You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cascade
and Clavio Scott Caulfield back once again joining you here
close to the end of July and we have big 10 football media days
going on in Indianapolis and it's starting to feel like
football season once again. IU out there trying to make some
waves. We're we're very fascinated by
what's going to be going on this season.
We're going to talk a bit today about some of the perceptions
expectations, Indiana where where they're currently
perceived, why that's the case. We're talk a little bit about
what has happened so far at at Big 10 Football Media days, Kurt
Signetti making some waves there as well.
And we'll talk about some other stuff as well.
The the college football game is out.
There's some thoughts to be shared there and maybe a few
other things as well. But Scott, first of all, good to
see you again. How are things?
I'm doing well man. How you doing?
Yeah, fine. You know, we're we're just kind
of chilling here in the fine city of Bloomington.
The weather's been pretty good down here over the course of the
last week or so. It's been not overwhelmingly
hot, which is always a concern this time of year, but I know
things are good making podcast guest appearances.
Got if you have those of you who have not listened, was on the
X's and Joe's podcast for an extended almost two hour long
podcast about the the 90s and the end of the night era, which
some of you might find interesting.
So be sure to head over to the X's and Joe's podcast, which is
hosted by our friends Bob Moats and Mike Wiemeth on the back
Home network and go check that out.
So no, things are good. Everything, any what's new in
your world? Anything noteworthy?
Last night went to it's, it's funny, it wasn't this concert.
I've been to two concerts now at Deer Creek this summer.
I try and go a couple times. I went to Dave Matthews like a
month ago and my wife and I were Ubering there and it's like, I'm
plugging in the address and I'm like Deer Creek.
And it's like, that's right. It's not I, I, I know it's not
Deer Queen and it's like I, I had to like actually Google what
it was because I forgot if it was like Horizon or Ruhoff
Cliff. Sure, whatever.
Yes. Yeah, went to last night.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Speaking of the 90s.
Yeah, but did make me feel old because they, they look a little
old. Anthony Kiedis, the Anthony
Kiedis, he had a like a, a walking boot, like a walking
boot. And, and I, I want to think
like, oh, it's probably 'cause he's, you know, crazy rocker,
but it's probably like he was playing pickleball and like hurt
his ankle or something. But overall it was a, it was a
good show keeping the 90s theme going.
So we we should have had that playing in the back of your
podcast. Maybe, maybe some of our
listeners have had had the same experience, but when when we
were in school that there was a show at the Assembly Hall, it
was the Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Did you go to that show? I don't.
I don't think I did. No, I remember it, but I don't
think I did. Yeah, that was.
With with, yeah, swing and a miss for me.
I think that was, I want to say that was spring of 2000.
It might have been spring of 99, but I think it was spring of
2000 because I think spring of 99 was supposed to be the Tom
Petty show that got cancelled, but I might have my chronology
wrong. But yeah, that was a good show.
I remember having ridiculously good seats for it.
This I would have been it had to have been.
It had to have it couldn't have been any later in the spring of
2000, because I remember Flea made like a, a, a a Bob Knight
joke or something like that and people booed.
But but I just, I think I was like 20 rows from the the floor.
It was just a great evening all the way around.
So if you were out in the audience and you watched that
show live, let us know. We would love to hear from you.
Underrated basketball fan Flee also made a Larry Bird joke last
night 'cause he's obviously from LA and he's a big.
He made some like work like French Lick.
Like where the Hell's Larry Bird?
Like mad better. It's just like, like kind of
threw it in there. Now I'm wondering if Flee has
like a writing team and that just like tries to give him like
two or three topical jokes for every place that he goes.
And he all he knows to do in Indiana is basketball, which I
guess is is on brand for for Indiana.
What he does for other states, Like what?
What's he doing when he goes to? He's criticizing ethanol when he
plays in Des Moines or you know, things like that.
Yeah, he's. Just like Phil Fulmer talk,
right, Phil Fulmer. Anyway, we we bring this up
because we're excited to announce the newest podcast in
the network, The Flea Show. Now.
Well, yeah, I know that we could probably get Flea at this point.
Like what else is he doing? I mean.
That is like there there's an X, like at some point, you know,
we'll, we'll be able to get him. He'll become less and less
famous at some point. It's true.
Well, that's good. I'm glad you got a chance to go
to that show at so Dave. Yeah.
Dave Matthews Band and and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I feel like you're really. You're trafficking in 90s
nostalgia here. I I tip my hat to you.
Yeah, I mean, that was before like the spring of country where
I did Morgan Wallin and Kane Brown.
Now we're doing I get we were my wife was gonna go to Atlantis
Morissette on Saturday too, but but we're not we're we're we're
taking a night out or not. Didn't do Atlantis third eye.
Blind is playing later this summer.
I I like how you're just genre hopping year to year.
Like next year it's just Scott with like, you know, yeah, yeah,
you're yeah, you do the 2003 doors down and yeah.
And then the following year you're doing jazz.
It's like you're going and seeing Whitten, Marsalis and.
So I've seen him actually, the last thing I'll say to this is
my wife and I like three years ago went to Bare Naked Ladies
and Better Than Ezra. So again, very 90s.
We have a genre. They know my type at
Ticketmaster, but we're watching Better Than Ezra.
And it was just like 4 dudes and cargo shorts and shirts and I'm
like, this looks like my HOA, right?
I'm really getting old because this was a rock band.
But like, these guys look like they could just be telling me
like, I got to mow my lawn and change the light, you know?
Yeah. From my house, The Dirty little
secret about the twenty 20s is that all of the neighborhoods
are run by people that you lived next to at Brownstone Terrace.
Yeah. You know, it's like you're just
villas. Yeah.
Essentially all it is is like a
slightly nicer Varsity Villas with like regulations about
having to mow the lawn on at this stage.
So just think along those lines that you know that culture is
never that far away anyway. So just a reminder folks, we are
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where they launched a bunch of cool, somewhat offbeat, you
know, collections. UTSA Roadrunners, the the last
one in the collection. And right now it's like from
here, from my house in Bloomington, I can hear Connor
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This is what they do. This is this is their time to
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first of all, use the code home 23.
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And just a reminder that there's always some sales somewhere
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Thank you all for being part of it, including those who have
been there since the very beginning when we launched the
sub stack last year. All right, Scott, so we jump in
to football and, you know, Big 10 media days.
So first of all, I just want to say this.
I I generally find media days to be overblown and unnecessary.
And it kind of just feels like what what annoys me, it's like
we drop the levels of skepticism and just let coaches say
whatever they want. And they say some really dumb
stuff a lot of times. Like Dabo Sweeney was
complaining the other day at ACC Media Day that, you know, the
problem for the ACC is they don't have like a Paul Finebaum
type of person on the ACC Network.
And yeah, right. No, it's like, and I'm just
like, no one wants that. Like no one actually needs that.
