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BuffedInPrime is great. He's a independent thinker, which is rare in CFB media/scouting. He understands IUFB better than anyone else I've heard.

I'm not really arguing any of your points, but just some thoughts to shoot the sh1t on a Friday: Is DeBoer elite... I kinda think he is? He took over a 4-8 UW team and went 11-2 with an Alamo Bowl win and then 14-1 with the title game defeat. That's pretty good for UW. But was he a Penix merchant? Maybe. His first two Bama seasons they've been a little off and I'm not sure why, which could make a case he isn't elite. That's a fair point on defense. Interesting Bama is actually 8th in SP+ defense (OU is #3). Bama is a bit better defensively that perhaps some of us realize, me included, so we've got some risk with them too in terms of playing a very good D. I suppose one thing that can give us some optimism is Oregon's D is #5 in SP+, so while it's not easy we can put up points on a good defense if we're sharp. I prefer OU just because I worry about was DeBoer might scheme up offensively (he is good at that) and they're got more pop in the bat to score. The home playoff teams have had a pretty big edge with the mega home crowds and I tend to think OU wins. However, my sports gambling record is mid at best, so who knows. It will be a fun game to watch.

Brace yourself... It's beautiful.

For what it's worth, per Fan Duel, IU would be -9.5 vs. OU and -6.5 vs. Bama. OU is the easier game. Bama is more dangerous with their offensive upside and would be the more marquee match-up given who they are. We last played OU in 1928, a 10-7 IU win! We've never played Alabama. It's gonna be pretty interesting watching Bama at OU for the right to play us.

Yes, I'd think is most likely -- build up behind the stands. Like you noted, Wake did this, and it looks nice. If we do this with our superb north endzone architecture that matches the rest of the campus it will look excellent. Oh yea, we could really use a new sound system. And while we're at it we should add those LED screens and lights that flash, sync up to the PA, and do all sorts of stuff that helps the atmosphere. Can't hurt and it's not that expensive.

Now that the site is back up, below is what I would do if I were IU. I think there is some low hanging fruit here. There is room to put more seats closer to the field, could total maybe 500 to 1,000 total seats. The ROI to do this I think would be good: not very expensive to add seats in these areas and these seats would sell for higher prices. After that, it's bigger and more expensive projects. There is the press box that's gotta be replaced soon, suites/premium seating if there's enough corporate demand, and maybe more general seating for the plebs like me if there is enough demand. I'm sure IU wants to do all of these, but it's more fundraising dependent. I wonder if these projects could include some classrooms/labs for sports science or sports med or something like that allows funding to partially come from IU and not just the athletic dept. A little creativity can help with funding...

FWIW I think this is spot on. I think over time we'll shift to smaller and smaller portal classes as our high school classes have time to develop. Getting ~10-15 players per year through the portal seems about ideal. - Like you said, the best programs still build through high school. Cig has been the exception (he's the exception in a lot of ways). Most other schools have a much spottier portal hit rate. - One trend that's out there is the impact of rev share. When rev share started last year, the overall portal quality went down as the P4 teams now all had a lot more money to retain their good players. This year a lot more kids are on multi-year deals, which may continue to reduce the number of players who hit the portal and reduce overall portal quality. Don't get me wrong, there will still be plenty of good players, but this is just a trend that's out there that makes high school important.

So the 2025 Heisman Show drew an average of 4.3M viewers, with a peak of 5.8M. This up 70%(!) over last year and it was the highest rated Heisman show since 2012. It does help the show moved from ESPN to ABC this year, but still. This is a monster rating! Fernando's speech has 700K YouTube views, and some other snippets of the Heisman show probably push the total YouTube views close to 1M. So with IUFB involved we've got record Big Ten Championship and very high Heisman Show TV ratings. IUFB has some real juice in terms of our fans and the compelling/interesting nature of the program. This is really great stuff.

Ha, this survey seems to have turned into an avenue for Scott to do some bragging. Which is perfectly fine!

I’m in favor of paying players and while I don’t love all the transfers, we’ve had one or two years and done for a while, so players only being around for a short time isn’t new. CBB TV ratings have been pretty solid so far in the NIL and portal era. However, one thing I do require is college age players who are students at the school. Yes I know some don’t go to class, but most actually do. That’s the connection for me and I’d guess many others — the players kinda go to IU like I did. If we get too many older, non-student age pros coming into the college game, that might actually materially affect interest, because it erodes that connection with the fans. Teams will feel more like local pro franchises than the school’s team. I can’t predict what happens, probably nothing unless TV ratings and attendance decline. If that happens maybe the P5 gets together and does something. It’s too bad.

