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That’s why I only posted Brad S. ;-)

Brad S. Though apparently we did hire some kind of Wonder who is coaching our football team.

Even worse is the other dumbest mistakes are probably also IUBB related lol. But hey, Woody is gone and Scott somehow turned around football, so maybe he can fix bball. Idk.

It probably won't, but if it makes anyone feel better, it sure seemed like Ben didn't want the IU job. And yea perhaps it's Scott's job to sell him on it, but not sure that was possible. Also, yes, maybe Scott offered CDD first as his preferred candidate. Anyways, it's water under the bridge now. TBD if we add Ben to our long list of what-if hires: Coach K, Pitino, Beilein, Boy Wonder, Dusty, I can't even remember them all at this point there are so many. I like CDD. He wanted the IUBB job. He's a good coach.

I like this topic and don't know the answer to why exactly our fans behave how they do: loyal to MBB, pretty fickle everywhere else. My guess is most fanbases are pretty similar with small differences here and there -- they're all large sample sizes of Americans. And people are very programmable based on their experiences. Most people who went to IU had amazing experiences in AH. It's loud, it's unique, it's got those cushy chairs, it's got our traditions, and we usually win a few big games there. I think this sticks with people for a long time, often for life. Conversely, most of us had grim experiences in Memorial Stadium -- cold, empty, quiet, losing. Now it's changed -- people are having a great time at Memorial and not so much as AH. Another few years of being consistently ranked and FB is going to have a pretty solid following. It reminds me of when Peyton got to the Colts and they went from nothing in Indy to the biggest team in town (or at least equal to the Pacers) in about five years. It helps that football is just a massive sport. Now, why are fans so fickle towards WBB? Not enough formative experiences or sustained success? Is there a base crowd in Bloomington and has the Indy crowd shifted towards the Fever? I really can't put my finger on why we had a 25% drop in opener attendance vs. last year. If I were in the AD I'd do a fan survey and figure out why some people have lost interest. Anyways, like I said, interesting topic.

Per the box score attendance was 7.5K last night vs 10k for last season’s opener. Similar opponent level. Not great.

As an aside on this FB vs BB topic, I'd hate to be an athletic director. You got to: Manage all these programs that all want more resources, especially in this rev share/NIL era Keep the donors giving, and my goodness do we have some pain in the @$$ donors lol Get money from the university/BoT (thankfully our President is into sports) Deal with the fans, and there will always be some angry fans Get coaching hires right Manage the operations of the athletic dept Deal with periodic PR issues Do the politics thing within the conference and broader college sports landscape to advance IU's interests When an AD does well they don't get much credit, and when something goes wrong people get mad as hell at them. ADs do get paid a lot, but it's a tough gig.

To play the role of unpopular poster: Per Nielsen, Disney has 11-12% market share of household media consumption. Not a monopoly. But, I know that won't change anyone's mind on Disney!

Just my opinion, but in terms of analogies, I’d say IUBB is more like a dilapidated abandoned mansion or awesome sports car that has been left in a barn for 30 years. There is still something unique and great here, but a lot of difficult restoration work is needed. And probably some modern upgrades.

I've never been happier with IU athletics, at least in the modern era -- let's call that after the late 90's so we don't debate old eras that were different. Are we a BB or FB school? Doesn't really matter. I'd say BB, that's still what we know best. Can FB be the dominate focus at a BB school? Yes. CFB is 4-5x bigger than CBB. IU fans fundamentally love FB like the whole country does, so when IUFB is good it's very easy to get very into CFB and the magnitude of the games and the huge gameday experiences. As long as IUFB is a ranked program in the playoff mix (I know we're a bit more than that right now!), it's going take fan attention away from MBB until the IUFB season ends. But the trade off is worth it. CFB makes basically all the money and creates the most exposure, and if you want to be a relevant school in college sports it's 95% down to your CFB program. And IUBB will have enough support to get by. I'm pretty pleased with what's happening with MBB. Okay, first off, Scott and IU have somehow turned our football program into a good one that competes with programs that have 2x our resources. Absolutely amazing. Literally. And to do that, IU is putting a lot more into the IUFB staff and donors are putting more into FB NIL. Now, despite doing all that, work is still being done on MBB. It's pretty clear there was a political struggle, and when he could, Scott fired Woody's sorry behind midseason(!) and paid him a $6.5M lump sum to get out (that was the negotiated buyout). Then he selected CDD and paid a $6M buyout to cryin' West Virginia to get him. He's paying CDD 5th most in the conference and he gave CDD a top-5 or 10 staff budget (definitely tops the conference) and ~$10M for players (#10-20 in the country). That's enough to build a strong program. This is serious effort on MBB, especially given what's happening across the parking lot in the most important college sport. Of course the jury is still out on CDD. I'm not sure how well he'll do here. And some of our fans more interested in MBB may want more resources poured into MBB and a faster turnaround. But, with CFB being the dominant sport and IU still being a fairly small athletic department in the P4, that's unlikely. What I see right now with our MBB program is our AD appears to be more in control, it's been given legit resources, and the new coach appears to be good at coaching. This could work, not sure I can ask for more than that. Fixing 30 years of mediocrity and four recent years of serious Woody damage is going to take two to three years. I get some don't like that timeline, but rebuilding any sort of organization, be it a company or a sports program, takes a few years 99% of the time. The last 30 years of IU athletics have stunk and I complained a lot and often grew apathetic. I don't know the future, I'm sure there will be ups and downs, but overall I see an athletic dept being run pretty darn well. I don’t want to be someone never happy with IU sports, so my approach here is I may as well enjoy this and hopefully it lasts a long time.

Good call he doesn’t make much sense.

Committee respects Iowa at #20! I love hearing how playing us close at home was a positive. Oregon only #9. IU #2.

Ha, I was about to post this. Adjusting for stadium size I’m pretty impressed.

Damn, that is some serious betting. It says he used an algorithm and didn’t know which games were being bet. I thought he might have used inside info to fade Woody and bet Cig. But no.

5 min in. Fairfield - 15 Penn St - 2 Hmm…

The line has since moved to 15.5 to 16. Yeesh. Once again the $ is coming in on us and once again I’ll say I hope it’s all smart money!

Some updates from the presser that just ended:

Oh nice I was just looking on SeatGeek and assumed it sold out. I’m optimistic a lot of red is gonna be there.

It is funny that northernmost highway exit to West Lafayette absolutely smells every time. There is a factory there or something. Tickets to this game are pretty pricey. While some of that is PU fans, I think most of it is IU fans. :-)

Frankly the price we paid is a big factor in assessing these recruits now. For example, if Karvala is $500K and Thompson was $2.8M… well there could be good value here. But, idk what we have to pay Karvala. So, I’m just hoping for the best.

Sounds like Hugh just got fired or is about to today. Not a surprise. And as far as coaches go, not really a guy I’m gonna feel bad for given his history and style. Update: It’s official.

A friendly reminder the first "College Football Playoff Top 25" show is this Tuesday at 8PM ET on ESPN (barf). Just like last year it will run every Tuesday at various times (7-8:30PM ET start times) and until the final selection show which is the Sunday after the conference title games at noon. IUFB will be a topic on Tuesday's show! ;-)

We should get a BTN pass after getting jammed with two games on Peacock this year! One other notable thing related to the PSU game: the line opened around 11.5 and it’s moved to 13.5. Any win there would be great though.

My issue with ESPN/ABC is they carry the CFB Playoff and their regular season bias nonsense carries over to that, which is poor form.

For folks in the thread. Pretty good news.