Like, we, we, we need fewer voices like that, not more.
But anyway, that's, that's kind of neither here nor there.
Big 10 Media Day. I've been to it.
I've covered it as a reporter. Like it's it, it, it's largely
there, I think to just remind everybody that football's about
a month away. And that's exactly what is going
on here. But what was cool about this
media day was that I, you and specifically Kurt Signetti were
able to generate some buzz. And you know, Kurt Signetti came
out and did Kurt Signetti things in his press conference where he
addressed the media at large. And, and when he was answering
questions afterwards, it was cool to see because ultimately
we've kind of heard a lot of these things already.
But you know, the the thing about Signetti and this is this
is where it it, it really does create an interesting thing when
you think about IU football and what IU football is trying to
do. You have to have somebody like
Kurt Signetti who can generate attention and also generate like
a level of swagger and confidence in your program.
And a lot of IU fans are simply not used to that.
I mean, if you think about the coaches that IU has had, I mean,
Tom Allen was was a guy that I think generated a lot of
enthusiasm in terms of like how enthusiastic he was about stuff
like life, whatever. But he also was not a guy when
you listen to him talk where you were like this guy oozes
confidence. Like he it was more of like an
earnestness as opposed to a confidence with Tom Allen.
Kevin Wilson did not ooze confidence.
Like he was a very smart football guy, but was, you know,
about as charismatic as talking to your insurance broker when it
came to, you know, him being up on the podium.
Bill Lynch, you just were kind of like this.
You know, he may know what he's doing, but it feels like this
guy's in over his head. You don't get that sense with
Kurt Signetti. And and unlike Terry Hepner, who
was very confidence driven and, and really whose confidence
there was a quiet confidence with Terry Hepner, It is not a
quiet confidence with Kurt Signetti.
It is a very out confidence. It is a very like, you know, we
are going to be successful. Not being successful is not an
option. And we've been successful as
coaches where we've been. There's no reason why that can't
happen here and we're not going to accept it not happening.
That is a, from my perspective, great for IU football and great
for IU football fans. But it's also so foreign that I
think media love it because it's like, oh, an interesting Indiana
coach. This is a nice change of pace.
But they're also like, you know, this is not what we're used to
seeing out of Indiana. And I think for a lot of fans,
the ones that have jumped in and I see this on social media are
all the way in. They're like, I would I could
listen to this guy all day. The ones that haven't, and I
still talk to a few of them are like, well, we have to see
results first before we're going to get excited.
So it's kind of an interesting thing with IU at this point in
relation to how Signetti is out there and what he's doing as far
as trying to gender engender some interest in this program,
in this team. Well, as you were listing the
coaches, I was, I was going through my head as you said,
that sort of looking at the coaches as you're going through
them. And I think the thing that's
different with Signeti as well is he's showing this kind of
arrogance is not the right word, but like a very strong
confidence before coaching his first game.
And so you could say that once the things got going with Tom
Allen, Allen kind of got there with the Elio thing and sort of
preaching it. But we think about how Tom Allen
started like it was kind of a a presser in the middle of the
night and then he loses his ball game.
And then it's like, you don't really, you know, those of us
very close to football knew the Elio stuff the first two years,
but that that program was kind of quiet.
You're right. Wilson came in and it wasn't he
had almost an arrogance of like, this isn't Oklahoma, like you
guys don't know what you're doing.
And that was more of kind of his tone.
I remember from the starting, you know, Bill Lynch obviously
came in under very, you know, tough circumstances.
But I would never say Bill Lynch was a, you know, braggadocious
type of guy outside. And when he's throwing gum in
the, you know, Michigan, Michigan game.
So this is something you need. And you go through the list, you
know, nothing Gennardo ever did was was what you would was good.
Cam Cameron wasn't boisterous. And, you know, Matt Mallory's,
you know, we're talking early 80s.
I can't, you're right. There's not a coach that's been
this kind of confident with a bit of swagger before he's even
played his first game. And I understand from fans who
went through the Tom Allen experience and we got a little
bit, you know, big as a program going into 2021 and kind of
like, all right, now is our moment.
And it all fell flat. So I, I get the idea of like,
hey, we need to see results first.
But I, I all I would say is like, I like it.
Like this is better. What, what I found funny on the
reaction to all of these things and the reaction to, you know,
how Signetti sounded at media day is it always does seem like
the rest of the conference or other fans are like mean why,
why are they doing that? Like why is Indiana doing that?
It's like, what's the other option?
Like just to continue? That's fine.
We'll just be bad. Like that's what we're going to,
you know, we're just going to hire a doorknob to be our coach.
And Nick, sorry, sorry. We talked about beating teams
and I'm so sorry that we thought we could beat Michigan.
Like that's like at some point teams that are bad have to
become good again. So this there was something, I
think the thing that stuck out to me the most from Signetti's
comments and I, I went back and was watching them this morning
and it stuck out again. So he got asked about the, the
appearance at the basketball game where he says, you know,
Purdue sucks, but so do Michigan and Ohio State.
And, and I, I loved his explanation.
Like, you know, this is an entertainment business.
We're in the we're in the business of entertainment and
you know, we want to, we want to be everybody's rival, He says.
I think later on in the press conference, I think a lot about
the way that IU has kind of accepted its fate in football
over the course of time. If you think about like Lee
Corso, you know, famously like goes like six or seven years
before winning the old Oaken bucket, and then he wins the old
Oaken bucket and he likes that, takes the bucket home and like
sleeps with it and all that, you know, famously.
You take a picture at halftime leaving Michigan.
No, no, no. That was Ohio State.
Yeah, that was And that was. And that was more of a joke.
But. But then later on, and, you
know, and this has been really consistent.
You've got the whole what have you done to beat Purdue today?
Signetti got asked something about the Purdue rivalry and
essentially was like, well, we don't play them until Week 12.
We'll worry about them then. In state rivalries are great,
but we want to beat everybody. And, you know, I, I think a lot
about how IU football and the the people that run IU football,
like the Purdue game has been the biggest thing because that's
been the barometer of success. Did you beat Purdue?
Did you did you win three games and then beat Purdue?
OK, great. Well, hey, it was a successful
season. Like that was what you aimed for
the only barometer of success because you're not beating
Michigan, Ohio State, you're not going to a bowl.
And, you know, so the stories we've heard in the past about
people walking around in the middle of the season and saying,
well, what did you do to beat Purdue today?
It's like, let's be frank, like IU and Purdue are about the same
level of program. They're both bad historically in
the Big 10, as much as Purdue likes to pretend that they're
better over the last 30 years, they're pretty much the same as
Indiana. And you know, they've had some
more success and, and even like, especially in the last few
years, they've had shockingly little success compared to what
they seem to think that they've had.
And so it is kind of a an artificial lowering of standards
when that's all you're focused on.
