Pagoda

FWIW I’d note there is a difference between football and bball. The best football programs are still heavily focused on high school recruiting and they’re lighter in the portal — they use it to patch holes. They want players in their program over multiple years where they can develop them in their system. Basketball is a bit different. Portal players work better and the best programs have got great results with them. Why? My guesses: In football, players don’t change teams much growing up — they mostly just play on one local team. Basketball? Top players are switching high schools/prep schools and AAU teams all the time. Transferring comes more naturally in basketball, and it’s also easier to integrate transfers in basketball than football. I don’t really have a conclusion or a point. I just think it’s interesting CBB teams have had more success with transfers than CFB teams. Part of the big challenge with IUFB is still all the transfers we have to get because HS recruiting/player dev takes time to ramp up. As for IUBB, I’m in the camp we want a mix of HS and portal players. What I care about more than HS vs portal is getting guys with a few years of eligibility — we need to get some year over year stability/culture from a core of multi-year guys. And to that core we can sprinkle in some one-year guys who are studs or patch needs. Multi-year players can be portal or high school, and frankly kids from small college programs can be safer bets than HS players (though maybe they’re more expensive). It’s hard. Good luck to CDD and staff.

I like the confident posts. I feel like we could win by 14 or lose by 14… I have no idea how this game is going to go given all our new guys. I couldn’t be more nervous. But that’s good — IUFB continues to make games very meaningful. Go Hoosiers!

Two thoughts: 1) I’m not entirely buying Raby’s NIL claims until it’s corroborated by some other folks who cover IUBB. 2) I’m not too worried about money for basketball. If CDD can coach, our fans are gonna freak out with excitement and the money will flow in (as Hovadipo said too).

It could also be “thank goodness we got the right guy… finally.” Just sayin’ it’s possible.

Of course it's never over until he signs, but this is good news given OSU's involvement and whoever else was still trying to recruit him.

I didn’t know there was a lot there. Looks like the parking lot for the old Folklore and Ethnomusicology Building (lol — classic IU). Good parking location, but not sure that’s a tailgate hotspot though…

Yea I don't really disagree. As for the workaround, if almost all schools shifted to doing something like investing in players' companies in lieu of NIL to avoid the clearinghouse, I think we would follow suit since that's probably not technically against any rules (I don't know enough though). I agree we won't do any illegal under the table stuff per our history. We'll see -- NIL Go may just shift to approving almost everything, which may have started to happen recently? The Woody years were just devastating. First off, we hired him, a major setback. Then that darn 4th year he got. The perfect rebuild time was spring 2024 when we were flush with top-5 NIL of $6M and the player market was favorable. We could afford almost anyone in that portal window! And we would have one year of rebuild under our belt going into '25-'26. Instead, Woody literally set that $6M on fire and we just had to rebuild into a much more difficult market this past spring with the rev share coming online increasing player comp 2x, maybe 2.5x. Just terrible. Oh well, it's water under the bridge now. Anyways, thanks for reporting the Rabby info, my antenna are up on the IUBB NIL. I'm not that well-sourced, but the people I know didn't sound too concerned. But, someone told Rabby something likely to get the message out... so we'll see, this could be a serious problem. I suppose it's good we are targeting highly ranked kids and I assume we know how much we need to pay them, but I'm really hoping we don't see any sort of trend of losing recruiting battles due to money. That would stink. Overall, money worries me. We're still fundamentally a fairly small athletic dept. We have some generous billionaires/high net worth folks, but I don't know how much they have left in the tank. That's why I go wild about football, because if we could ever become a midsize football program that will transform our athletic dept financials -- there is athletic dept revenue upside of 20-30% in my view. Fingers crossed our NIL situation is okay and CDD is the guy for the job. I'd rather focus more on the actual games than NIL/rev share/coaching questions.

Thanks for the info. Not what I want to hear. NIL Go is just something to work around and as we know NIL is still vital to compete. I also wonder how football is trending. **Edit**: For what it’s worth, the few people I know around the AD saw this from Rabby and said no one really knows the exact NIL levels and they aren’t too worried. We shall see…

It’s Indiana[‘s Athletic Dept]. I’m not sure what’s easier to schedule than your own team playing itself in the arena you own. Stu has a good theory.

There will be an intrasquad scrimmage at AH to supplement the Kirkwood event. 7 p.m. ET on Friday, Oct. 3. I'm glad this gives folks a chance to get into AH. https://iuhoosiers.com/news/2025/9/15/mens-basketball-mens-basketball-to-host-cream-crimson-scrimmage-presented-by-smithville

That is a great article. What a mess. I would hate to be a coaching staff in this environment. I've heard enough about CDD to be confident he can navigate this chaos. I assume if there is a need to work around NIL Go with schemes like investing in a player's "business" vs. paying them for their N/I/L, IU will do what's needed to be competitive. The money must flow.

Gah, two years in a row they jam us with one of the nine B1G games that get put on the 'cock! I expect no more Peacock for the next two years!

I’ll take it. ODU is up to #56 in the ESPN FPI, ahead of five B1G teams and Duke (per PittHoosier1 on X).

And so it nears -- the biggest game for IU athletics this fall/winter by a massive margin. Do we win and take a huge step towards being in the CFB/CFB Playoff national conversation again? Or do we lose, fall out of the top-25 and the national focus, and try in the background to make a decent bowl? Hoooo boy is this a huge game.

Purdue is -26.5 at ND right now. And they still aren't very good. They're gonna get a paddlin'. I really dislike both teams, but a win would mean more to PU and signal they're improving -- I hope they lose by 40.

Rumor I’ve read is South Carolina at Mizzou gets it. However, if South Carolina loses that could be up in the air.

28-0 now

I’m not saying they’re going to win (no jinx), but ODU is up 21-0 at Va Tech with 7 min left in the 2nd.

And there it is, OSU hinting at wanting more of the B1G media rights. The smaller schools are going to need to band together when this comes up with the new media rights deal in 2030. OSU AD revenue is already 2x ours and way ahead of most schools. If they get more media rights the gap will get even bigger and we’ll have little chance to compete. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/bigten/2025/09/11/ohio-state-buckeyes-big-ten-college-football-super-league/86039939007/

Cool, I would have guessed IU -2.5 or -3... so to me this is a positive.

Oh boy, things getting a lot worse for Ballmer and the Clips. Pablo Torre is torching them. Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong reportedly invested $1.99 million in a failing Aspiration days before Kawhi Leonard payment https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/breaking-news/article/clippers-co-owner-dennis-wong-reportedly-invested-199-million-in-a-failing-aspiration-days-before-kawhi-leonard-payment-133036644.html

https://www.si.com/college/indiana/football/curt-cignetti-indiana-football-louis-moore-got-to-get-better Classic Cig lol.

A lot of tickets were bought for the remaining conference games over the past week -- two more sell-outs just announced and Wisky (the last game of the year) is close. I know some were disappointed in the non-con crowds, but this is really unprecedented levels of ticket sales, especially with the higher prices this year and we don't have any marquee names coming to town (though yes Illinois is a huge game). This is good stuff!!!

Two more games for Louis, which is good. Of course we want him cleared all season, but kicking the can down the road with the same chance to get him cleared all season is a win. Louis Moore will be eligible for the next two games as both sides agreed to move the September 10th hearing to September 24th. (IDS)

Boom!!! Night game prime time let’s go!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!