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I can only guess, but probably not a lot, at least the good players — these programs are obviously doing well and most of them have healthy resources to keep their key guys.

Yes, there are very few portal commits right now. Just having Tucker DeVries (I get he may not be official, but he is 100% IU) puts us ahead of most schools right now.

Calbert is my all-time favorite player. I even bought his Bullets jersey when he went pro. I could not respect Hulls more. He came to IU when we were at rock bottom, he got his @$$ completely kicked for two years, but he stuck with it and won a B1G title. You can't be more of a Hoosier than Hulls. While I love these guys as players, I don't know if they are good assistants and/or if they fit with CDD's system. It appears they aren't a fit, and while it hurts, I'm glad we are seemingly not providing any favoritism towards former players with respect to coaching positions... as we know that can be slightly detrimental (or if it's the head coach, devastating). Of course though, with former players like this we should always be welcoming them back, trying to keep them involved where we can, and keeping them in mind for any jobs they can get on their merits.

I'm fine if they bring it back, some random thoughts and opinions: - It's a great trophy and it's too bad they had to stop using it due to that alcohol-related death of a UK player. It's nice we kept the trophy in Bloomington. Also it's kinda funny how IUFB gets involved with so many random rivalry trophies. - I love playing UK in basketball, I find that game more interesting than Purdue. But personally, interacting with UK fans one time per year is enough for me. - With as tough as the B1G is, I'm fine with non-con cupcakes for a few more years, especially as we are still program building, notably with getting high school recruiting going, which takes a few years. - If we are going to play a tougher non-con, I'd rather schedule bigger programs like we did with ND. UK may not help our SOS as much (could be a bad loss early). - Looking back, attendance increases were modest when UK came to town, indicating IU fans generally don't find UK to be that interesting of a football opponent. - We'll either get some sort of B1G-SEC challenge to spice up our non-con, or I would try to schedule home/homes with bigger programs where a loss doesn't hurt us too much and a win has more upside. That's just one person's opinion, and I'm far from an expert in CFB, so I could be missing something. I definitely agree it would be fun to have a big non-con game most years. I can't wait for this IUFB season. Spring game is coming up!

Kevin Willard is being a bit sensationalist. The money is exploding mostly because the rev share is starting this year. This will add $2-6M to player payroll depending on the school, which is about 66% to 100% increase in player payroll over last year depending on the school. Therefore, players are asking for a lot more this year. NIL has basically no guardrails or rules, fair enough. Though pre-NIL was to some extent too if you think about all the under the table payments. However, the rev share does have guardrails and rules. It's capped. Players will sign real contracts with universities to play sports for the first time ever (keep in mind NIL contracts could not include anything about playing, which is dumb but true). What's happening seems pretty understandable. I don't think players or agents are any more wild than they were last year. It's just the rev share starting.

On the topic of portal rankings -- just an observation: These portal kids are much easier to rank -- they have completed actual seasons of D1 and/or D2 ball. High school kids are much more of a mystery and tougher to rank -- less tape, competition can vary a lot, and they have the uncertainty of translating to college ball. Personally, when it comes to portal players, while I like high rankings (I can't help it), it's very easy to just watch the player playing college games and reach a conclusion on your own. It's a good point program fit is important and rankings don't really capture that. I'm glad CDD understands this.

I like Rice. He seems like a pretty good kid and he has overcome a lot. Unfortunately, he got caught up in Woody's system -- I guess his NIL takes some of the sting off of that. He may not be a fit for CDD, but hopefully he can find a place where he can start improving again.

Ha, classic IU. A few times a year IU will always get me to feel like this:

I've got no issue with CDD, I just wanted Pete to ask some more follow-up questions and dig deeper. Same thing with his Mendoza interview. It doesn't really matter just a preference from random anon fan.

Yep. Honestly I didn’t get much from that, Pete seems like a nice guy but he doesn’t bring much out of his interviewees. I’m still not entirely clear on CDD’s vision for the program, but it will be pretty clear in three weeks.