Not that beating Purdue shouldn't be an important thing,
but I do like the idea that a new coach comes in and says,
well, OK, yeah, Purdue's a rival, but it's one game out of
12. It's not what we need to fixate
on throughout the course of the year, which does that's
different from what we've seen from a lot of coaches in the
past that IU. And so I I am appreciative of
that. And I think it's a very
different type of mindset now with a lot of this, I mean, at
the end of the day, and, and Signetti himself has noted this
in a press conference. Like it's this is just talk.
Like we're we've gotten to the point now where it's like you
got to go do things as opposed to just talking about them.
And this is where the big unknown happens to be.
You know, Signetti's doing his job.
His job is to go out and get people interested in IU
football, not so much fans, although that is certainly
helpful because fans in the stands and means fans interested
in donating money, which means NIL money, which means a bunch
of other things. But you've got to make IU seem
like a place that's a run by people who know what they're
doing. And then B, are able people who
are able to take that knowledge and translate it into results.
And recruits pay attention to this.
High school coaches pay attention to this.
And IU's got to do something to stick out and, and stand out
that you cannot just continue to go along the way that Indiana's
gone along and build slowly. You can make certain progress
that way. But especially in the transfer
portal era, you need a coach that's out there that that
sounds clever, that sounds like they know what they're doing,
that sounds confident, that's bringing A level of of swagger
to your program. Because those are all factors
that are going to be utilized by recruits and transfers.
And thinking about where am I going to go to school?
And, you know, there's some stuff that's going on right now
in terms of this proposed settlement, which we'll get to
in a second, where it's like it's going to get harder, not
easier, I think for Indiana to compete at the level it wants to
compete at because of how far away they are.
So how do you bridge that gap? You've got to bridge that gap,
you know, to to, you know, build to success.
I mean, he had this, he had this comment and this was about nil,
but he Signetti's comment was I'll quote here.
Somebody asked me, how do you define success at Indiana?
I was like, well, we want to be the best.
I mean, you don't you, you don't bring your kids up, Johnny, you
know, to be 4th best, I want you to be 10th best.
Bullshit. We want to be the best.
So when I talk about no self-imposed limitations, that's
what I'm talking about that that kind of mentality, you know,
it's hard to say. I never know for sure with
coaches if they're saying these things in press conferences or
if they're not like what is their actual belief system?
How are they actually approaching things?
You know, you can, you can talk about this all you want.
How do you actually make it happen in practice when you're
dealing with with your players and you know, how are you
defining their levels of success when you have coaches that don't
outwardly talk about these things, does that mean they
don't think that they're important?
Probably not, but. I do think as much as we don't
know about what makes a coach successful and effective versus
not, other than things like being very detail oriented tends
to help, you know, working smart tends to help like things like
that. You can't help but gravitate
towards a coach as a fan or as somebody who's looking from the
outside in that seems to have command of themselves and what
they're doing and seems to be able to say things that make
sense in terms of what equates to success.
Again, you've got to wait to see it it happening, but it does
feel like a breath of fresh air when he goes out and does this
spiel in front of a bunch of people.
It's like this guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about
and he seems like he hires people that know what they're
doing. And that really does make you
feel more confident, even if there's not necessarily a lot of
tangible evidence saying you should be more confident.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's and again, I'm not I'm not the
biggest fan of of media that a day stuff because it doesn't in
the end, it doesn't really matter and you can have nice
sound bites. What I do like is you, you did
mention, you know, selling the program and and the NIL piece.
You know, I, I do like that even though he's a little bit on the
older side of coaches, he, he does seem to understand and be
forward thinking with the way NIL and the transfer portal is
going. We're like, I mean, one of his,
one of his quotes is, you know, he talks about getting hired and
he's like day one of the job. I got 10 offensive starters in
the portal. Half my defense.
I didn't know that kind of joking about when he took the
job. But then he goes on to talk
about how like, instead of being like, you know, we're a lot of
some coaches in the last year or two and turn that into like, and
this is the problem with the portal.
Like you just you get like starts bitching about the portal
NIL. It's just like, no, like, and
then I got to go to work and I'm going to start solving this.
And it does feel like, you know, he understands the the way this
is going. There's also, you know, and
again, man, you and I are both kind of glass half full with
football right now. So we're looking at this and
trying to, you know, looking at the positive side of things, but
they're also does seem to be, you know, it does feel like it's
kind of the, you know, the proverb, you know, run, but, you
know, be fast but don't run or something like, you know,
Signetti does feel like he's understands.
You know, I probably only have seven or eight years here at IU
to really do something where at times it has felt with other
coaching Staffs kind of like, hey, this is a process.
We're building the first steps this year of a four or five year
process with Signeti. It does feel like he kind of
sees like, man, I'm 62, I don't have 20 years to flip this
around. Like it does kind of feel like
we're not trying to skip all the steps, but we're trying to be
quick without running and kind of being like, hey, we're, we're
trying to be good and we're trying to be good now.
And I do think that is what a lot of people are gravitating
toward because every every other time and we've had a major
regime change in football. It always feels like the
discussion is like, well, we got to tear it down to the studs.
This is this a long process. And we know in Indiana you're
not going to get success overnight.
You start getting like all these.
It's like, well, that sounds like a three-game, the three win
season, like before even started, I've never felt that
was signeting like, and that's The thing is.
And then everything, the little pieces that I'm hearing is that,
you know, we're not skipping the steps and we're doing things the
right way. And these are all the things
that, you know, this is what he's known for is being kind of
a leader of a program and building a program.
And so that's I think where if I just distill it down, I think
that's what people are really gravitating towards the the feel
of we might actually be good this year.
Not like, you know, win the big 10 good, but 567 wins good.
I hope it's better than five wins that that that.
Yeah, we're, we're not doing the predictions yet.
But yeah, well, no. And, and look, it was
interesting. There was a nice piece in the
Daily Hoosier that that Seth Tao wrote that talked to some of the
players. And one of the the notes from I,
I'm trying to remember which this was Aiden Fisher, who
played at JMU. He was asked about Signeti and
how that whole situation is, you know, working in terms of
looking at him as a coach from the player perspective.
And his quote was the thing with coach Sake and how contagious
his attitude and self belief is. It's huge for our team.
We have a guy that's going out there and he believes so highly
in himself just because of the way he prepares himself.
So that kind of leads into us and we believe so much in
ourselves and what we can do because we have the guy at the
head of it who's taking care of things on the back end to where
there's nothing that we're not prepared for.
It's because he's taking care of those things behind the scenes.
And I mean, ultimately, I think what you see with a lot of
really successful coaches is that very thing you know, it is,
it is very much do you have the confidence in what you've done
that you've managed to secure all of the details.
And as we talked about many times in the Allen era or the
Wilson era, wasn't it was it was really inherent in both of those
two very diametrically different types of coaches.
