season. We just have to hope. It certainly doesn’t feel right though. From the head coach’s quiet personality to some of the staff… I dunno… If CDD doesn’t work out I’ll be out of explanations. I always thought politics/meddling was the common thread that messed up IUBB since RMK, with the one exception being Glass hiring Archie, but I blamed that on Fred’s lack of experience. However, this time around we had the blueprint of a high performing program 100 yards from Assembly Hall to copy and our AD was in control of this hire… and yet we still struggle. I’m baffled.

If CDD doesn't work out, maybe Scott got unlucky with CDD? We can’t really know, but I don’t see a reason to assume to the worst. It’s not like IUBB was any good for the previous 25 years before Scott got control of the program from Quinn & Co. I’m not saying our AD is perfect. But I can’t ignore all that went into IUFB’s stunning achievements.

One more unhinged edit from this guy. He kept all the receipts. Nsfw language. https://twitter.com/edwardkoton15/status/2013978356572713256?s=46

We've joined this small club.

1) I really like it. Perfect band song for defense. Ominous. 2) Does this make us the evil Orcs? I'm gonna say no. Just using their tune.