Pagoda

Same. I think his Year 1 success gets the attention of the big money folks at UM and he gets a contract/staff budget/NIL boost and he elects to keep building there. UM is a good school and lower pressure gig. All we can offer is perhaps a little more money and easier transfers, but we are also a tire fire. Not hiring him after last season was likely a huge mistake and just classic IUBB mismanagement. If we did hire him we would be in fantastic shape right now on the court and recruiting. On the other hand, maybe he loves IU and is confident Scott and Pam have cleared out the old guard so he feels good enough to jump into the tire fire and fix it. Fingers crossed.

If Cronin gets up there at the intro presser and does the “It’s Indiana” routine, he will get people on side pretty fast. But he has to win…

I agree the language is vague and it sounds like it could be a Saban situation. I can’t shake that feeling either. I’m just sharing what they think, I don’t know exactly what they did to investigate the statement. They are pros and while I don’t want to believe them, I am forcing myself to.

I’ll post this again. I happen to know a few legit CBB journalists and none of them are hearing this stuff. They have dug into the Brad statement and it’s a legit “no” in their view. Maybe they’re wrong, I hope they are, but I really doubt it.

I get your point, and I would agree our on court results over the last 20-25 years have been horrible. We are crappy on the court. Ole Miss has a better team than we do. So do a ton of programs. I think our on court results have been so bad we aren't a blue blood anymore. We're not really relevant in the world of college basketball at this point. I don't think I have an elitist view of our program's results. I disagree on the program's value and not having anything to lose. Despite our struggles, we are somehow, and I don't know how, top-10 in attendance and revenue, and therefore top-10 in program value. The last Forbes list had us as the #3 most valuable program and the last Wall St. Journal list had us #5. Basically, we still have a lot of fans/donors who spend money. Yes, fans are losing interest, but we still have a ton of fans, more than most schools who are better than us on the court. Ole Miss is a tiny program, probably #50+ in program value with very little fan interest when they hired Beard. Therefore, they had quite a bit less to lose than someone like IU, or our "peers" that didn't look at Beard in their hiring processes like UK and UL. A school with some prestige on their brand like UM didn't consider him either. That's why I don't think one can say he worked for Ole Miss therefore he works for us. As for Chris Beard himself, I've never met him. If I was running this process I would dig into everything that happened -- call Texas, check with PIs and police, talk with Chris... get the whole story. Maybe he has changed and is hirable, I don't know. From what I hear that's not the case, but I would find out, maybe he's fine. If Scott and Pam did this and got comfortable with him, I would support him. But I don't find this part of it to be particularly relevant to our coaching search. What I do find relevant, regardless of who Beard is today, is how difficult he is to hire. The media coverage of the hire will talk about the DV issues and how IU got comfortable with it, and fair or unfair IU's morals/ethics will get questioned -- that's hard for the university to stomach. As mentioned above, we still have a very valuable program due to the size of our fanbase/donors. Hire him and there will be some immediate and material division with the valuable fanbase/donors. And if he does something at IU, that would do very serious damage to our program, completely embarrass the entire university, and the people who hired him are getting fired. Yes there is upside if he wins, but I think it's important to recognize that IUBB, despite how bad we are on the court, still has a lot to lose, and he brings some big downside risks that no other candidate does. He's a good to very good coach, but I doubt he is so much better than other candidates, even our down the list options, that IUBB becomes hard to support if we don't hire him. We'll see. A good coach plugged into our top-5 NIL should be able to do well. Unfortunately, we have like the worst coach possible right now. For the folks who like Chris Beard and want to hire him, okay fine I don't want to get into that, I'm just presenting some big picture considerations. I am still optimistic Scott gets us a coach that restores IUBB. Maybe I am wrong on Beard and he is the right risk/reward for IUBB, it's possible. In the end, this is just an entertaining discussion about an interesting aspect of our search for a coach and the above is one anon's prediction for people to take or leave.

We don’t know what Ole Miss did. We do know they didn’t have much to lose with their crappy bball program, so it’s easier for them to take risks.

Yea all the articles when he was hired mentioned it and there were questions about morals and ethics at Ole Miss. Whatever, like it or not no big brand programs/schools are looking at him. Personally, if Scott and Pam looked into him and got comfortable I could live with it. It just seems very unlikely.

The risks are bigger. Hire him and every media piece will mention how IU got comfortable with his DV issues. Fair or unfair IU will be associated with DV which is bad for our brand/image. Some donors and fans will be upset, so we have division there. If he has a repeat issue, and he continues to drink which doesn’t help, Scott is 100% fired and maybe Pam too. No other coach brings these risks. It’s hard to see how this could work. If he had quit drinking and shown how he changed and called Pam/Scott to explain how different he is and how nothing will go wrong… maybe. I see no signs of that, UK, UM, and UL didn’t look at him.

Hope so.

Yea. I’m worried they love what he’s doing and will want to keep him. Their athletic dept revenue is about $250M vs our $150M (I’m adjusting out our loan), so they could pay him a lot and give him more program budget. They have great football NIL, get the attention of a few donors and they could ramp up bball NIL. It’s true the support for bball hasn’t always been there at UM, but if they want to, it could be.

UM has so much money it’s not too hard for them to pony up to keep him — contract, staff $/program budget, and NIL are all going way up. Not good.

Yea. There is his contract, but he can use this to get more NIL commitments too. If he can get the attention of the right boosters UM has a crapload of money to give him. I don’t feel too good about prying him out of there to come fix our dumpster fire.

Hubert is the second best human being he knows.

Chris Beard is at the top of their list. ;-)

It kills me we could have Dusty right now and have a shot to win the conference plus some serious program building under our belt. We would likely have Mullins, Sisley, and some other elite HS players committed for next year. That would be sweet. But noooo. We are the opposite situation — program getting worse and a big rebuild effort required and Dusty may not come. Brutal. Just brutal.

I don’t think we are hiring Brownell and not sure where you got that from my post. I’m just discussing the idea because it’s fun to do.

I think we would go with our best bet midmajor coach before Brownell.

Yea. Goodmans reporting was vague for sure and there is a sliver of hope. But fwiw, I know some quality journos who cover the team and after looking into it their view is Brad is a no, which bummed me out. I wanted to believe it’s Saban before Bama but not sure it is. I don’t trust Rabby. Anyways, we’ll see, hoping for the best. Go IU.

Stevens more likely than Beard. See UK, UL, and UM not giving him a look in their hiring processes. He is very hard to hire for bigger brand programs/schools due to image damage to the school, some upset donors and alumni, and ongoing risk with his behavior.

It feels like a grenade went off in here yesterday. Everyone is disoriented from the blast, we’ve got some folks down, some are unaccounted for, no one quite knows what is going on. It’s going to take time to recover…

Yea. Same issues UL, UM, and UK had when they didn’t look at him in their processes. UNC won’t consider him either.

On something like a seven year deal it’s an extra $1.5M/yr if you amortize it. I know the buyout is paid shortly after hiring him just another way to look at it. That hurts but it may be doable.

Cig is so great.

I hope this happens. Football is king, so much bigger than bball as we know. We will still have bball, but being good a football transforms IU athletics to a whole other level and everyone will benefit.