Pagoda

Yea. Kinda funny that as a WVU and Pitt guy… word is he doesn’t like PSU much, which would make sense. Though of course that doesn’t stop someone from taking a job. I feel pretty good he stays and keeps doing what he is doing here — it’s good pretty well!

Interestingly, IU turned out to be a platform where he can make the CFP and beat teams like Oregon on the road. We may not have the most NIL, but our NIL is going up. And he probably has the ideal alignment and relationship with the President, AD, and other key folks, which does matter quite a bit and is part of the reason why this whole thing is working so well. When the fit is great and things are going very well, and hopefully it continues to, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to leave it and restart.

A few observations: Our odds to make the playoff went from -115 (53% chance) before Oregon to -2000 (95%) after. I didn’t track this until now, but we are now +200 (33%) to win the B1G Championship game. OSU is -155 (61%). Wild stuff. Of course we have a lot of football left to play and nothing is a given, but these are just what the old betting markets are saying.

Knowles makes about $3.1M. If we wanted to, we have enough athletic dept revenue to bump Haines up from $2.1M to $3M. No guarantees we would, but I think if it kept him we probably would. But in general I agree head coach jobs are going to be offering more money per year. He could easily get HC offers that exceed $3M/yr, with probably longer duration and more guaranteed money too. Plus it’s a big step up in his career. If he takes a HC gig it’s very understandable and I’ll cheer for him.

True, I think we would pay Haines whatever he wanted, but if he wants the head coaching gig there is nothing we can do. If he wants to go the head coach route, hopefully he is picky about the job he takes and stays here a little longer as he waits for the right one.

I thought we were paying the staff enough after all the big raises last year. Somehow they are justifying even more. Another round of revised contracts/raises makes sense and we’ve got to pump every cent of NIL we can find into this program.

#3 ranking incoming. :-)

Oregon had about 50 yards in the second half before some of the garbage time stuff. What a performance.

Yep. We just won at the #2/3 ranked team. I’m not seeing a reason to move.

Hearing our lockeroom celebrations in the background is amazing!

Yes!!!

BUMP THIS THREAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This will take days for me to process. Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!

CFB world:

Cmon Illinois put up a fight.

I can’t think of a more butthurt program/fanbase than WVU. Good grief will they ever move on? It’s been six months.

Another enjoyable read. Maybe others knew this, but Cuban is a bit more involved than I thought, which is great. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/indiana-football-mark-cuban-curt-cignetti-success-nil-revenue-sharing/

For me, without seeing the terms of the deal, I just don’t have much of an opinion. My gut is the B1G isn’t dumb and the terms will be okay or even favorable to the conference. If this deal sucked OSU and Michigan would likely have squashed it. I’m also pretty sure the B1G will not lose control of anything per Petitti’s comments. My guess is we’ll see around $100M come into each school and future rights distributions to the schools will be a little lower as some of that goes now goes to investors. Frankly what may matter most is how well IU spends the money we are about to get. College sports is already big business so in my opinion this doesn’t change the nature of anything.

I am curious what the theft and fraud was related to this time around. He did the image rehab thing after he got out of jail and he was working at some logistics company. Sad to see him implode again.

David Williams? lol

Not going to drop, but at best maybe increase a little more slowly. Regardless, I want IU getting as much sponsor money as possible. We need it to spend on all sorts of stuff across the athletic dept.

I don’t know about that. IU’s athletic dept doesn’t “make money,” they spend it all, and then some. Sometimes they spend wisely, like Cig and staff, who are very expensive, and the fans benefit. But, sometimes they don’t spend wisely as we know…

Lamar is a cool dude. Elite hair.

Will make the jerseys more ugly, but I guess I’ll take the sponsor $ vs shaking down the fans with higher ticket prices and donation asks (though those probably won’t really stop honestly).