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Get Wilkerson to commit. ;-) Aside from that I don't know.

Wait a minute here. I think some facts are being missed. And bear with me, some of these numbers are best estimates from what I hear from media and AD folks. 1) First off, Pat is misinterpreting that comment. That's mostly a joke. If you listen to Cig's other interviews, he thanks the donors and Scott and Pam and says "our pot of money is nice." I'm sure he wants more money, but I don't think it's an issue right now. 2) Here's the trend in IUFB NIL/rev share for players and money for staff, which is important to keep in mind. End of Allen Tenure - $2M NIL. Grim! Our staff budget wasn't great either. Cig Year 1 - We promised Cig $3M NIL and he got ~$4.5M. He was very happy. We were only 20-30% of the big programs last year who had $16-20M NIL. Cig Year 2 - With the rev share, we are about $22-23M (something like ~$16M rev share and $6-7M NIL). He's getting the bulk of the rev share like most P4 schools and our NIL is up again quite a bit in Year 2. The big programs are $35-40M total. We are now 55-60% of the big programs, which is a big improvement from last year. I'd guess we are around #25 in the nation for player payroll -- just an estimate. Maybe as good as #20. Also, we gave Cig a significant increase in staff budget, $11M is now top-5 in the country which is amazing. And Cig himself more or less doubled his comp and is now a borderline top-10 paid coach making about $9M+ after incentives/bonuses. IU's commitment to football is good. The progress in 1.5 years is immense. 3) Basketball NIL went from ~$6M last year to what looks like ~$7M NIL + ~$3M rev share this year. We increased NIL for bball, but not a lot. Cig can't be surprised at NIL levels for bball at IU. So, overall, I don't think Cig can complain too much right now, and I don't think he is. I'm not seeing false promises or a bait and switch. HOWEVER, we have to keep improving each year, or else it could become an issue. On the money point, unfortunately I think we need more for football, and basketball, but let's focus on football. Ideally we would have $10M more per year for football payroll, which would get us to 75-80% of the big programs. That's about as good as we could do, we will never match OSU, Texas, UGA, etc., they're just way bigger. I think Scott has to keep engaging new donors and sponsors and next year find a way to increase our player payroll $3M+ so we can keep the improvement going and keep chipping away at the bigger football programs. And Cig has to continue to deliver with the resources we are giving him. Tough job, but that's what it takes to be good in the hyper competitive world of CFB. So, what I'm saying is from what I can tell today, things are really pretty good. I'm not seeing or hearing about an issue with IUFB funding -- we'll see if anything else comes up.

Our logo made the cover of the CFB ‘26 video game. It’s a little thing, but kids see it and all the little things add up as IUFB changes its perception.

Here is most of the staff talking in front of the crowd at Huber’s. Moderated by Don.

CDD interview at Huber’s. Talks roster, size/rim protection, Goode/Leal, recruiting, and more.

Now that the bison mascot rollout is done, the athletic dept has shifted their focus to announcing the key leadership hires for our flagship program* that we hired several weeks ago! :-) Still no players listed on the website though. Maybe that's a summer project for the AD. * I know football brings in more money and it's growing at IU, but we're still technically a basketball school... for now.

This is the first clip I've seen of Tucker post- shoulder surgery. Looks good. https://x.com/CoachBasye22/status/1927410311704850818 Hopefully the WVU fans don't see this... they may (probably will) fire up their conspiracies again.

IU is selling a toy mascot in their store already, and the description says: "This plush uses the best fabric, designs, and captures the details to make our mascot authentic." Decent chance the new mascot looks something like this? Maybe.

Per 24/7, last year the two comparable new coach, big rebuild teams had portal classes ranked #5 (UK) and #27 (UL). Both teams had generally speaking good years with their new coaches. Our class portal class is ranked #9 this year. Rankings aren't everything (but they're directional) and things are very TBD, but what has happened so far doesn't look to be an outlier situation or notably alarming.

This is coming from an anon poster who generally believes in firing coaches quickly. I'm not in the need to give a coach four to five years camp. To level set: CDD has been here for two (2) months. Not only has IUBB generally been bad for 25 years, CDD inherited Mike Woodson's four alarm tire fire of a program where almost all the staff and players were unusable and had to go. The only useful thing CDD inherited was one (1) 4* high school recruit who committed despite Mike. Even with our resources, no staff and no players is a tough starting point. I think a turnaround can happen pretty quickly and it should be expected, but it will take some time when a coach inherits a four alarm tire fire. There is just no way around it. I don't mind folks being critical when we get some concrete signs of trouble, but it's been two (2) months. Give me a break. We have a whole new staff and roster -- we're going to have to wait and see how this goes because we just don't know right now. The goal in Year 1 is not to be top-10 or whatever -- the goal is put out Woody's four alarm tire fire and establish a culture and foundation we can build from for years to come. Think big picture. In my view, a reasonable Year 1 of culture and foundation building includes playing modern/smart/tough basketball, making the tournament, signing very good high players again, and then doing well in the spring 2026 portal. All of this will set us up for Year 2 when expectations can ramp up. What I cannot see a reasonable case for in Year 1, and especially not two (2) months in, is comparing ourselves to programs that have been healthy and successful for many years or decades. Such as Duke. It's a free country, but if you're expecting this in Year 1 you're going to be miserable. I don't think a turnaround in the portal era should take long, but it's also not going to happen over night either. I might suggest watching this program play some games and compete in high school recruiting battles. If we play bad bball and miss the tourney and recruit poorly, okay hit the panic button. I probably will. But until then, getting worried seems pretty pointless. And hey, CDD has built programs before. His staff looks pretty good -- we've got offensive minds and a coach from a rich top-10 program liked what he saw at IU and joined us. CDD teams defend reasonably well. There is real talent on this team, notably shooting. This could turn out pretty good... we'll have to wait and see.