They were always felt like there were details that weren't being
accounted for. Now we may see this team on the
field after a month and be like, wow, there's just a lot of
details that still haven't been accounted for.
But I thought it was telling Signetti saying in the media
day, you know, there were a lot of guys that did me a favor
because they left, you know, rather than stick around.
You hear stuff like that. The things that I've heard here
locally about how IU has been progressing in practices and in
spring and whatnot, and it does feel like there's just a much
greater attention to details, a lot more businesslike in a lot
of ways and so. That that's I've heard that too,
that you know that on and AM and it's just comparing where we
were with Alan it it felt like the things I was hearing from
the Alan when you know, things were going on.
There was a very, a very flat organization where it's like,
you know, anybody could talk to anybody and like you could move
up and, and not in a bad way, but it, everything that I've
heard is that it is very businesslike and it's a very
higher hierarchical. So it's like if you're a tight
end, you talk to your tight ends coach before you talk to the
offensive offensive line, you know, the offensive coordinator
and it, it does, you know that very few, very few of the
players are actually dealing with Signetti, which is kind of
the way it should be. Not, not just everyone's talking
to everybody about everything. It was a comment from Mike
Kadik, who has been around for a while and, and is certainly very
familiar with how things go in that same piece by Seth.
And it basically said, you know, we're, we feel like we're
getting essentially a different level of support.
The quote was with Coach Signetti and the confidence he
brings to the program, this community.
I think the fans are getting behind him and us.
And I think that's what we needed.
We needed some support. Not that we don't get support
from the fans in the community, but it's feeling different this
year. It it and it does.
We've talked about it, other people have talked about it.
The vibe is just so different in terms of how the fans, not all
of them, but most of them are perceiving this program.
And at the end of it all, it's coming from Signetti and to a
lesser extent, his staff and the way that they are conducting
themselves publicly, trying to get people excited.
And they're succeeding. And it this is again, it's an
intangible thing. And we've look, people got
excited about Tom Allen. You know that you had the whole
breakthrough thing and it felt like coming off of that
Pinstripe Bowl year, there was an.
That was marketing. No, I hear you.
But like that was all marketing because like that was the
marketing department pushing the breakthrough thing.
That wasn't like that was that was like that.
As you were saying, I was creeping like a lot of this
excitement. There's not really a marketing
plan for the football season this year.
It's really just Signeti being and, and this is one of those
like it's, you know, not to get into a Hollywood thing, but it's
like some people just have it. I, I don't want to sit here and
just completely glow him because we, we come out and lose the FIU
in Western Illinois. Like things are going to be a
little bit different. But you know, you, you can just
kind of tell when you see coaches, some of them have it
and have that intangible, some don't.
And we all know it. And I, I do think Sigdetti has
it and it's all we have to go off of right now.
But I, I would say the difference is a lot of the times
the interest in football was based on the marketing
department kind of pushing along the team where this feels, this
feels like it's all signet because I haven't seen, you
know, as a season ticket holder, I haven't seen like a lot of
marketing stuff from the football, but not a bad way.
But it's not like there's a slogan that's going out there
from marketing. No, there is.
It's never daunted. Have you, have you not?
I forget you haven't been on on social media for like 3 months.
Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm the one who actually left.
Everyone says they're leaving. Scott.
You did leave Scott. Scott has gone to the gated.
Community of social media Which what?
What? That sounds that just sound way
worse. No, I just I, I was never.
I'm still as engaged as I was, which was never I I check on
stuff during games and that's about.
It no, there's this whole new thing on Twitter that's
fascinating, which is this never daunted hashtag, which has kind
of become the rally point for a lot of the online fans for
football, which is great because it's, it's and then even like,
like there was a leaked photo of a bison in the, I think it was
either the weight room or in one of the other areas with the
never daunted slogan above it. Like it.
But that came, it felt somewhat organically throughout the
process of, of all of the things that have gone on over the
course of this spring and summer.
And I just, I'm excited because there's excitement.
The video of them moving the rock, I did see that, yes.
There's just little things and well, look at the, again, at the
end of the day, what happens when you get on the field is
what's going to matter. And I think it's interesting
because Signetti pointed it out and a lot of IU fans have
pointed out like nobody's taking IU seriously amongst the
traditional media. Like the traditional media voted
Indiana 17th out of 18 teams. There are some cracks in that.
It's interesting because we've we've heard a couple of
podcasts, not ours, say Indiana could win eight games this year.
You know, one there was another podcast I've lost.
There's so many of them have lost track, but like on the 11
guy said, well, they they're not going to be very good.
Another was like, they might have more wins than Michigan
State and Washington combined. I mean, there's it's all over
the place. And part of this, and it kind of
goes back to something you said earlier.
It's such a reset in college football year over year now
because of the fact that you bring in a brand new team.
I mean, we think Indiana's done that because they've got what,
35 transfers and a bunch of guys who have been starters.
Signetti mentioned. Like this is a team that's going
to have like 31 seniors just in terms of like, not just the guys
that were stuck around, but all the transfers that came to that
don't have any eligibility left after this year.
But Washington, I think has even more.
Like Washington was like around 40 transfers.
It's half your team, you know, So when you're talking about,
you know, when Signetti himself in press conferences is talking
about, it's really hard to prep because you don't have a lot of
tape from guys that are going to be there to watch.
You don't see a lot in spring ball.
He was mentioning, like, trying to scout Washington
specifically. And it's like, we're going to
have to look at or at at Arizona footage because that's where Jed
Fish was from. Yeah.
That's what a lot of coaches are having to do if they're
struggling to know how to evaluate teams.
Media have no shot. I mean, nobody's watching that
much film. You know, nobody's paying that
much attention. Nobody's got access to that kind
of material. So it's, this isn't a criticism.
But most of the time these polls and the way that people project,
it's going to be based off of the profile of the school and
what the school has done up to that point.
And if you look at Indiana and you saw how Indiana played last
year and the struggles that they had, and then you look at the
Big 10 as a whole and you're trying to evaluate based upon
that. Of course you're going to have
Indiana in like the bottom one or two teams.
I, I don't see what the argument would be against that.
But that's all that you're basing it off of.
You're not basing it off of knowing what Indiana's got
because I don't even think Indiana knows what they've got.
We don't know if Curtis Rourke is going to be a big 10 caliber
starter. We don't know if all these
transfers are going to come in and play well.
We don't know, you know, how Signetti's approach is going to
translate. There's all these intangibles
and there's also intangibles with a lot of the teams on
Indiana's schedule and you go down the list like how does
Maryland recover from not having Taga Vailoa as their starting
quarterback? How does UCLA recover from not
having Chip Kelly and not having a lot of NIL money?
How does Washington recover from losing all of those people and
having a brand new coaching staff come in?