I'd give Fred a grade of D, maybe D+. He came in with no AD experience (classic IU hire) and it showed. Negatives: - Excluding media rights increases he had nothing to do with, he didn't increase our athletic dept revenue much - Didn't do well with the FB and MBB coach hires/fires/extensions Unfortunately, those two things are most of, if not almost all of, what matters when grading an AD. Positives: + Facilities: Shook down Cindy for the AH renovation, which was a pretty well done project. Got the south endzone done, which was a C- design, but still better than nothing. Other facilities were improved: Wilkerson, baseball, softball etc. Media rights $ helped him (the whole conference upgraded facilities too), but he still did a good job fundraising for these projects and getting them done. + Made some good coach hires in the non-rev sports + Added the big flag pole at Memorial Stadium. A gamechanger. Final thing I'd note is in some fairness to him, he had to deal with McRobbie, who was a nightmare for athletics. And I suppose Fred probably unknowingly taught Scott some lessons in terms of what not to do. He's a nice guy, but he didn't do very well as AD here. Another interesting and disappointing chapter in IU athletics past.

I’m confused, per his book he rebuilt Indiana Athletics! ;-)

Nice. That’s a start. Though it appears our super duper apparel partner Adidas spent $5 on production for that. I assume we’ll get one with Heisman House Nissan ads…

Pavia: F the Associated Press!

To my untrained eye, Raiola seems like the exact type of QB who should be calling Cig and Whitmer. He's talented, but has all kinds fundamentals and mechanics issues. I'm almost certain he would be transformed here and sent to the league for a big payday. However, I'd be surprised if he realized that and would buy into the IUFB system. He'll probably look for the high bid at some historically big program and assume he'll figure out the development part. He might figure it out, he might not. I don't have anything against him except he Mahomes impersonation stuff is a little odd (I hope he's not trying to tear his ACL right now).

Word is from the Hoosier Huddle guys that there isn’t anything to the Mestemaker chatter and rumors.

Oh look someone wrote an apology statement for Diego. ScreenRecording_12-14-2025 21-27-06_1.mov

60 Minutes must have loved how the BTCG and Heisman capped off the story they had been working on for weeks. Update: Link to video https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-indiana-hoosiers-became-college-football-powerhouse-after-years-of-losing-60-minutes-transcript/

I’m gonna enjoy his inevitable demise.

Haha. Holy sh1t is that embarrassing. I’d love some of the morons advocating for him to explain that. Clark Lea… buddy…

I get that. But you’ve got a pretty good chance to retain them. Maybe I’m wrong. And regardless I don’t think this is the primary issue with CDD (if there ends up being one).

Agree. Personally, I wish he brought in more multi-year players that could develop and improve into a solid foundation for the next two to three seasons. I was willing to think longer-term with the program building. Maybe I'm wrong in wanting that approach. But, like you noted we're going to have a pretty new team next season. And if it doesn't work this season, I don't know why next season would be much better. Ugh. But we'll see if he can get this thing to work, it's still early blah blah blah.

IU gave CDD $10M for players. Where was more money going to come from? Sure as hell not football. Maybe we could have cut some non-rev sports... I don't disagree with the critiques and the results have clearly been not great to start out. My view on this has always been how good is CDD as a coach and less about how much money he got for players. $10M is not chump change. If CDD can't make the tourney with $10M, it's hard to make a case to give him more. Money won't fix what's limiting him and he'll keep underachieving. I can't control IUBB, so I've got to hope CDD figures it out. While that's looking less likely than I would prefer, it is still early and it's not impossible. But yea, I'm worried.

Two things: 1) If anyone can find a video of this let me know. I can't find one. 2) Very cool!

Like Scott or not: - IUFB went from one of the worst programs ever to really good, which no one thought was possible. #1 ranked, B1G champs, and a Heisman winner. The value of this is immense. It results in materially more athletic dept revenue, way more TV exposure ("earned media") that's easily worth tens of millions of $ to Indiana University, and more negotiating leverage when the next B1G media rights and grant of rights come up. And that last part is important because the media rights may not be split evenly next time around. The above is the biggest accomplishment by any AD at IU. And Scott did it. Even if you want to make a case he got lucky with Cig, which there is no basis for, Scott identified Cig, got him to come here, got him the resources to win in terms of NIL and staff budget (IU had never supported football before), and kept him at IU's still relatively small program despite several huge and prestigious football programs wanting him. That is flat out fantastic work. So, no, Scott is not incompetent or weak. - I know we like basketball here, but in the world of college athletics, CFB is really all that matters. It drives the billion $ media deals, almost all the athletic dept revenue, and 100% of the influence in college athletics. CBB? It doesn't really move the needle on revenue and TV ratings, it's a comparative sideshow. - We can argue the Woody hire, people who cover IU will tell you Scott wasn't supported and there were serious outside influences, but whatever. Now CDD is clearly a Scott hire and he will own the results. We're 11 games in and it's not off to a great start, several red flags have emerged. I'm disappointed. We'll see how it goes over the next probably three years at least. It's not yet over for CDD. But yea, I'm worried. Nothing I can do about it though. If CDD doesn't work out, this will be on Scott and it's a demerit for him. Though IUBB not working wouldn't be a departure from the previous 25 years. But Scott won't be going anywhere as long as Cig is here and IUFB is winning seven or more games per year (seems likely we'll exceed that by quite a bit). In college sports, CFB is king, even at IU.