Nate Tice sure likes Mendoza — sees him as a top QB in the draft. A detailed breakdown on why in this article: https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/nfl-draft-qb1-at-this-early-stage-is-indianas-yes-indianas-fernando-mendoza-who-has-a-world-of-potential-222731089.html

Ha. And the winner of that four team tourney plays Michigan.

You weren't in Assembly/Cook Hall during CDD's first six weeks on the job, so you have no idea how CDD was operating or really what was happening at all. Despite this, you made up this story and then declared your made up story a red flag. If you want to panic, fine, but this doesn't make any sense.

I've done some work with IU, and when it comes to things like websites and marketing, we had to go to central departments that from what I could tell seem to do it for the whole school. And let me tell you they move slow. So I suspect the athletic dept has to submit what they want for the bball webpage to that central IT department that does the websites. It's probably some combination of the AD being lazy and the IT department being slow. This isn't a big deal, but it's amateurish and it sort of annoys me because it's a basic effort thing. And really our whole athletics site looks terrible. I know this is a pointless rant, but I'll post it anyways...

I love how level and calm Carlisle is. His postgame locker room speech was literally seven seconds long -- he's focused on the big picture. And he doesn't get baited in the postgame pressers. This is so fun.

Another short teaser w/ Cig. I can never get tweets to embed into a post, sorry.

Sounds good to me. Agree some high school kids will transfer, though keeping the good ones and developing them over multiple years creates what appears to be the ideal foundation for a program. At least this is what the national title winners have done. But you’re right, portal has to be factored in too and we have done a nice job there as well. I also thought our key player retention this year was very good — you just know all our top guys were getting tampered with. But we kept 'em.

It's a slow day. Out of curiosity, below is our historical high school recruiting per 24/7's rankings. The best teams in CFB are still being primarily built with high school recruits (with some portal supplements in key spots), so I like looking at good old high school recruiting. Recruiting rankings aren't everything, but they're directionally helpful in measuring classes every year. There are a few outliers, but we've historically been around #50 in the country and towards the bottom of the conference. Year - Overall/Conference 2025 - 46/14 2024 - 65/16 (conference expands) 2023 - 68/13 2022 - 25/5 2021 - 55/12 2020 - 58/12 2019 - 37/8 2018 - 50/10 2017 - 62/13 2016 - 53/11 2015 - 53/9 2014 - 48/9 2013 - 42/8 2012 - 57/11 2011 - 55/11 I'm stating the obvious, but if we can level up to be around #30 ranked high school classes every year, that will make a world of difference. To some extent football is a game of physics -- just mass and speed smashing into each other about 180 times per game, and we do need some more mass/speed to consistently compete at a higher level. I would guess our NIL/rev share for football is around #30 or maybe a little better nowadays, so it's doable. And of course with Cig and his staff, recruiting at this level should provide enough talent to hopefully be in the mix most years to make a 16 team playoff and finish mid-pack to top 1/3 of the conference. These sort of results would be incredible given our history. I think Scott's #1 priority should be finding as much money as he can for our football player payroll. As has been pointed out many times, FB drives the whole athletic dept and it's the only sport with a serious ROI. Exciting times for IUFB.

Yea. Reminds me of when Scalabrine did the "Scallenge" vs. HS/D2/D1 challengers. IIRC no games were even close, most guys can't even score a point against him. As Brian said, "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me."

4* DT. He committed per his IG. Big time get. He had a ton of offers.

Ha. IU moves so slow sometimes. For example, right now on the IUBB website, the only coaches we have listed are CDD and Nick Norton. They actually have a completed page for Kenny (not linked up properly to the website though), a picture of Drew Adams but no bio (also not linked up), and nothing for Rod, Bargen, Sturtz, or Horn. Also, no players are listed (other schools have their transfers listed). https://iuhoosiers.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster This isn't a big deal, but you kinda want your program all laid out nicely on your website for reference and marketing. Players should be up with social media and NIL links. Come on IU! Maybe everyone in the athletic dept was working on the bison mascot rollout.

After listening to a handful of interviews and quotes from our new guys, I've got a pretty good idea of the type of player and program culture CDD is looking for -- and I like it and think it's going to make a big difference. Like you I'm looking forward to cheering for these guys. Onwards and upwards.

lol. I'm looking forward to this.

It appears the bison mascot is official. I'm looking forward to this, I think fans like the bison (everyone loves mascots) and it fits with Cig's IUFB. See teaser video below: https://x.com/IUHoosiers/status/1923015512327586292 I also like the media IU has been doing with the bison, good stuff, example from earlier this year:

Missing the tourney with top-5 NIL and getting fired is failing, aka an “F” grade.