Pagoda

50% increase in season ticket sales! Fantastic news — support is really increasing as is program revenue. https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/sports/college/iu/2025/06/19/indiana-football-season-ticket-sales-reach-historic-levels-after-college-football-playoff-appearance/84255197007/

Yea, personally I view these rankings as directional. The ratings services aren't always right, but in general they're okay and over a ~15-30 player class they'll provide a decent read on the overall quality and potential of the class. I think of the buckets as: bottom of the conference, midpack, and the top 3-4. We're midpack, which is really some nice improvement. If we can consistently be midpack in the class rankings that will be new territory for IUFB, we've never done that before. Of course, the coaching staff matters a lot, and I think this staff can take midpack recruiting rankings and deliver top 1/3 of conference results. In my opinion that's all we can ask for. Thanks for keeping track of all this.

Sheesh Rabby is killing my buzz!

So intense, engaged, and detailed… I know it’s a hype clip but I’m impressed with Coach Norty. This staff really seems like night and day from the last one and that really should make a difference…

3* from Columbus North https://x.com/ParkerElmore1/status/1934271627556008315 Sounds like he could play TE. Per the below link he played bball and was quite athletic with that too, so the old bball players can be good TEs is in effect here. https://x.com/GPPbasketball/status/1925349454552367211

Todd McShay did a detailed scouting report on Fernando. Interesting read. Like others have said, if he has a good year he could be a first rounder… https://mcshay-report.beehiiv.com/p/scouting-fernando-mendoza-why-indiana-s-new-qb-is-a-wide-receiver-s-dream

Yea, that game was intense and draining. Now there is just one day's rest before game 4. I'm hoping the Pacers conditioning/style + the crowd can propel us vs. the Thunder maybe being fatigued. I kinda agree with the take that whoever wins game 4 is in the driver's seat for the series (sort of a "no duh" I know). This whole playoff run has been amazing.

IUFB payroll is around $22-23M (NIL and rev share). This big programs are $35-40M+. There is actually a great source for this info... Cig himself. https://www.si.com/college/miami/football/curt-cignetti-believes-miami-40-million-roster-upcoming-season This seams like a big gap between IU and big schools, and it is, we're like 60-65% of the big programs this season. But last year we were around $4.5M of NIL and the big programs were $16-20M, so we were only 25% or so of the big programs last season. This is progress, but unfortunately we need more money. All but a few schools do.

Yea, that could be right — maybe best case? You make a great point on the fatigue factor causing a death spiral. Nothing is more exhausting than hacking and struggling from deep rough when you can only advance it 50-100 yards. So the 18 handicap is tired and they have to handle undulating super slick greens they are not used to. There would be lots of chips running way by and putting could be even worse than 3.5 per hole. The number of terrible lag putts and missed three footers would add up real quick. I’d guess double par for a score, 140 or so? I like bloodbath US Opens. I hope they turn the course up to 11 and make these pampered pros cry.

3* from Ohio. Other offers include Cincinnati, Boston College, Duke, Kentucky, Rutgers, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, and West Virginia. https://x.com/jadynwilliams22/status/1932485430185722005?s=46&t=zoBJGD5TXRBDk1ODyOZqlg

Great hype video dropped. https://x.com/indianafootball/status/1932145654475677775?s=46&t=zoBJGD5TXRBDk1ODyOZqlg

3* from St. Louis -- more of the regional recruiting approach Lebowski posted about in the other thread. 20+ schools offered, notably BC, Purdue, and MSU. More of the IU-wrapped IndyCar too.. This is the busy time for recruiting...

3* TE. Visited over the weekend and committed. He had a Missouri visit scheduled, but he committed anyway. He had a bunch of B1G offers and some SEC schools too. https://x.com/macfarlane_pj/status/1931780140431782050 Interesting detail, in watching his commit video, IUFB now has their IndyCar prop wrapped in IU colors with the CFB Playoff logo. Previously the car was blue and black with "IndyCar" on the side. This is another example of IUFB caring about the little details, which I love. See pics below: I know it's been around since last fall, but this little IndyCar promo partnership is cool. It's unique and it fits with image of Cig's IUFB (at least the fast and relentless parts). And I bet it annoys Purdue a little bit, who is pretty tied into racing with all their engineers and their marching band stuff at the 500. But hey, IU has The Little 500, which is a helluva tie in too. Good stuff.

