Discussion: Where do you think IU ranks with NIL in 2025?

[newcastle12]

I started wanting to discuss this after Thanksgiving week (and then the hamster went on strike), when I saw a whole lot of the elite teams in the tournaments this week.  Previously, it seemed to be a fairly certain conclusion that Indiana was spending a ton of money, and was likely in the top 7, and likely higher than that.  However when I looked at our roster and compared it to several others over that week, I just didn't buy that we were even top 10, and thought we were probably closer to 15 honestly.  Which still is good, but not what I was lead to believe.

Then the Louisville game happened, including seeing a player who was interested in coming here and we got outbid on, and I just think that it's obvious this roster isn't one of those high end rosters from a talent (which to me means money) perspective.  

I think we appear to have spent around 10 million on this roster between rev share, and NIL, and there's teams I've seen that I think are spending double that or more.  And several that are at least 5 million more, based on what their player look like athletically.

Did some of the donors who were all in helping for Woody back out and take a wait and see?  Is the Football success canibalizing the NIL.

I'm focusing on NIL, because I think we are more than competitive in our Rev Share.  I think that our investment in the coaching staff and those types of things are closer to the top than our NIL player budget.  

What's your thoughts?

[Home Jersey]

My thoughts are: 

--- I don’t believe it was ever a "fairly certain conclusion" that Indiana was spending top 7 or likely higher NIL money. Definitely not in this past cycle where this roster was formed. Not sure what led you to believe that? I also think that Conwell knew he wanted to go to Lousville and we didn’t make an offer he couldn’t refuse. That’s a decision the staff may come to regret, sure. 

--- I agree it’s obvious it’s not a roster with high end talent but I don’t think that was anybody’s expectation after seeing it. I definitely don’t think a high end roster is determined by money spent. I think it’s really tough to have any degree of confidence in NIL numbers that aren’t public record. Obviously you want to have money to compete in this era. Don’t think you NEED to spend the most money and Kensucky this season confirms that. I am fine with the “moneyball” strategy as long as the formula is correct and the prioritization is right. 

--- I think basketball is going to need to be comfortable rolling like that because football is rightly going to get first dibs on the money pot. I wouldn’t brand it as “cannibalizing.” It’s being invested wildly successfully there and they’ve earned that level of support. It also may pay dividends for the rest of the AD with enough sustained success...

...My final thoughts are that I think this staff was really hampered by not being full strength at the start of the offseason.

I expect the roster to be upgraded next year. Don’t know or care what we’ll have to pay to get that done.

And I think we still have some fun ahead of us with this group. Ups and downs for sure. 

[Pagoda]

Here are some high level estimates from what I can gather.

I think our bball NIL hasn’t changed much this year, we’ve just layered on rev share.

Last season, pre rev share, it was reportedly $5-6M NIL.  This year bball gets around $4M rev share + $5-6M NIL = $10M total, which is the commonly reported number.

I can only guess where $10M ranks.  Somewhere between #10-20.  The issue is rev share made a lot of other programs more competitive (notable schools with no serious football program to use up rev share, think Big East) and also some schools upped their NIL.  Woody’s last year were were probably close to top-5 and because of those factors we’re #10-20 now.  Which is still nothing to scoff at…

And our staff budget is around the tops in the conference.

I think we have given CDD enough (plenty) to start building in year one.  I don’t think we can flip a Woody destroyed program in two months (the time CDD had to hire and staff and hit the portal for a team).  But I do think we should make the tourney without much drama this season and build to be a consistent top-20 team next season.  I get we’ve had a bit of a red flag the past two games, but that’s a separate discussion.

Football’s roster was $21-22M this year.  I’d guess that’s #25-30 in the country.  Frankly it’s crazy not to prioritize IUFB for NIL right now for obvious reasons.  So if CDD wants more he needs to prove to donors he’s worth it.

[WayneFleekHoosier]

Yeah. The talking heads said we were top 10 in Woodson’s last year. CBS eye on basketball survey and talks to a lot of sources reiterated the same.  The NIL budgets jumped wildly for many schools. Many said we paid over 5 and were top 10 in Woodson last year.  Reports say we paid about 10 this season and that to me is very believable.  Apparently Wilkerson was near 2 to 2.5 million. Crazy.  Kentucky reported is around 22 and that’s believable too.  BYU is getting 7 million to Dybantsa. And 2 plus to the guard.  UNC way up there. Duke, Kansas, UConn, Michigan, Illinois, and on and on.  
 

We aren’t top 10. We might be in the neighborhood of 10-20, but other surprising schools are spending big too.  
 