This leads to an interesting topic of what programs should get what resources -- it's a tricky one. Outside of FB and MBB, every sport generates a loss. The WBB crowds are pretty darn good, but the ticket prices are low and revenue is modest, meaning WBB generates something like a $5-6M annual loss. So, which loss generating sport should get the remaining rev share/NIL after FB and MBB take 90% of it? Our best programs like men's soccer and swimming/diving? A highly attended sport like WBB? A sport rising in popularity like WVB? Tough to say. Personally, I would push a little more towards WBB due to the high levels of fan interest and the upside for anything basketball at Indiana. I also like how WBB is getting a lot of kids and families involved and the program has a lot of great role models. I'm sort of surprised some subset of our MBB NIL donors aren't more into WBB -- Cindy Simon-Skodjt can find enough for Garzon in her couch cushions. And to be fair she may be checking those cushions right now to keep her. I don't buy that Teri doesn't need more NIL/rev share, no matter what any coach says they want more money for players. Hopefully the athletic dept can find her more support, but I know it's not easy with all the other mouths to feed. As for the fans getting milked, I get it, it's annoying and I feel it too, but I guess it's just what athletic depts do in as many ways as they can. The revenue share is paid for by the athletic dept, which gets 1/3 to 1/2 of their revenue from fans buying tickets, donating, paying for parking, etc. And technically it's even more, like almost all of it, because fans ultimately fund the media rights too when we buy cable and streaming, and advertising is directed at us because we will buy stuff from sponsors. Sort of is what it is. I suppose a positive spin is we could say us normal fans get a good deal in that we are technically freeloaders on the big money donated from Cook, Simon, Ned, Andy, and others. That is assuming this group of people is not also trying to be the Athletic Director, which we know they like to do from time to time, especially with men's bball... fortunately it appears they got that out of their system for at least a few years.

Mgbako is in the portal and testing the NBA draft (ha!). I'm glad he will be gone.

Yea. I cannot imagine the Clearinghouse telling some kid, especially one that is less well off, he can't get $1M NIL, only $500K. The player and schools will hit the courts, and I think state legislatures will get involved too if they don't already have labor laws on the books to cover this situation. I can't see this Clearinghouse having any teeth. I’m guessing this will be the Clearinghouse NIL approval process:

Interesting. Thanks, I hadn’t seen our IUBB rev share number yet. Per the IndyStar, IU was targeting IUBB rev share to be about 2x the conference average. I would have guessed the IUBB number would be higher than $3.5M, because that obviously implies the conf average to bball is something around $1.75M (~8% of the rev share). That’s pretty low, especially with the settlement to former players allocating 15% to men’s bball. From what I can tell this is good, the less rev share other schools are doing for bball the better because IU’s payroll advantage is on the NIL side and schools can dilute that if they got aggressive with bball rev share. I’d guess schools are generally leaning into FB, which as we know is the only sport that really moves the needle.

Even when players put a “do not contact” tag on, I bet almost everyone calls them (usually their agent) anyways. Schools don’t have much to lose — at least leave a text or voicemail with an NIL offer and see if they respond back…

Yea, Mike likely lands most of these guys by overpaying. Like Rice and Carlyle didn’t even visit another school… I would guess it’s because other offers weren’t close. There are also some not so great rumors with certain players’ behind the scenes behavior. Some rumors may not be true, but some probably are, and I’m sure Scott is filling in CDD on those that are true. Some players will probably be “encouraged” to leave too. We will find out soon. The old “mass exodus” is likely coming this time around. Good.

A unique dynamic this year to keep in mind is the House Settlement (rev share with players) seems likely to get final approval and potentially go into effect on April 7th. Schools probably want to get players' NIL deals done before that. The reason is the House Settlement will likely include some version of a "Clearinghouse" for NIL deals -- basically some accounting firm determines if NIL deals are fair market value. I doubt the Clearinghouse will have much teeth, I can't imagine it going over well if they tell some kid (some of whom are not well off) they can't make $2M NIL but only $1M NIL... schools/players will hit the courts (labor laws won't like this) and state legislatures will get involved. Regardless, NIL deals done before April 7th are to my understanding free and clear from any sort of Clearinghouse review, and schools will want to avoid the Clearinghouse. Given this dynamic, the we could see a lot of portal activity happening over the next two weeks before April 7th rolls around.

To be clear I'm good with DDV -- I think he will do very well here. Time will tell if Quinn & Co's cronyism created another great what-if in IU lore. It hurts to see our guy doing so well somewhere else when he could have been here.

Ha. Maybe. Tough to pick between Francon and Tommy Basketball.

Yes. Also a factor to some extent could have been his OTE coach joined BYU as an assistant right before he left PU. That was a funny decommit — PU was coming off a title game appearance and somehow lost their top ranked recruit.

Interesting Sisley post.

Good. This reminds me about a funny aspect with Illinois fans — they don’t really have a conference rival, but you can tell they want one. They will try to go at us or Purdue or whoever, but they can never really get another fanbase to bite and take much of a care about Illinois. When Kelvin flipped EJ it got heated for a few years, but it’s mostly returned to normal.

It's not a big deal, but I do prefer calm coaches on the sideline, I think that is generally good for the team. After Reggie's 1998 game 4 winner vs. the Bulls, Larry had my ideal coach reaction. Huge shot, no reaction -- game wasn't over and he knew MJ had a little bit of time left (and Mike nearly made the shot).

Getting Murphy would be quite the flex and a staff "recruiting win" for CDD. This is petty, but it would be fun to just poach a guy like that from current top-10 team as shot across the bow of college hoops.