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

My view to take or leave. Most of this will come as no surprise. 1) Generally speaking, we have almost no football culture at IU beyond tailgating. For most fans lifetimes, we've been terrible. Why we have been so bad would be another topic we can table for now. As a result, our football fanbase is very small and few people have a tradition of going to home openers or games at all. A lot of IU people I talk to still don't believe what's happening is sustainable. They'll say it's a fluke, etc. Everyone still mostly talks about basketball -- look at our forums. And I'm not blaming anyone, people like what they like. It takes time to establish a tradition. When the Colts got good with Peyton, it took a few years to generate serious ticket demand. In 1999, I remember 20K Titans fans in the RCA Dome for a playoff game the year we had a home bye (13-3 record!). Message board posters are tuned in to what's happening, but a lot of regular IU fans still are not, and big crowds require getting regular IU fans involved. 2) IU increased the ticket prices pretty significantly this season. IMO, that's fine for the conference games, but not the cupcakes. $62 was the cheapest ticket available public ticket from IU for the non-con games. That's just mispriced and way too high to get newcomers involved -- $124 for two or $250 for a family of four, plus parking, to see bad opponents. Bad value. A lot of not-really FB schools getting better cupcake attendance are pricing tickets at $20 or less or doing two for ones (ASU, Illinois, etc.). 3) I don't think we market very well or do a good job directly reaching out to alumni and potential ticket buyers and making it very easy to buy tickets. I'll just leave it at that. 4) Some bright spots? Season tickets are up 50%. The conference slate is not a great one, no marquee opponents, but Illinois sold out five weeks ago and barring a collapse the rest of those games will too (MSU/ULCA are 93% sold, Wisky 87% sold). Those are not cheap tickets either. Also we secured a field sponsor and suite sponsor. Corporate interest in increasing, which is great. At the end of the day, I wish we were further along with fan support, and it does annoy me (that's a me problem admittedly). But, when I think about it, I can see why things are the way they are. Another good season I think we'll get another nice increase in fan interest.

We’re already paying him $9M and the staff budget is literally huge, easily top-10. Hard to pay him much more. Other schools can offer more NIL and football culture. But do they want an older guy who has never recruited 5*’s in their part of the country? Maybe. I feel pretty good he stays — starting over somewhere is tough at his age and he would likely lose autonomy, job security, etc. at other schools. He’s got plenty left to accomplish here and the fit is good. But we do need to keep giving FB resources to win. I dunno, just how I see it.

I see a high of 80*, mid-70’s at kickoff. That game has been sold out for a long time and Big Noon will probably be here. People know Illinois is good. Should be a very good crowd. Just my $0.02.

Students showed up again. Credit to them. Alumni and others — not so much.

Gotta be a bot. Sent from some Chinese phone. Funny though.

Yea. Good point. If they would have told us we need the fans there to help the team (i) get the best final score for our playoff push, (ii) prep for the conference schedule, and (iii) show out for recruits, that would resonate a lot more with me and give me a sense of purpose to stay. Just my $0.02.

That wasn’t the best message, but personally it didn’t bother me too much — I took it as more encouragement than shaming. I get where you are coming from though. The wording isn’t great. “Here we go again”? Who wrote that? This should be saying the team needs the fans all game for XYZ reasons and it should be written and signed by Scott Dolson and maybe also Cig. At the end of the day, our football fanbase is small, but more than that, IU overpriced the cupcake games by quite a bit. These crowd tomorrow won’t be good and IU didn’t do a good job moving tickets.

Even better!: Former #iufb WR Myles Price is listed as the first-team kickoff and punt returner on the Minnesota Vikings' official week one depth chart. - Mike Schumann @ The Daily Hoosier

Exclusive: Kawhi Leonard signed a $28M endorsement deal for a "no-show job" with a fraudulent tree-planting company funded by $50M from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, according to documents obtained by @PabloTorre. "It was to circumvent the salary cap," an inside source says. 1) Wow this is serious. 2) It's pretty funny when a guy with $150B comes up with such a bad way to funnel money to a player.

It was so bad and it's UNC, so I felt fine posting a very negative view. Almost everything (scheme, tackling, effort) was not good or exceptionally bad. Agree getting 70 new guys on the same page will take time, but that's one of their big problems -- how much time will it take and will it ever happen? The staff has never done this before. Recruiting analysts don't like their portal class (they took several guys no one else wanted). And very portal heavy teams have tendency to quit if the season gets sideways -- mercenary issues. Plus they have the whole Jordan and Bill sideshow distraction. They do have an easy schedule which helps. We'll see. If I am wrong, it sure wouldn't be the first time!

This is so embarrassing for UNC. $10M/yr for a clown sideshow, a 48-14 prime time blowout, and maybe six wins at best this year (their schedule is easy) with a good chance to be worse and miss a bowl. And they could have hired a real college coach instead… I don’t mind this happening to cheatin’ UNC.

As we know all too well the coaches from the pros often don’t know the college game!

Cig is fairly positive after week one.

And yesterday he led the team in tackles and had a INT. We really need him to win his case.

Yea. Here are the google searches for buyout spiking like crazy last night. His $63M (!) buyout will help to give him more time, but yea, he's under serious pressure. It's almost impossible to follow the GOAT Saban, especially when rev share/NIL took away some of Bama's old advantage of under the table payments.

Yea. This staff is still just starting their second season after inheriting a broken program that won three Big 10 games in three years and has the most losses in D1 history. Last year was great, but the program is still in the process of being built up and there will be bumps in the road and uncertainty. We are still a small program trying to move up in the CFB world. I don’t really disagree with any concerns cited, I’m just giving this staff leeway. They’ve earned it.

You’re a lot harder on the football program than the bball program!

We left 14 to 21 points on the board. I’m definitely not panicking. We are still a portal heavy team, which makes getting everyone in sync more difficult — last year was sort of an anomaly in terms of how fast it came together. And our QB is much younger than our last guy. Let’s wait and see. Cig and staff will likely fix a lot of this. They didn't forget how to coach.

That is not what I hoped to see today. But, it’s one game. We have three weeks to evolve as a team and figure some things out. Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do.

Our only guy out is Baldwin, hope nothing serious. Great student turnout today. They’re are powering the crowd. Alumni… mediocre.

Yea. Wisconsin is really slipping. Mediocre coach, they can’t hide in the Big 10 West anymore, and now other programs, including us, are starting to have some real recruiting success in their state. I’m finding these developments to be… enjoyable.

Louis’ battle against the NCAA continues. He can play at least the first two games. To the NCAA:

I don't think it's a big deal, but it looks too cartoonish and unserious to me. I'd like a meaner looking bison -- college sports are tough and competitive. @Stuhoo makes a good point it's not the most bison looking bison. If you asked people who knew nothing about IU what it was, I'm not sure how many would say bison. We'll see how the real life one looks here in a few days. I'm still pro-mascot -- kids like it, it's fun, and the mascot design/suit can evolve if feedback isn't super positive.