Curious to see what we do after missing all the “top” freshman targets and then landing some middle ground guys.  Curious to see what budget DDV gets offfered to play with.  
 

I hope the administration realizes they need to generate some excitement in the program.  The hire didn’t do it. The assembled roster didn’t do it and now the results aren’t doing it.  
 

I guess we will find out what they plan on doing by this summer to see the response to what this season will be. 

[AZ Hoosier]

1 minute ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

Yeah. The talking heads said we were top 10 in Woodson’s last year. CBS eye on basketball survey and talks to a lot of sources reiterated the same.  The NIL budgets jumped wildly for many schools. Many said we paid over 5 and were top 10 in Woodson last year.  Reports say we paid about 10 this season and that to me is very believable.  Apparently Wilkerson was near 2 to 2.5 million. Crazy.  Kentucky reported is around 22 and that’s believable too.  BYU is getting 7 million to Dybantsa. And 2 plus to the guard.  UNC way up there. Duke, Kansas, UConn, Michigan, Illinois, and on and on.  
 

We aren’t top 10. We might be in the neighborhood of 10-20, but other surprising schools are spending big too.  
 

Curious to see what we do after missing all the “top” freshman targets and then landing some middle ground guys.  Curious to see what budget DDV gets offfered to play with.  
 

I hope the administration realizes they need to generate some excitement in the program.  The hire didn’t do it. The assembled roster didn’t do it and now the results aren’t doing it.  
 

I guess we will find out what they plan on doing by this summer to see the response to what this season will be. 

You also have to ask about the impact of a #1 rated football team on overall NIL. Before Cignetti, football was, more or less, an after thought beyond what was necessary for the basketball team.

[WayneFleekHoosier]

8 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

Here are some high level estimates from what I can gather.

I think our bball NIL hasn’t changed much this year, we’ve just layered on rev share.

Last season, pre rev share, it was reportedly $5-6M NIL.  This year bball gets around $4M rev share + $5-6M NIL = $10M total, which is the commonly reported number.

I can only guess where $10M ranks.  Somewhere between #10-20.  The issue is rev share made a lot of other programs more competitive and some schools upped their NIL.  Woody’s last year were were probably close to top-5 and because of those factors we’re #10-20 now.  Which is still nothing to scoff at…

And our staff budget is around the tops in the conference.

I think we have given CDD enough (plenty) to start building in year one.  I don’t think we can flip a Woody destroyed program in two months (the time CDD had to hire and staff and but the portal for a team).  But I do think we should make the tourney without much drama this season and build to be a consistent top-20 team next season.  I get we’ve had a bit of a red flag the past two games, but that’s a separate discussion.

Football’s roster was $21-22M this year.  I’d guess that’s #25-30 in the country.  Frankly it’s crazy not to prioritize IUFB for NIL right now for obvious reasons.  So if CDD wants more he needs to prove to donors he’s worth it.

We need to figure out what Michigan is doing. They are outspending us in both major sports.  You’d think we could find a way to compete but I guess that what a 100k football stadium gets you????  Or it’s donors….  
 

IDK but I’m jealous of the money at their disposal.  

[Pagoda]

12 minutes ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

We need to figure out what Michigan is doing. They are outspending us in both major sports.  You’d think we could find a way to compete but I guess that what a 100k football stadium gets you????  Or it’s donors….  
 

IDK but I’m jealous of the money at their disposal.  

That 110K football stadium goes a long, long way.  Their athletic dept revenue is ~$110M more than ours (we're around $150M pre-Cig impact, we won't have post-Cig reported financials until January, and UM is ~$260M).  They've got so much more revenue than us mostly driven by football.  And they obviously have a larger donor base, but I don't know the details.

We're never going to outmuscle schools financially.  Best we can do is be like around #10 in bball and top-20 in football (and we aren't there yet).  But that's not chopped liver and we can do damage with that amount of spend if we're smart.

I'd note UM only cares about football.  Their coach isn't very good and their future is meh.  Our football team is ranked #1 with a Big Ten Title.  They also have to figure out what we're doing now...

[WayneFleekHoosier]

That 110K football stadium goes a long, long way.  Their athletic dept revenue is ~$110M more than ours (we're around $150M pre-Cig impact, we won't have post-Cig reported financials until January, and UM is ~$260M).  They've got so much more revenue than us mostly driven by football.  And they obviously have a larger donor base, but I don't know the details.
We're never going to outmuscle schools financially.  Best we can do is be like around #10 in bball and top-20 in football (and we aren't there yet).  But that's not chopped liver and we can do damage with that amount of spend if we're smart.
I'd note UM only cares about football.  Their coach isn't very good and their future is meh.  Our football team is ranked #1 with a Big Ten Title.  They also have to figure out what we're doing now...

