Pagoda

Seems so. Though if we manage to get a more marquee home/home I’d feel good about that. I’d like an opponent that if we lose our season isn’t over, and if we win it’s a big resume builder. Plus a marquee opponent is more fun, gets more eyeballs on IU, and lets us sell more expensive tickets. UVA was more downside than upside in my opinion. But, if we schedule a UVA-like team that will leave us scratching our heads. Frankly I’m fine with the cupcakes until our program is more established with several high school classes integrated into the team and less portal reliance. The cupcakes serve a role when we have tons of new guys. We’ll get criticism, but if it helps us get ready, the B1G schedule will always give us enough chances to prove ourselves.

While we need to make some effort with basketball, football absolutely needs to be eating first and prioritized. I know we like bball, but CFB is 4x bigger than CBB and this is our once in lifetime chance to win big in the biggest sport and change the program for decades to come. For example if there is $1M in the NIL kitty, that’s got to be going to Cig and not CDD. On the bright side, FB is the only sport with a material ROI, and if we keep building it will produce excess revenue for other sports, like bball. This is easy to see at all the football schools who are good at bball. If a school has a good FB program, that will take care of almost everything else financially. I think Scott gets this and he is getting all the right people on board, from Pam to the donors.

Yea, our B1G media revenue is nice and a leg up we have on non-B1G/SEC teams like Texas Tech. Agree you never know how long the mega-sugar daddies will keep up the huge donations. Even for a billionaire that's a lot of money out the door each year with no monetary return. And lastly, I think you're spot on that the NIL/rev share-era has really helped schools like us get on a more level playing field. Pre-NIL, especially with IU not really paying under the table, we had no shot in recruiting battles with larger programs. Even last year our football NIL was ~20% of the biggest programs. Now with the rev share kicking in this year we're ~60% of the big programs player payroll. That is a huge shift is competitiveness. Now we can land guys like Fernando even with schools like Georgia and Miami in the mix. Or Coogan from ND. And our high school recruiting is picking up. Exciting times.

Not to be a downer or combative, but we don't have butt-loads of money. Texas, Texas Tech, OSU, Oregon, A&M, UGA, etc. have the big bucks. Our alumni base is large and has potential, but it's not that much bigger than other alumni bases. Plus, IUFB has very few non-alumni fans, which is tough, as the non-alumni can really power a program -- see Ohio State, or our basketball program. The IUFB fanbase is growing fast, but it's still small. We have some solid billionaire/high net work donors, but they're not Phil Knight or Cody Campbell. Looking at the current AP top-10, I'm certain all those schools spend $12-15M+ more on their rosters than we do. Some are probably $20M more. On top of that, many of those schools have athletic depts generating $100M+ more per year in revenue than we do, mostly driven by their enormous 80-100K+ stadiums, sponsors, etc. What Cig is accomplishing with IU's resources is genuinely hard to believe. I think we can close the money gap to maybe 75-80% of the biggest programs' player payrolls, which is enough to do big things given our staff, but we've got work to do. Just being honest here. I don't think anything is wrong or bad, it's just that building a football program takes time and we're still in the early stages -- we aren't even two years into the Cig era. And again, the progress IUFB has made under Cig is incredible and very exciting.

Some of my guesses, I have no insider knowledge: 1. At his age, probably no? CFB lifer. 2. Not sure, but I'd say yes on matching whatever someone else might pay him. Frankly it's hard to pay him much more. He's at $9M/yr plus bonuses after his raise last year, which is nearly top-10, and his staff is almost a blank check and definitely top-10, maybe top-5. The staff all got raises, with Haines getting three total and Owings getting two total due to big program interest. We've done all we can to keep his staff together. Amazing job from Scott, Pam, and others. I'm more worried about NIL. Our total player payroll is around $22-23M and the big boys are $35-$40M+. Our roster is mostly 3*'s. Recruiting has picked up, but it's still 3* heavy. While he gets more than I thought possible from these guys, if he feels he can't afford the athletes/raw talent he needs to beat top-10 teams, that's an issue. If we can keep increasing our player payroll $5M or more per year until we're 75-80% of the big boy programs, he will feel the building momentum and have more of a ceiling to operate in. Tough job for Scott but this should be his top priority. We of course want to keep upgrading facilities, though really our facilities are "okay" and likely not a deal breaker. 3. Not sure. He is older, his wife likes Bloomington, and changing to a mega program job, while it would bring more resources/CFB culture, also brings risks. Right now he is big man on campus with autonomy and he has a great relationship with Scott and Pam. This is his chance to be the all-time legacy guy of a program where he leaves and everything is named after him. That won't happen anywhere else. Go somewhere else and there could be a whole world of politics to deal with (sort of like our bball program), job risk (though he's a confident guy), and a need to recruit a different player/part of the country, which he has not done before. Is that really the best fit for him? I don't know what he thinks. And that last part may help us on the other side too. Larger programs see a great coach, but he's older and has never recruited 5*'s in their neck of the woods. I'm sure they're interested, but he isn't a no-brainer ideal fit for somewhere like Florida. The main school that worries me is somewhere like Penn State if Franklin screws up and they lose faith in him and Cig does something like win one of the games at Oregon or PSU this year. But it's way too early to worry about that. 4. Yes! Right now, football needs to be the #1 focus for the athletic dept. It makes the most money and this is our window to change everything about the program for years to come. 5. Great conclusion. What is happening right now is unbelievable and extremely fun.

