Pagoda

One more post on this. This ended up being the second most watched game last weekend and viewership peaked at a massive 11M people for the Coop Catch. Most of the CFB world tuned in with the majority probably hoping for an upset. Instead they got an amazing drive and maybe the best catch of the year. I’m glad they saw it.

Rich Rod is pretty funny when he goes off on this generation with his annoyed Boomer energy. This is from his recent presser:

The site is up!

Eli lost me on this one. Late in the season like 25 teams have playoff hopes (including those who are likely in). To start the season I don't know, maybe 40 to 45 teams have playoff hopes. That's a lot of teams in the mix. And this is a cut throat competition at the end of the day. And I get this is probably just cope from getting eliminated, QB injury, etc.

The Penn State game was a big rating TV rating: 6M viewers. That's around the 25th most watched game so far this season. Doing some (very) rough math on our total regular season TV viewership: 2023: ~11M (pre-Cig) 2024: ~20M 2025: ~30M (estimating the last two games) What a difference. The post-season game ratings (including the conference championships) are huge. For example, IU-ND last year was 13.5M viewers. With our postseason picture still TBD, I'll hold off on speculating about that part of the TV ratings. Anyways, fantastic stuff for IUFB and IU.

Love it.

After.

We all know this, but LSU is fighting a losing battle and making things worse. Interesting comment below from an attorney specializing in college coach buyouts — LSU could be creating another problem here with the offset.

https://youtube.com/shorts/qvCslVLRYoI?si=iZpaDOk1aig4wmvJ Ha, this is good drama. Ya know LSU and Brian Kelly really deserve each other lol. Also, another not good look for coaches considering that job. They won't have much clarity on who they're working for given the interim AD, etc. and now there is risk of not getting paid a the buyout.

Another vote for Homefield. Started by an IU grad and they’ve got fantastic designs worth checking out: https://www.homefieldapparel.com/collections/quarter-zips And there are the Peter Millar ones: https://www.petermillar.com/c/game-day/mens-collegiate/big-ten/indiana

I know the weather was bad last weekend in Wisconsin, but their leading passer was their kicker with 24 yards on a fake! Their two very good defensive performances were in bad conditions. Fortunately, the weather looks decent for our game this week (knock on wood). Their defense may slow us down some, it's a solid unit, but they're gonna have to figure out something on offense to make this a game... The spread is nuts. Last year the PU game was -29.5. Depending how the line moves this could be our largest P4 spread ever if I had to guess. Doesn't really matter though. Anyways, it's nice to be back home and hopefully no injuries this weekend.

Definitely. I keep forgetting this -- but in addition to the great comeback, given his deep West Virginia connections (as a player and his dad coaching there), I suspect he hasn’t liked Pennsylvania State very much for many decades, making Saturday a little nicer.

I always liked Lenny. Definitely a bball legend.

Kind of a bummer — the Rose Bowl is a much more interesting venue than SoFi. I guess they’re really hoping they can sell more premium seats and tickets at SoFi. They’ll have to to make up that buyout.

Good point. I think there is a bonus positive today of shooting this well in an NBA arena. I don’t have the stats, but over the last decade it seems like we’ve shot the ball extra bad in NBA arenas, which of course is serious issue in the BTT and postseason…

If you’re interested.

Note that the deal would be with the University of California pension system, who isn’t classic private equity and is much more passive or put differently not operationally involved. No one will care about this, but technically “private equity” owns tens of thousands of companies and many do very well or even great. In general mostly only the bad ones get noticed or make the news. Other types of ownership have their pros and cons too. Everyone can feel how they want about this, I don’t care, but I’ll wait to see the terms of the deal here. The B1G doesn't have to do anything, so I'm optimistic the terms are favorable, but we'll see...

Update from #40 to start IIRC.

I’m gonna be refreshing KenPom all evening.

Boom!

I’m glad he faked that injury so he could come play for us.

Very solid IU crowd imo.

Yea, they really shouldn't need this if they were responsible. But ADs can't help but overspend. Off the top of my head: IU's AD got a $30M loan from IU -- we've got the donors to cover it but it's still out there. OSU had a $38M deficit in FY2024. I know Washington is broke from overspending on their stadium and reduced media rights for a period after joining the B1G. I'm sure there are many other examples of financial distress throughout the conference if we looked closely, especially with rev share kicking in and donors needing to also fund ever increasing amounts of NIL. I'm sure the rationale will be that this helps schools adjust to the rev share era until the media rights increase more, which the media rights will. But. But! We all know all the schools are probably going to spend an influx of cash fairly irresponsibility and get themselves back into not so great situations. As you mentioned, it will be interesting what the actual terms of the deal are. 16 of the 18 schools are clearly pretty gung ho about it, so much so they're ready to go around USC and UM. Wild. As a fan, I guess I don't care much. Is what it is. If $100M comes in and that helps with a Memorial Stadium renovation... well I have to admit that would be pretty nice! lol

Perhaps. I’m not exactly disagreeing. One might say Fernando had the Iowa drive to take the lead late in the 4th, the Oregon drive after the pick-six (wasn’t totally his fault, but some of his fault) to take the lead midway through the 4th, and yesterday. Those are some memorable moments in tough road games. He and Sayin are both around +160 or 170 right now. Decent chance (knock on wood) this comes down to the B1G Championship game performances / winner. Personally, while it would be cool, I don’t care much about the Heisman and its popularity contest nature. Obviously the on field results matter a million times more and I’m also more interested in Fernando getting a great draft pick and big ol’ contract. Future potential QBs will notice that the most.