Agreed. However, They are the right coaching hire away from being Ohio State in football again.

But Basketball is likely on a 5-10 year reign of dominance. Time will tell, but being outspent by Michigan in basketball really bothers me, particularly with the Dusty May angle.

Hoping the football success will sometime soon propel basketball success.


Sent from my iPad using BtownBanners mobile app

[Pagoda]

4 minutes ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

 

Agreed. However, They are the right coaching hire away from being Ohio State in football again.

But Basketball is likely on a 5-10 year reign of dominance. Time will tell, but being outspent by Michigan in basketball really bothers me, particularly with the Dusty May angle.

Hoping the football success will sometime soon propel basketball success.


Sent from my iPad using BtownBanners mobile app

 

They have a high ceiling in football, but hiring a coach is hard and that job isn’t as easy as it looks for whatever reason.  They flubbed on Rich Rod, Brady Hoke, and probably Sherrone.  It took Jim six years to get it going there and he did get over the hump in years seven through nine, though he got caught cheating and left the school with penalties that cost around $30M.

I won’t change your mind on what annoys you with bball, all I’m saying is UM has their share of challenging issues.

[str8baller]

10 hours ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

We need to figure out what Michigan is doing. They are outspending us in both major sports.  You’d think we could find a way to compete but I guess that what a 100k football stadium gets you????  Or it’s donors….  
 

IDK but I’m jealous of the money at their disposal.  

I was bored one day and read on a Michigan blog or twitter or somewhere I forget now, a couple Michigan fans talking about how Dusty basically hit the donor circuit from day 1 and the response to him was really positive. I’m sure them just having bought a football championship helped the mood of the donors. Supposedly Cig had similar success with Cuban this off season. 
 

You can take all the above with all the credibility a random internet comment deserves, but it seems like a plausible theory given their success and his personality. A hope Devries has a little bit of that in him.

[str8baller]

11 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

I definitely don’t think a high end roster is determined by money spent. 

Agree to an extent. No doubt UK spent more money than say Arizona. But UK spent unwisely, apparently. And maybe so did we. We went the midmajor alll-star route. But unlike Cig we didn’t come up with any Sarrats or Fishers. In fact, I don’t think any of our guys are plus-athletes at the B1G level. So that means coach needs to form them into a cohesive unit and quickly.

 

 I agree with you that just because we or UK have stumbled doesn’t mean we didn’t spend in the offseason. It’s expensive to get free agents. One thing I wish we would’ve done is get a couple less seniors so we had more returning next year. Going back out into the market for 4 new starters next year is going to be rough, especially when one of them is a big. 

[Home Jersey]

1 minute ago, str8baller said:

Agree to an extent. No doubt UK spent more money than say Arizona. But UK spent unwisely, apparently. And maybe so did we. We went the midmajor alll-star route. But unlike Cig we didn’t come up with any Sarrats or Fishers. In fact, I don’t think any of our guys are plus-athletes at the B1G level. So that means coach needs to form them into a cohesive unit and quickly.

 

 I agree with you that just because we or UK have stumbled doesn’t mean we didn’t spend in the offseason. It’s expensive to get free agents. One thing I wish we would’ve done is get a couple less seniors so we had more returning next year. Going back out into the market for 4 new starters next year is going to be rough, especially when one of them is a big. 

Totally agree. 

I'm hoping Dorn starts to show some consistent production that we can pencil him in as a starter next year with Sisley. We may need Dorn in the starting lineup this year the way things are looking IMO...

Then we'd need a big man and two quick guards who can shoot well (plus some depth). Miles has fallen out of the rotation, which is a bummer, because he looks the most athletic of anyone on the roster IMO and thought he would add something for us on defense / rebounding. If he and Harris can be rotation players next year, that'd be huge for portal spending purposes. Not sure how many, if any, of the returning players get "Creaned."

Either way, a lot of work for the staff to do come portal season. Would be nice to have enough money to grab a big fish or two. Otherwise we need to find a few Fisher / Sarrat types... and that can be hard. DDV doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who crushes the donor shmoozing right off the bat. But that's total speculation based on his "unassuming ball coach" personality 

[pumpfake]

I pretty much agree with the thoughts othershave posted.  CDV had to shop for a full roster, so unless he had an unlimited checkbook, he wasn't going to bring in an all-star team (and he hasn't). The story has yet to be written on how successful the combo of talent and coaching results.