How does Northwestern recover from deciding to play in a
10,000 seat stadium? You know, I'll be like, there's
just all kinds of those things. Michigan State's another one
where you're like, who knows? So there's there's very few
Givens and I don't blame people for underrating or
underestimating Indiana because if I didn't know, if I wasn't
plugged in to the Kurt Signetti rejuvenation machine, I would
probably underrate Indiana too. I'm, and we're probably sitting
here, you know, we've been dogging UCLA and talking about
how that's potentially an easy win.
We're looking at Washington being like, well, they may not
be very good and we're you're not sitting there with an IV
drip of Jed Fish quotes from the offseason or something like
that. So, you know, same with me.
So it's just one of those things where it's a natural to put
Indiana in that spot. And I actually think it helps
Indiana because it will position them in a place where perhaps
they're not taken as seriously, at least in the first year.
And that may be what Indiana needs to, you know, win a couple
of one score games that they lost last year.
So 2, two things. One, as you talk about, you
know, teams having so many variables as they're preparing
for do do you think Signetti has made a real tactical error here
by naming a starting quarterback in Rourke?
I mean, should we go back to another variable It's just not
having We shouldn't. Maybe we should not name a
starter and just try that again. You know, I, I, I got to say,
this is the frustration that I've had You and I have talked
about this a lot. When you see something that
doesn't matter being pushed forward as something that
matters, it really does reduce your confidence.
And this is, I think this is a great lesson for leaders in any
walk of life. If you're, if you're ACEO or if
you're running a division of a business and you fixate on
something that is clearly not an advantage, but you keep talking
about it being an advantage, you're going to start to lose
people. And I think that's kind of what
happened. I mean, the it's, it's still
fascinating to me that we spent that much time being like, we,
we couldn't possibly let you know who's going to be the
starting quarterback because you know, that's going to give the
other team an advantage for what a drive, you know, and, and it's
funny now, especially in this era where teams are changing
over by a ridiculous degree, like you've got, there's so much
more subterviews just kind of built into college football
because you don't know what the roster is going to be from one
year or next. But hey, guess what?
That's how a lot of football works.
That's how it works at the at the pro level.
When the average career length is what, three years, you've got
all this change over. Somehow those coaches are still
able to do what they need, need to do.
So I am glad that there's some stability, that there's a clear
hierarchy. I do think that that helps to
breed, you know, a, a mindset of here's what we're going to be
doing and it's nice to get away from that particular mode of
operation. Yes, yeah, the, the the second
one and I, you know, again, like, like you said, I'm not,
I'm not, I'm not digging into UCLA's offseason.
I'm barely digging into IU football's offseason, but where
I do think, as you know, people who are paying attention to IU
football and I think Signetti is seeing this also.
You know it, it does feel like the quiet, quiet confidence is
coming from the schedule. You might have been talking
about this for like almost three years.
You you saw ahead, you saw how advantageous the schedule was
early on and then even with the new Big 10 pieces.
But, you know, we'll be doing a pod, a preview podcast soon
going through each game, but you would assume the first two
games, FIU and Western Illinois, those should be wins.
And then, you know, if, if you're just taking how people
looked professionally and seemed to run an organization, you
know, I did see some clips of Desean Foster at media day.
I, I, I feel good with where we're going coaching versus US
and them. And UCLA isn't exactly a world
beater. I mean there's and you just keep
going through the schedule. There's a world where you know,
we're we're hosting Maryland. I also noticed that the Big 10
did list their games for the Big 10 tailgate and that will be the
the game that Indiana gets. So the Maryland game on
September 28th, the Big 10 tailgate were there.
It's not quite game day, but you could have a scenario where
that's a four and O Indiana team with the Big 10 tailgate, like a
real hyped up environment playing Maryland where you could
be looking at going five and O and two and O in the Big 10.
That's not illogical. And so I, I'm not going to keep
going from there, But I just, I think there is a real path to
seeing that as a possibility. Not like we have in the past
where it's like, well, you know, maybe if Michigan State sucks or
if, you know, Minnesota's not as like this is a real path to a
real kind of nice pivot point in the season where it's like there
could be a lot of enthusiasm. And I, I feel like that's also
where some of this confidence is coming from.
Yeah, it's there's so many options that the season has in
terms of like the option is the wrong word, but there's so many
directions it could potentially go.
It's nice to have that pathway in front of you where if you
take advantage of it, it's a nice runway for what could
happen through the rest of the season.
It's also a young team, it's a new team, it's a team that's
still going to have to learn how to mesh.
And so we'll, that's where the balance has to come from from us
as analysts and pundits to, to try to evaluate where things are
going. It's just, I'm just excited.
There was such a trepidation going into last season.
I remember sitting here last year and just kind of being
like, well, I guess we're going to run this back.
And, you know, it looked like we're going to run it back for
two years in a row. So to be in the spot that we're
in now where we're talking about this and you got entertaining
stuff going on at media day. It's just it just the the the
the overall, the old. Well, I didn't say vibe because
it's more than because we used vibe a lot last year.
But the aura around IU football is different.
And we'll yeah, the patina. That's right.
Yes, it's it's it's nice, a nice Foss for bronze at this point.
But yeah, it's it's it's just fun and I'm excited and it's
great to see the coaches right now having fun with it and the
players, you know, seem to be in a good mindset.
And then I guess the last thing I'll say on this mindset, as I
think we talked about when Signetti got hired, mindset is
such an important thing. There's as much as we like to
make a, you know, the, the difference in terms of teams
from a physical perspective isn't always as big as we think
it is, certainly between the very top teams.
Like Ohio State's athletes look like they're from a different
solar system than Indiana's in a lot of cases.
But mindset helps a lot. And we've seen teams that don't
have the talent of Ohio State compete against Ohio State, beat
Ohio State, including Indiana teams.
Where did that come from? That either came from great
scheme or great mindset. I think Indiana's got the chance
to have both, and that is exciting.
And I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like over
the course, especially that first month where you're still
seeing the settling in happening because that can set the pathway
for the rest of the season. Yep, yeah.
Anyway, we'll, we'll keep up to speed for you all on that.
They'll be plenty to talk about. We'll have some, some fun
interviews coming out throughout the course of this upcoming next
couple of of of of months and I guess next month.
It's only we've only got, what, 36 days until the season starts?
Very soon. Wild.
Anyway, let's let's move on slightly.
I want to talk about the college football video game.
I recorded something last week where I talked about some
problems with the game. You know, there were certainly
some positive things. I've enjoyed actually playing
the football. It gets devilishly difficult
once you get above like varsity level, but they actually dropped
a patch and that patch fixed some of the things that I
complained about last time and I haven't had a chance to really
dive in post patch too much. But you've been playing as well.
Would have been your overall reflections on the experience of
playing college football for the first time in a long time.
So we, we were at a lake house last week.
So it dropped. I I was not in in a position to
download a game. You were at a lake house?