I can only guess, but I think this will at least be a continuation of the post-McRobbie era increased focus on sports. Frankly, anything post-McRobbie was going to be an increased focus on sports, that man did not get it. I've never seen IU spend on athletics like they have the past two years. Not even remotely close at all. Last year IU provided an unprecedented $34M loan to the athletic dept, mostly to support football. This will get paid back as media rights increase and gameday revenue improves, but the key takeaway is prior to this (and excluding covid), IU would never send more than a few million to the AD in any given year. That has completely changed. So, the basic logic is this support has occurred under Quinn/Pam/Scott, and since they're continuing, we'll probably continue to see more of this higher level of support for athletics. I'm biased because I like sports, but I think it's worth it. Football is the only sport that can produce a material return on investment for the athletic dept. Big MBB programs like IU can make some money, but it's not close to football. If we can become a midpack, or ideally top 1/3 B1G FB team, that will help our athletic dept immensely and help IU sustain all sports. As of today we're still one of the smaller P2 athletic depts and only football can change that. Last thing on this athletics support topic -- what Scott has started and in my opinion needs to keep doing is monetizing our improved football team. Like it or not, almost all the athletic dept revenue comes from fans directly or indirectly. We need Memorial Stadium sold out every game (should hopefully happen) and the fans have to absorb some ticket price increases, which seem pretty fair given the team they get to watch now. Other things that would help out our tapped out athletic dept are (i) a stadium sponsor, (ii) enough corporate interest, probably mostly from Indy area firms, to justify building suites, (iii) getting more whale donors engaged (Mark?), and (iv) chatting with Adidas about improving our contract with them (Cig is a material change since we signed!). Our athletic dept is tapped out with all this spending on coaches, NIL and rev share -- more money would help a lot. Maybe the BoT can help with some of this, I don't know.

Unfortunately, it appears this Bomba issue is not over. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/45444572/more-men-allege-sexual-misconduct-ex-indiana-team-doctor

3* OT take from Wisconsin. His other top offer was Iowa State, and then some smaller schools offered too. With Bostad's connections in Wisconsin (and UW being down), we have been getting nice some recruits outs of that state.

I'm looking forward to it. I'm guessing we'll get the usual positive tidbits and hopefully this year those are true. Key question: Will we get strength and conditioning hype videos? The classic sand pit and battle ropes? This is a quiet staff, so I'm not sure it's a given...

This recruitment will likely take some more work. He just got an offer from his Pop's school, Florida State. https://x.com/jay__timmons/status/1929316491658215785 Update: This one doesn't look good: "It feels great. I came here last year as a freshman with one offer from Akron. I've been here four times now. This has been a dream since I was a kid. I've never been a big sports fan but I've always been a Florida State fan. It's crazy. It's a great feeling. It could possibly switch things around. Indiana is home right now but we'll see what happens," Timmons told Noles247.

Spot on. Update: I heard this guy in reality owns a roofing business. Ha. Very close guess in the tweet.

Gregg Doyle is up to his usual self -- he had a very awkward moment with Pascal in the postgame presser. https://x.com/bleacherreport/status/1928294875369197657 I don't know why the Star keeps him around. He must have some friends there or dirt on someone. Stuff like this, the Caitlin Clark incident we all know, and his nonsensical IU takes... he's turrible.

I really think IU is trying to give him what he wants: - Cig and staff got big raises -- well deserved. But after that first round of huge raises, Haines got two more raises after PSU started sniffing around. Owings got another raise when USC tried to get him. We retained the whole staff minus Tino who got a legit promotion to play call that he had to take. Tino's replacement is absolutely top notch -- we didn't go cheap there either. - We retained basically all our key players. I am positive every school and their mothers were tampering with them, and many of those schools have a lot of money. - Portal class ranked around #20. Got Fernando, potential mega stud. - Now we're signing higher grade high school kids We can always be better, but I'm just outlining some positives. Anyways, I think about the Illinois game a few times every week. Huge game. Big Noon Kickoff likely in town, outside shot for GameDay. Massive chance to set the tone and avoid trying to bounce back with two hard road games @Iowa and @Oregon. It's fun having such big games to play, but nerve-racking.

I’m not sure the roster overhaul materially changed our bball player payroll amount. If it’s an overhaul we spend $10M on 10+ portal guys plus Sisley. If it’s not an overhaul we pay $10M to retain 6-7 guys and get 5+ more from high school and the portal. The general view is our bball spend is borderline top-10, maybe in the 10-15 range nationally. It’s not an excessively huge amount that is top-3 or something and really sucking money from football. Just some thoughts on the FB vs MBB dynamic. Not arguing, more thinking out loud. I don’t exactly know how money gets allocated between the two.

Ha. The Knicks celeb fans have made a point of sitting courtside and making themselves a part of the game as much as they can. Spike started this in the 90's as we all know. When they put themselves out there like that, they become fair game. Spike found that out when he tried his schtick with Reggie. Now these guys are finding out with Pat when he incorporated them into his bit. Pat is good at this -- his presenting and WWE background is perfect. And clearly this is all understood to be not that serious -- stick and stones... If they want to avoid getting a ribbing and some booing on the road -- all they have to do is fade into the background a bit more, maybe sit in a suite. But they didn't, so boo friggin' hoo.