I don't have any idea where we rank in spending. My guess is that we were well prepared for the adoption of NIL when it started, but many schools quickly passed us in spending.  The shame is that we squandered our head start with a dud running the program.

This rebuild will likely take longer to achieve what we hope for than we (wishfully) believed.  I stll shake my head at some of what we claimed 10 months ago (we could grab an elte coach, and with "our resources" be back near the top - because just look at what others (UK, UL, etc.) did.)  Cig was "lightning in a bottle" - impossible to do twice (and we didn't).

[Kentuckysucks]

16 hours ago, Pagoda said:

Here are some high level estimates from what I can gather.

I think our bball NIL hasn’t changed much this year, we’ve just layered on rev share.

Last season, pre rev share, it was reportedly $5-6M NIL.  This year bball gets around $4M rev share + $5-6M NIL = $10M total, which is the commonly reported number.

I can only guess where $10M ranks.  Somewhere between #10-20.  The issue is rev share made a lot of other programs more competitive (notable schools with no serious football program to use up rev share, think Big East) and also some schools upped their NIL.  Woody’s last year were were probably close to top-5 and because of those factors we’re #10-20 now.  Which is still nothing to scoff at…

And our staff budget is around the tops in the conference.

I think we have given CDD enough (plenty) to start building in year one.  I don’t think we can flip a Woody destroyed program in two months (the time CDD had to hire and staff and hit the portal for a team).  But I do think we should make the tourney without much drama this season and build to be a consistent top-20 team next season.  I get we’ve had a bit of a red flag the past two games, but that’s a separate discussion.

Football’s roster was $21-22M this year.  I’d guess that’s #25-30 in the country.  Frankly it’s crazy not to prioritize IUFB for NIL right now for obvious reasons.  So if CDD wants more he needs to prove to donors he’s worth it.

What makes you think we will make the tournament?  Will have zero quality non conference wins and likely need to go 12-8 in conference to get a bid.  No way I see that happening.

[WayneFleekHoosier]

7 minutes ago, Kentuckysucks said:

What makes you think we will make the tournament?  Will have zero quality non conference wins and likely need to go 12-8 in conference to get a bid.  No way I see that happening.

100%. We have a tougher than normal B1G slate too.  And still Might need 13-7.   Hoping for the best, expecting the worst.  

[Pagoda]

12 minutes ago, Kentuckysucks said:

What makes you think we will make the tournament?  Will have zero quality non conference wins and likely need to go 12-8 in conference to get a bid.  No way I see that happening.

Maybe I didn’t word that as clearly as I could have.

I think making the tourney should be expected for the resources we put into this program. 

I get the last two games have unfortunately created serious questions (red flags) regarding the tourney this year.  I don’t know if we make it this year.  If we don’t, that’s a failed season and very worrisome for the CDD era.

I just have to hope CDD figures it out because he’ll probably get at least three years.

[Kentuckysucks]

31 minutes ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

100%. We have a tougher than normal B1G slate too.  And still Might need 13-7.   Hoping for the best, expecting the worst.  

And probably have to beat both PU and MSU at home.  

[Home Jersey]

Bumping these posts from the Lindenwood game thread.

Just because it's timely for this discussion, not to put anyone on blast. Sorry Stu :)

On 11/21/2025 at 8:18 AM, Stuhoo said:

A combination of IU football beating teams 86-3 on a regular basis and a couple of really good early season showings have raised expectations to where a 20 point win over a crappy team is "concerning?" Some top 15-ish rosters are in one posession games late with some crappy teams on a regular basis this time of year.

I get the negative narrative, but I'm trying to stay in close proximity to reality:

• We are 5-0
• We are (barely) ranked with a whole new team early in the season
• We have a professional, hard working coach and staff with modern schemes
• We have physical talent limitations that will equate to some losses, but
• We have a veteran roster that can really shoot the ball,  will have the maturity to overcome and respond to bad stretches, and will make for some really fun games this season.

As an IU basketball fan and general optimist? If you have realistic expectations, IMO this win is not a time to be concerned. Instead, it's a really good time to be an Indiana basketball fan. And that's true whether we win 28 games or 21 games this season.

While I agreed with much of this post, including the sentiment that it's a good time to be an Indiana basketball fan (because I like DeVries still), but I was very skeptical about the "whether we win 28 games or 21 games" bit. 