I don't believe that last year. Yeah.
Yeah, last week. Yeah.
So, but it's like it was family time, vacation.
Like, I was not going to be like, hey, well, you guys go
have fun. I'm going to play NCAA Football
for 10 hours. So I I got it, you know, like
three or four days ago. I listened to your podcast first
and then started playing. So I went in with some of your
thought mindset. I've I'm still only year one in
my dynasty. So I, I don't, I don't know some
of the longer term things that you're talking about, but it was
funny going into the recruiting and I heard you talk about how
like, you know, kind of not super intuitive and not sure.
And I'm like, all right, well, that's just, I'm, I played a ton
of NCAA. I'm sure Galen's just missing
stuff. So I go into the dynasty and
then it's like week two, I go in and it's like, wait, why?
Why are like half my points already gone?
Like why, why is it like auto recruited?
Like going like checks the auto recruits Like, oh, no, it
doesn't auto recruit. Just like what you do one week
automatically goes the next week and then like a little red gem
pumps up and I'm like, I think that's bad.
But like what? What is the gem?
Is that good? Or besides, like I'm literally
I've done more Googling for this game than I've ever done where
it's like NCLO football 25 red gem.
What does it mean? And it's like, oh, there's a red
gem, there's a green gem. It's like it does you see it, it
kind of makes sense. But there's also like all these
icons in the recruiting that I'm just like, don't know what any
of these things mean. Maybe I sound super old, maybe
just Googling is the new directions.
But there there was kind of an unintuitiveness that you are
100% right. There's still little things like
I created a custom playbook. I cannot find out how to make it
my playbook in my dynasty and I've been Googling trying to how
to figure that out. Outside of that, the gameplay is
really smooth. Some of the stuff did come right
back. I was able to find some of the
yeah, thanks for your, your comment down there.
I tried to warn them the, the, the gameplay is very smooth.
Some of the things came back. You know, the, I started in
freshman. I played a game as Texas, just,
you know, kind of the fun offense.
I was just crushing somebody like, like, all right, this kind
of came back. Then I, I stepped up the level
to varsity and I noticed it getting a little bit tougher.
But no, it's it's thus far, I think you're a little bit, you
were a little bit harder on the game than I would have been.
I would say it's a recommend to go out and buy just because it
is, it is fun. The gameplay is fun.
And you know, I hopefully they can fix some of those longer
term things. I just have not had to get with
it. But once you once you kind of
understand how the mechanics of all the recruiting pieces work,
like once you figure stuff out, it's all right.
But yeah, there is a there's definitely some Googling.
It's going to need to happen when you get going.
And, and I, you know, I think that it really depends on how
much you need absolute or at least a perception of absolute
realism in order for it not to be immersion breaking.
That ends up kind of being the, the borderline for a lot of
people in this case. I look at it like this.
It's a fun game. I actually think the patch
addressed quite a bit. It just takes an adaptation and
there's going to be some things in the SIM engine that don't
work very well simply because of the the weird way that college
football is shaped right now. But I think you can make some
changes yourself to the mix that help.
There's some, there's already some stuff out there with
Googling, whether it's YouTube or Reddit.
Both of those communities have done a really good job of diving
into some of the mechanics. I've picked up some tips on the
recruiting front, which have helped.
I picked up some tips on the gameplay which have helped.
And I feel less awkward. You know, I think for a lot of
people this is a weird launch because, you know, it's, it's
aimed at us, Scott. It's aimed at people our age.
Yes, it's certainly aimed at younger people, but the bulk of
the excitement seems to be coming from people between like
ages 35 and 50, not coming from people ages like 12 to 25.
Now, I think that will grow, but I'm actually surprised at how
close they tried to get to the experience that most people had
before. And yeah, they missed a mark on
some things, but I think that they can round those things into
shape overtime. It's just it's also an
interesting era for this sort of thing because what you end up
with is this situation where people get really vicious online
when there's things that happen that they don't like and you
know, everybody. Because when you are critical or
when you are when you're complaining about something,
you're going to get more attention on social media.
And so that's been the 1st place that most people have gone.
It's like, let me go be loud and angry about something and that
will lead to more attention being given to me.
It's not going to help with the game.
And a lot of times it actually provide provides an inaccurate
picture of where the game is at. So yeah, I know I would
definitely say buy it. I just wanted people to go in
with some expectations based on what I had seen.
And then credit to EA, they did drop a patch short shortly after
I did that. I'm sure it was my podcast to
kind of push them over the edge on those things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll be a sponsor soon.
The other thing that I was kind of surprised with, and again,
man, forgive me, things change quickly.
I know it's not Division One. It's, you know, football, the
FBS or but I was I, I just remember what like we talked
about in one of our previews, like the Idaho team and the KIBI
Dome, like Idaho's not in the game.
Like I, I remember there just being like a plethora of teams,
like 140 teams in the old game. I was surprised at how few of
like obviously all the teams are there, like you're missing
Michigan or Michigan State or something.
But it's like they're, they didn't seem to be the same
number of teams. Like, you know, as again,
starting out a dynasty. I'm like, all right, I don't
want to. I'll start with a bad team.
And it's like there wasn't as many bad teams available or just
kind of it, it felt like a little bit more like what
college sports is now just the cream rising the top and here
kind of the top 50 or so teams. Although it was, it was fun
pulling the stars that you're giving me that look.
Maybe it's just Idaho that was missing.
Idaho, yeah, 'cause Idaho's not FBS and they don't have FCS
teams in there, but there's like 130 teams in the game, so it.
It felt like less, but maybe, maybe that's with my memory.
I think it, I think it's because there's everybody's packed in
conferences. And I mean, I would recommend
and 'cause I think it's a valid, it's a valid point because
you're used to seeing more conferences and you can see more
teams. Go to ESP NS standings page for
college football and page through it and you'd be like,
how many teams are in the American.
Yeah, how how many teams are in the Sunbelt?
It is wild, like how clustered college football has been.
And that's I because I I did have a similar thing there to
the point where I'm going to start a new dynasty this weekend
where I just do a complete realignment based upon what I
want college football to look like.
I think that's a better way of going about things.
Sorry. Go ahead.
I'm I'm in a dynasty with my brother-in-law and he's Eastern
Carolina and it's like I got to remember what conference they're
in. It's like they're in the
American. They're also East Carolina.
They're going to come and beat you up.
So I'm playing UTAP and there's many times I'm like, I think I
should be in the sunbelt. Like no, I'm in Conference USA
like feel UTAP as a sunbelt team.
The other thing where they miss the mark definitely for like
people like you and I is there is no cross play on dynasty
games. Obviously cross play exists
because there is real cross play for you and I can play online.
You're an Xbox. I'm APS five guy.
