Pagoda

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.

Great post. Well said. Thanks for the in person account of the game. Teams evolve over the course of the season. Over the next three+ weeks, as you said, hopefully we can get healthy and a little more in sync as a team. We can play as well as anyone in CFB and therefore anything is possible.

Re: the crowd: That was more red than I've ever seen at PSU. I think we had ~10K or maybe a little more at Maryland. Some other games have had decent IU fan showings too. We're starting to travel a bit as a football fanbase!

To restart this thread, a few notable things yesterday: - Iowa lost in classic Iowa fashion (by a safety) - Wisky somehow won with their punter as their leading passer. The weather was bad, but still that's wild. I'm sure this win will help Cig talk up Wisky in advance of playing us. Line is around IU -30 so hopefully not much drama for us next week but of course you never know because injuries can happen in any game and we need to avoid those. - The ACC continued to sh1t the bed with UL and UVA losing at home (plus Duke lost to UConn) - A&M is playing well at the moment, though Mizzou's QB was out. Bama looked okay to good though they have an iffy run game. Miss St. was a perfect match-up for UGA so not much to take from that imo.

Line is IU -2.5. I was a little more interested in this than usual given it’s so early in the season. I was hoping for a surprising number like 4 or 5. But, the bettors view is a slight edge to us and pretty even teams. Hopefully we can make a statement today.

This great promo art IU made when the schedule was released sums up yesterday.

Fyi

Probably doesn’t matter, but I prefer Oregon to win. That lets us keep the claim of “best win in CFB.” In a sea of rankings arguments, I like how that fact sticks out in our favor, especially after the nonsense narrative developed that we only beat bad teams. But, who knows if that really matters much.

No problem not seeing eye to eye on MM. Just passing along some things I've heard from people around the program. Stuhoo's description is probably better than mine ("toxic" might be a bit much). The right coach and team can probably get him on track. It will be a bit annoying we'll have fairly constant discussion on former players doing well, plus "analysis" of all the coaches we "could" have hired. Good news is I'm pretty confident CDD won't care about any of that and I think he's a good coach who will ultimately succeed here.

Maybe. This would be my positive spin: MM can shoot, but he can't defend/put in consistent effort, plus he's a toxic dude. Glad he's gone, he's a culture killer. MR I don't really have an issue with. Though he's not much of a fit for CDD's offense and he may have irreversible Woody-itis after three years here. Fine to see him go. Tucker I honestly don't know. I think Woody's bad program was the worst possible fit for him and he'll probably do well. I know he and his parents were upset last year, but I can't blame them. I saw Kanaan had a pretty good stat line vs. Boston College (6/11 FG, 4/7 3PT, 19 PTS, 1 Asst, 2 Steals, 1 TO). Quite the change here! I'm sure Rice will be pretty good. It's wild how bad our former coach was...

Yea, they’re in a Fickell pickle. IIRC they already tried giving Fickell more money for this season. I’m looking and they spent pretty heavy on the portal, but it just hasn’t worked out for some reason. Probably the coach/staff more than money. Kinda reminds me of when we gave Woody another year with more NIL. That doesn’t address the real problem. If I were them I’d rather see coordinator changes or something. I dunno, maybe Luke figures it out, he’s been successful before, but it’s not looking good at the moment. Too bad. ;-)

Yea. If someone arranged an independent third party scientific test/study that would be quite interesting.

I’m not a fan of that list. I’ve been to big games at some of those places and they’re way high — for instance Texas and UM aren’t very loud. But, the debate on this topic will never be resolved.

Yea. I kinda want Oregon to win to bolster our case for "best win of the season," I really like that feather in our cap. But it probably doesn't matter much either way and I'm not going to worry much about the outcome.

Hmm. To each their own, but I liked the lighter court. For reference, here was our court in 1994 with a nostalgic graphic! The new court looks closer to this, which I like.