On 11/21/2025 at 8:59 AM, Home Jersey said:

What if we win 17 or 18 games? Haha

I'm not writing them off at all but we've got very real limitations this year. Will probably upset some teams we shouldn't and have some fun along the way... just establish a strong culture this season and really need to build a better roster in the portal for year 2. 

 

On 11/21/2025 at 9:06 AM, Stuhoo said:

After we beat Bethune Cookman, Sienna and Chicago State, that would be 9 wins and 15 losses against P5 teams. 

Possible? I guess. But that is not happenning.

We were 5-0 after Lindenwood coming off a win over Marquette, which has since become much less impressive. 

We played 4 OOC P5 teams and many of us were hoping to go at least 2-2 against them. 

 

On 11/21/2025 at 9:08 AM, Home Jersey said:

We will see how we do during B10 season. Possible, yes. Not as sure as you that it's not happening. 

 

On 11/21/2025 at 9:17 AM, Stuhoo said:

Do you realize that your worst case scenario would be fewer wins against Power 5 teams than the worst season by either Archie Miller or Mike Woodson as IU coach? Yes, that's including the year that Archie lost to both ISU and IUPU Fort Wayne.

Like I said, we can see flaws with this team and still have a sense of reasonable reality after beating a crappy team by 'only 20'.

We play 24 P5 teams between OOC and B10 play. 

I thought then and think now that going 9-15 or worse in those games is possible. 

On 11/21/2025 at 9:21 AM, Stuhoo said:

The year we lost to Indiana State and IUPU Fort Wayne we won ten games against Power 5 teams. Do you really think there's a snowball's chance in hell we could be worse than that? Because if we win 18 games this year that's where we're at.

We're now 7-2. Best case scenario we finish OOC play at 11-2. Worst case probably 9-4. 

19 Big Ten games left and we're 0-1 so far.

Looking at the schedule, I think it's certainly a possibility we end up closer to 17/18 games than 21+.

 

Only feel semi good about Washington, @ Maryland, @ Rutgers, Minnesota and @ Ohio State. 

... All this to say it may end up being a worse season on paper than the worst years with Archie and Woody, but I will still think the program is on better footing with DeVries at the helm. Just going to try and enjoy this season where possible. 

Really need to hit on our priority portal targets for next year. Critical. 

[str8baller]

54 minutes ago, Kentuckysucks said:

And probably have to beat both PU and MSU at home.  

That’s going overboard. B1G has done well so far and our overall SoS will be fine. We’re not in a hole metrics wise like we were last year. Last year at 19 wins we were one of the first teams out with Deevries WVU, oddly enough. At 19 wins this year we are “probably “ in. That just means holding serve at home. 
 

The good news is we only play UM and Illinois once and both on the road. Along with MSU, those are the 3 teams that seem like they can absolutely swarm us athletically.  Out of those 3 we only have MSU at home, and holding serve at home gets us 10 wins. But we don’t have to do that because we can pick up other games. 
 

No reason we can’t split with our in state rival. No reason we can’t pick up another game on the road to make up for dropping the ball at Minny. @ Maryland, @Rutgers, @ ohio st, and the west coast swing are all viable options to pick up a road win.  

To bring it back to NIL: we still have talent on this team. Everyone is new and having some ups and downs is to be expected. Also, people wanted a 3 point heavy shooting team. That also comes with variance. We’ll drop a couple bad ones but take one or  two where we shoot lights out.  
 

Even is we lose to UK, 11-9 in conference gets us in the tourney. Every above .500 team in conference last year got in. We also have a chance to win a couple games in the BTT. 

 

[str8baller]

1 hour ago, Home Jersey said:

Only feel semi good about Washington, @ Maryland, @ Rutgers, Minnesota and @ Ohio State. 

... All this to say it may end up being a worse season on paper than the worst years with Archie and Woody, but I will still think the program is on better footing with DeVries at the helm. Just going to try and enjoy this season where possible. 

It’s still really hard to win on the road in conference and that includes people coming to Bloomington. If we drop more than one of the home games vs PSU, Neb, Iowa, NW, Oregon and Wisconsin and don’t make up for it with big wins elsewhere, then the season is cooked and Devries better hope we win the national championship in football to lighten the mood in Btown. Because it’s gonna get testy. There’s still the Woody/Buckner faction, that probably includes some donors, waiting to say “I told you so.”  I don’t even know what you say at that point if you have worse than a Woody season.  
 

I might be overly optimistic but I don’t see it happening. With the way NIL is distributed I don’t even know how it’d be possible to run out a roster worse than half the league with our budget.