You know, I'll, I'll just say this in our, in our world of
political divisions, Galen, we need to be coming across the
aisle. And I think this is where EA
Sports needs to understand that we're not, we're not a red
country, not a blue country, we're not APS 5 country, not an
Xbox country. We are an all gaming country.
Like not having cross play for dynasties is is kind of silly.
It makes me wonder if there is going to be a $20 patch coming
out that solves that. But it does seem like that's
that that's kind of almost a real F you to a lot of the fans
because like you have to know this is an environment where,
you know, I would not say there's one clear gaming console
standard. It does feel like PS5 and Xbox
are both have a pretty sizable market share.
It's not like you're talking about, you know, you know, VHS
and Betamax back in like 89 or something and and then every
other game has cross play enabled.
And then even within your own game, you have cross play
enabled in other areas. To not have it in kind of the
one key part that everyone's really going to want to play
does seem like almost like an intentional miss for some
reason. Yeah, I mean, we'll see.
I, I think that'll probably get fixed down the road.
I mean, I, I get the sense even with two years to work on
things, there were just, there were some things that they just
didn't do. And I think you, there's some,
some criticism there, certainly. But it is disappointing when
something that was promised as a, a feature doesn't end up
actually happening. And there's been a few things
like that. But look, again, I'm willing to
wait until right before this the regular college football season
starts. And this is, I think one of the
big differences between the old, like the last time college
football came out as a video game was 2013, like it was 11
years ago. It was a very different world
back then. Yes, there were patches, but the
the way that video games get downloaded and used these days
is very, you know, everybody was getting a physical copy of the
game in 2013. Very few people are getting
physical copies of the game in 2024.
It's not to say that it isn't happening, but a lot of people
are just buying on whatever the store is, PS5 or the OR the Xbox
store, and downloading directly from that.
There's patches that come out more regularly.
In some ways it's a much more stabilized system because you're
not reliant on an Internet. You are relying on an Internet
connection, but you're not reliant on them getting it right
the first time. But it is disappointing, and we
see this a lot in the video game industry in general where stuff
gets released in a not ready state because there's an
announced sell date and then it has to be patched.
So if you dive in early, you can get disappointed very quickly.
And that is a problem that I think a lot of people maybe are
running into with this game. And again, I think, as I said on
the last show, just let it breathe a little bit.
And I think they're going to get a lot of those problems fixed,
at least I hope so. They got Memorial Stadium right.
Yes, looks good. The only thing, and this is kind
of always been an issue with the college football games.
I, I wish they would go, and this is a very minor Scott
thing, but I wish they would go deeper in some of the
alternative jerseys. Like if you're, if you're IU,
like UTEP has like 3 jersey choices.
Like it's just, you know, three colors.
Same with IU, although it's like they, they have two different
versions of the Trident and the eye helmet.
And I can't tell the, the difference, but there are two
different versions. But it would be cool if they
brought back like, you know, the, the Oval and the, the, the,
the Chrome striped helmet. You know, if if there was a
little more attention to detail for teams with all of their
their throwback possibilities, makes it a little bit more, a
little more, you know, things you can play around with during
a dynasty. I agree.
We'll see what happens. I mean, my, the one thing I
always like to do is do the so the create a team stuff all
happens online. I always like to create the
Chicago Maroons and put them back in the Big 10 that you
know, and then like then we have a nice regional conference.
I'll probably going to do that. There's actually some somebody's
already created the Chicago Maroons on team builder.
I'm going to put that original Big 10 team back in the Big 10.
That's a good rebuild challenge if you're looking to to do
something unique. So that's something that I will
probably be attending to. Stuff like that though with IU,
like little detail things. I think a lot of that is going
to get added in future itinerations.
It's a lot of stuff. You get 130 teams in college
football. That's a lot of little details
that you got to hit across the board.
I am interested to see how they handle all of that as we move
forward. So anyway, it's the 26th of July
and what we're going to try to do moving forward here is, you
know, we're we're going to ramp up a bit on the football side,
you know, basketball kind of in a holding pattern.
We know what the non conference schedule is going to be, Scott.
We don't know what the conference schedule is going to
be. We probably aren't going to know
that until the end of August. I would guess maybe even early
September. But this will be we'll do a lot
of football stuff here over the course of the next few weeks as
we try to get a sense of what this team's going to look like.
Obviously, we're about as much in the dark as everybody else in
terms of how the pieces are going to mesh together, but I
think we can start doing some studies and some interesting
things about the teams that Indiana is going to play and
just how Indiana is we think is going to attack things.
Obviously, you know our friends over at Bite Sized Bison, Taylor
Lehman, he's going to be doing a lot of great work with data and
we'll have him on a few times to talk about what he's seeing and
some of the projections going on there.
But that should be a fun next month as we ramp up for that
first game that Indiana hosts the the end of August.
Tailgate is always a hot 1, so we'll be prepping for that as
well. On the food side, we'll talk
about a little bit of that. So I'm excited.
We're looking forward to football season being back as it
really does feel close and looking forward to chatting
about this with you. Any anything else from you
before we wrap up today? No, it it's a, it's a very quick
minor postscript. Can I can I make one thought on
the schedule for basketball? Yeah, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, please. It's, it's not a fully formed
thought and I, I, I never fully like going down the road of, you
know, hey, I'm a season ticket holder and like, I'm spending
money on this. But it, this is, you know, when
the, everything that you said about the schedule makes sense
and I think it's all valid. I think the piece that is
sometimes missed or not discussed is it it it is just
kind of a bummer as a season ticket holder, how many games in
the non conference that Indiana controls are just games that I
really don't want to go to and I feel like I'm paying for and
don't get. And you and I used to joke about
going to like what you and I would go to the premier non
conference game and I I went back and looked in the last like
five years. So last year there was two
games, you know what, one Kansas, we finished season
ranked 27th. I guess Army is also a named
team, but they were 300 and 44th.
But it's like you didn't know like I know Army versus like,
you know, Merrimack State or whatever.
The year before was North Carolina.
That's fine. The year before that I remember
was like St. John's and you're like, I guess,
I guess this is it. The year before that was a
COVID. That was the COVID season.
Like there was just that was a funky year.
There was not a lot of non conferences fine.
The year before that you had Princeton and Florida State
Princeton, I just go again with the name 150th in the country.
And then the year before that you had kind of a nice year.
You had Marquette and Louisville both coming to Assembly Hall.
That that's kind of fun. I, I, I would just say with the
schedule, the thing that's kind of a bummer.
And, and this ties into football as a season ticket holder on
both sides. And I firmly agree with
everything football is doing with the schedule.
And I firmly agree, like we shouldn't be scheduling, you
know, better schools and football.
But it is just, you know, in a world where the varsity club
wants money and now NIL wants money from from donors.
And then, you know, pieces of that used to be part of kind of
the program are now costing extra in football.
And then you have to pay for your tickets and those ticket
prices go up. It is just a bummer.
It's like there's not a lot of fun teams coming through to see.
