Pagoda

Feels like it’s a matter of time until college teams start trying to trot out 23-28 year old pros with “eligibility.” CBB needs to be careful. If the sport gets away from college age players I think people will lose interest in a meaningful way (much more than anything NIL or the portal did — which was not much imo). Good job by Izzo to speak out as one of the statesman of CBB (and yea I know he isn’t a saint).

Dang Coach, that's a rough prediction. I hope your predication is as good as your record at Georgia.

Great posts everyone. Enjoyable reading, thanks. I think Aaron makes some good points about our fans, even if they’re tough truths. I’ve kinda noticed it over the years. As for football support, I suspect some of that can also be attributed to the program generally getting limited attention/interest/resources from IU and the AD. I don’t know. But, we are in a new strata with football. Big university support and a great coach. Every traditional power had a stretch of years where they became a “football school” or at least one with a big fan base. These moments were many decades or even a century ago. Perhaps for IU our moment came later… starting in 2024. We’ll see how well our fans embrace what’s happening. So far it’s been good, but it has a ways to go. If we make the B1G champ game it will be interesting if we can get close to 50/50 with the OSU fans. Peyton transformed the Colts fan base in about five years and we still see the impact of that today. It can happen.

CDD probably feels fine. I doubt his resource allocation changed since he signed seven months ago. Until I hear otherwise that’s likely the case given Scott seems to stick to his word on NIL promises. He’s been given enough resources to build here — #10 to #20 in the country, something in that range. More than he had a WVU, probably quite a bit more since he left there. If he does a good job this season he’ll get more. He’s got to impress the fans to get more NIL, and that really means Cook, Simon, Ned, Andy, and maybe a few others. I think Scott is doing a good job increasing our NIL and allocating it. Biggest question for IUBB right now is if CDD can be a very good coach here and make the tourney this year without much drama. If he does that everything will start falling into place.

Small tidbit.

Should we at all be disappointed in Adidas here? Ultimately it's on CDD/IUBB, but as we know the shoe companies play a big role with the top guys via contracts and NIL. MT was an Adidas player right? It just seems like they don't do much for us, but I don't really know what's happening behind the scenes.

Word is he is coming for the UCLA game.

In Cig's presser today, he said his new contract came together in less than 48 hours. Scott walked in his office Tuesday and said we want to do this with your contract, can we talk with your rep? Cig basically said sounds good. That was it. It's pretty clear the alignment and groundwork needed was already in place such that both sides were comfortable -- no big list of demands or a drawn out negotiation. Excellent work from Scott and IU in my opinion.

4* Composite out of Cincy -- would be in the secondary. Hoosier Huddle guys are hearing some positive chatter. Cool nickname.

Maryland game is set for 3:30 on CBS. Nice to be on network TV.

Some interesting outliers… :-) (h/t Fornelli’s X account)

I think that thing is end of life at 60 years old. I’m pretty sure a new one is coming.

Doesn’t hurt. Honestly I think PU is a quality academic institution. They have good to very good programs, keep tuition down, and I find their graduates to be generally pleasant and trustworthy people despite their usual quirky Purdueness that comes from four years in West Lafayette (barf). BUT… They’ve got one hell of an obsession with us. They chant about IU at most FB and MBB games. I never think about PU when we aren’t playing them. As a result, I hope they never win another game in any sport. They brought it on themselves.

Fascinating topic. I’ve never looked into why schools fall or rise in the rankings. It’s interesting @Stuhoo listed reasons and none where that UF hired a bunch of great professors students wanted to learn from. Maybe the better faculty comes after the student demand increases? I don’t know. Marketing/perception seems to be a key driver more than anything. As for IU, it’s great is we are embracing football as a marketing tool. Whether it’s the Flutie Effect at BC or Saban’s program driving applications or what happened at UF, it works. IU probably got more coverage the week of the Oregon game than we will for almost our whole bball season. And now Big Noon is going to showcase IU for two hours on network TV this weekend. It will be interesting to follow if IU sees a rise in applications next year.

Scott is great and we have some wonderful people in the athletic dept, but when it comes to the basic operations of an AD (ticketing, marketing, communications, etc.), it’s not great. It’s pretty likely our few late arriving players threw off the schedule for creating the calendar (which probably hasn’t changed in 50 years), and that was too much for the athletic dept to handle and something as simple as a calendar is now all delayed lol.

Interesting. I really enjoy the drama around coach fires/hires, and I’m thrilled we locked up Cig so I can enjoy these searches. Some more big ones job openings are probably coming. Florida St. for sure. Maybe Auburn. Wisky is a matter of time. In the next one to two years maybe Michigan, LSU and/or Texas open up — those are tier I jobs.

This kid has his Halloween costume set.

I know they’re working on it. I bet Scott has a master plan for Memorial Stadium he shares with mega donors for fundraising. However, nothing has been publicly released. As others have said, suites and/or premium seating is likely part of it. And definitely a new press box. My personal guess is a small capacity increase is part of it, but not much. Our fan base is still on the smaller side and over the next 10+ years the home viewing experience is going to continue to get better (VR, better cameras/angles, and stuff like that) which will reduce interest in attending stuff in person. This seems to be a long term trend for almost all sports venues. Overall, I’m excited for some renderings to be released. In the meantime, the current Memorial Stadium looks pretty good, which is nice.

Despite UCLA’s improved play and three game winning streak, we opened up -24.5. Wild times!

I like Big Noon every once in a while. We get the show, which is going to be a two hour advertisement for IUFB and IU broadcast on network TV for two hours. Great exposure. Also, the fans like the show being there in the morning, especially the students. This is all good in my book for an IU-UCLA match-up.

It’s close.

Miscue from NBC with the word SaTURDay Also sums up Peacock.

Boilees skunked at Northwestern. 19-0. Ouch, that was a winnable B1G game for them.

Totally agree. A new deal could help both sides. Things have changed at IU and a whole new setup and contract with our apparel partner is very much needed.