Some recruiting folks have logged predictions to Texas Tech. Darn, I should have waited to create a thread lol.

My last post on this game. Dave Revsine in the BTN studio saying: “Bret Beilema… assumes the position.” lmao ScreenRecording_09-21-2025 15-54-17_1.mov

He was at the Illinois game -- his second visit to IU this year. Grew up in Indy even though he's in Texas now. The day after the Illinois game he announced he is committing October 4th. I have no insider knowledge. We are recruiting against the biggest/wealthiest programs here... but... we'll see.

I agree though I would add I think we need to play Oregon and PSU competitively due to the stupid “narrative” that developed after we had to play the two best teams on the road last year. Before the season started IIRC we had better odds of winning 10+ games than making the CFP, and I think the difference is how we look in our two really hard road games (getting blown out would hurt our chances). Maybe I’m wrong. Regardless, it’s fantastic to be in the mix so far four weeks into the season.

That’s gonna trigger some people. I love it.

Lamar is flat out funny. It’s really nice to have such a likable team with some great personalities.

I’m really enjoying various football media and our own team account posting some variation of: Who is this year’s Indiana? Indiana. In ESPN’s FPI, we are up 10 spots to #6. It would be great if Illinois can beat USC at home next week. Sheesh… what a night.

I’d note that regardless of how this season goes, we need to keep pumping up the NIL. No better person to give athletic dept resources to. But we can worry about that after the season is over. What a great night wow wow wow!!!!

Everything we hope they're thinking.

I cannot stop smiling.

I cannot stop laughing right now. What a performance. Just unbelievable. I am so genuinely amazed.

Very little. Good stuff from our fans.

It’s really pretty good looking. Stands are steep. We’ve come a long way.

It’s nice Chase committed in spite of the damaging Rabby narrative that we’re broke. ;-)

They may jam us on Peacock to start… That would be highly annoying.

That was impressive. The $40M+ they spent on the roster from their mega donor showed today.

I don’t follow the concerns here. I think most fans, and more importantly the university, expects to make the tourney this season. You don’t spend a boatload changing the whole coaching staff and then $10M on players, including several one year guys, to do anything less. Louisville made the tourney as an 8 seed and in the round of 64 got whooped by Creighton. Pretty good first season given their rebuild, but not exactly amazing. Then they had a very good recruiting class. We’ll see how they do. They aren’t some permanent top-10 program yet. At this point I don’t see why IU couldn’t do that — as in make the tourney without much drama in season 1 of a new coach. I think in season 2 of CDD we can be a consistent top-20 team, maybe better. Will it happen? I don’t know. It’s September. We’ll have a good idea if CDD can coach at IU after this season. I say “at IU” because coaches don’t always translate here. If he can coach here, it will take some time to build up to where we can win the conference and make a real tourney run. Season 2 at best to do that (that would be amazing), season 3 more likely. I don’t know.

Life outside of the super soft Big 10 West is not so easy…

I’m looking at Week 6 and I don’t know how GameDay avoids Miami at Florida State. They are still livid in Tallahassee over 2023 and Herbie being the de facto spokesman for why they were left out. It could be a rough day of heckling for Herbie… which is nice to think about. They won’t give him a pass because he brought his dog.

Someone once said that Bert’s pullovers can also be used as grill covers. Lol. On the bright side, the bettors like us, and I trust them more than the talking heads. I want to win this game so badly. Come on IU!!!