And it does feel like this is where basketball can step it up.
And I was looking at the schedule, you know, just over
the last couple of years, it's a lot of, you know, Kennesaw State
and Merrimack State and you know, you, you can go, you know,
we played Xavier on the road. Why not get a home and home with
them? You know, and I look, you know,
there's, there's teams like DePaul is not great.
They're a regional team. You know, I'm also, as I'm
saying my own argument, I'm kind of knocking it down.
I'm not sure it really matters like if you're just trying to
get wins, get wins. But I do wonder if there's
something, you know, maybe you look to get some, you know,
Evansville or just more regional teams that are also not great to
pad some of those wins, at least to make them a little bit more
of interesting games. If you're not going to pull one
or two better, you know, non conference games at home.
But I would just say that's, you know, it's kind of been
Indiana's MO the last five years to have one OK team come in.
It just sucks this year at South Carolina and not like a Kansas
or a North Carolina. It kind of feels like that year
and you know, 2122 with Saint John's.
But that that's just it. It's kind of 1/2 form thought
that I'm not fully convicted on. But just as someone who's paying
money, it is a bummer when you know, so many of the non
conference games are just like this.
This is all BTN Plus to me. I'm I'm offended by that last
comment. No, no, no.
Just like I. Mean like it's a BTN plus game?
Like if this is a game that would be put on BTN Plus it's no
not. Having having done play by play
for an IU game that was on Big 10 Plus last year, I'm a little
bit hurt, Scott. But yeah, I get what you're
saying though. And here's what I will say.
I think, well, hey, people wanted people wanted fights, you
know, we got it. No, I'm kidding.
Here's the thing I'll say, and I think I said this when the
schedule was first released, or at least the non conference one,
there's a balance that Indiana has to strike.
When you bring in this many new players, you've got to have some
on ramp to get to what is going to be a pretty tough Big 10
schedule just because of the slog of playing 20 games and
having some decent teams in there.
UCLA should be good, Purdue will be very good.
You know, this team's Indiana's got to deal with I as I've had
some time to ruminate on the schedule.
I think it just highlights that IU is still in this weird mode
where they're putting all their eggs in a, in a, in one basket
when it comes to the schedule. And that basket was Battle for
Atlantis and they have to do well there.
So this schedule is fine if you play good teams and at least
beat one of them there. And if they if that doesn't
happen, then the schedule won't be sufficient.
And, and I do think that fans are willing to some degree to
accept not playing name brand teams.
If you're winning a bunch of games.
Like if Indiana goes undefeated in the non conference, then I
don't think anybody's going to complain about what the schedule
was. The problem has been that
historically Indiana hasn't gone undefeated in the non
conference. And then you get upset because
not only did I, you know, not get a marquee opponent to watch,
I also just don't think that that helped Indiana in terms of
what they were trying to do. And I, I am curious how that all
plays out with this upcoming year because ultimately this,
you know, Indiana just wasn't where it needed to be.
And the advanced statistics back that up last year.
What is going to make Indiana better is, is playing better
teams going to make Indiana better?
Like you can't convince me that in 2023 Indiana wasn't helped at
least some way by traveling to play a what ended up being a
very good Xavier team on the road that they weren't helped
by. You know, they played North
Carolina, who seemed like they were going to be very good.
Even the even the losses they had to Arizona and Kansas, I
think help that team down the road in terms of understanding
how to play against Tom competition.
I don't know how, you know, this year really results in that.
And I think you can make the argument that last year those
games really didn't help Indiana that much in terms of how they
developed. So, you know, a lot of what
we're used to is, again, it's the Bob Knight method of
scheduling where you schedule all of these tough opponents.
Izzo does this all the time. It seems to it.
It historically worked for Michigan State.
Has it worked that much for Michigan State the last couple
of years? Maybe not.
And there's, you know, so you have to balance that other
calculus of I know our fans want to play against higher profile
teams, but ultimately our goal is or in our, what has to be our
mission is get the team into the NCAA tournament.
And there's a particular computer methodology that has to
be utilized in terms of who you schedule to get to that point.
And that stinks because we don't want to play like fans don't
want to see you play a computer. They want to see you actually
compete on the floor. I don't know.
I really, I, I'm torn on this because I get the, the pragmatic
nature of the schedule. I just think it leaves Indiana
open for stuff to go wrong at a level that perhaps nobody's
going to be comfortable with. I, I agree with all that.
I, I guess I, I just can, I was looking at it from the, the
point of view like, Oh, that's true, but it's like there's
somebody still has to pay for this.
It's like this is where Indiana is in a bind.
As someone who's been a season ticket holder for gosh, like
almost 20 years now, it's tough year in.
It kind of reminds me of like the airlines and the baggage
fees. If you remember way back in the
day, there used to be no baggage fees in airlines.
Then like one of the years that the gas prices, air jet fuel
went up way high and all the airlines like, all right, we're
going to put a baggage fee, but it'll go away once the air, you
know, the jet jet fuel goes down.
It never goes away. But this is kind of what it
feels like, like the prices you're always paying a premium
price for IU basketball compared to other entertainment.
I'm also a season ticket holder with the Pacers and I pay
similar rates for similar tickets And I I year in, year
out, I always feel like the Pacers provide me a little bit
more. It's also because I know that,
you know, I'm getting I'm going to see, you know, high level
teams come through game bridge. But you know, the thing with
that, with IU basketball is just the, the price is always at the
premium in the big 10 and the product and the schedule always
isn't. And, and you're everything
you're saying is right. It's just like it, it just fills
down like it's kind of becomes a problem.
And I'll, I'll end on this because there's no, do not want
to get deeper into this, but it, it becomes that problem where
you, you, you can't really schedule like a Kansas or
Michigan State right now because you don't have the team to
compete for it. But this is where, you know,
then you, you, you've got to kind of do the scheduling that
we're doing. But that's not super fun for
someone who's paying, you know, two $3000 a year for tickets to
be getting kind of a mid tier schedule.
But, but it's what you have to do to get back up there.
It's just, it's a bummer that it feels like every year you can
justify away why it has to be this way, But it's like, all
right, I'm still paying for South Carolina.
Like that's, that's basically what my non conference is paying
for. And the rest of them seem to be
giving it anyway. That's it's just the, the cost
versus what you're getting. But I I understand all the
reasons why, so I'll get off it now.
On that note, yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap up well.
We'll be back with more coming up soon.
And we'll have some VIP stuff for those of you who are on the
paid subscriber list hopefully within the next couple of days.
So thank you all again for joining us here on the show.
Thanks to our sponsors at home Field Apparel and be sure to
check out the rest of the back home network as programming is
ramping up all over the place for Scott.
I'm Galen, this is Crimson cast. We'll catch you folks.
On the flip side, bring back the bison.
Good to talk to you folks. Hello everybody.