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It's what everybody's doing. All right, Zach, welcome back.
It's been a long season for IU basketball and I wanted to first
start off by kind of getting a bit of an epitaph and of course
a post mortem on the Woodson era, which is now ended after
Four Seasons. Indiana barely missing out on
the NCAA tournament this year. So two times in four years,
Indiana doesn't make it. And it was certainly a mixed bag
in a bunch of different ways to see the the era seemed like it
ended perhaps better than it looked like it was going to end
at the beginning of February. But if you reflect back on these
Four Seasons with Mike Woodson at the helm, what's your overall
impression? What are you left with as far as
as how this period of time went for Indiana basketball?
Well first, if there's a video component to this, I hope it it.
It caught me having to physically remove my 7 year old
because he was trying to find a a piece of a Lego that is not in
my office. This is a common thread on
Crimson. Cast of Scott's sons do the same
thing during the show on a regular basis, so you fit right.
It's a it's a crisis of of substantial proportions anyway.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't know, it's it's kind of funny
like the the Woodson era just feels like it kind of covered a
lot of ground, a very short space of time because there were
these sort of like distinct storylines that like it.
I don't want to say there weren't common threads, but the
first year was so much about Indiana has to get back into the
tournament. Indiana's got to break this this
streak. Indiana has to get to a place
where it's not, you know, sort of grappling with this, this
this almighty struggle just to just to return to one of college
athletics more forgiving post seasons.
And then the second season was, you know, defined by I think
expectation at a level that no other Woodson season was in
terms of, you know, Indiana was pre season big 10 favorite that
year. That was also Trace Jackson
Davis's senior year. You know, that was a that was a
group that I think, especially by the end of the season, you
very you very much felt like a lot of that was kind of an all
or nothing year in terms of, you know, you knew trace was
leaving, Race Thompson was leaving Miller cop was leaving
Jaylen Pitchfina was leaving. There was just like such a sort
of maximize everything about this year.
And then I think, I think the last two years are the 1st 2
that feel a little bit more interconnected and, and maybe
not necessarily in a good way, but more I think in the end
reflective of, I mean, certainly obviously what eventually moved
Indiana to, to, to move on from Mike Woodson or, or everyone to
move on. I know Woodson, you know, sort
of announced he was going to step down, but also maybe a bit
of a sense that that this was this was not a the, the
direction of the program was just one that that kind of
couldn't be sustained essentially.
And you know, I mean, I've covered Tom Crean's nine year
tenure, Archie Miller's four year tenure and now Mike
Woodson's four year tenure. And it is funny to me how
distinct, how much it seems like we sort of packed into four
years under Mike Woodson. And I mean that like largely on
the court. I'm not talking about
controversy or, you know, headlines or I mean, I mean,
like largely on the court, it feels like Indiana, you know,
kind of almost kind of endured 3 distinct eras within one for
your tenure. Maybe that's a little bit
reflective of the portal era and how much teams turn over and the
fact that, you know, if there is less continuity than you are
constantly feeling like you're almost kind of seeing each team
in its own sort of space and time.
But yeah, I mean, it it I, I honestly haven't stopped to
think that much about, you know, kind of Mike Woodson's four
years just because there has been so much going on in the
last few days. But that is probably the way I
would describe it is that it it does feel like we we packed an
awful lot into a short space of time.
I mean, I think you you hit on something really interesting
there, which the portal era, it did feel like in Mike Woodson's
tenure, it almost felt like Mike Woodson got hired in a different
era, one where you were still focusing on traditional
recruiting. NIL as a matter of course was
still not a thing. It wouldn't become a thing, you
know, really in earnest until, you know, shortly after he got
hired. And this last year was a a
roster assembly like we've never seen in the history of Indiana
basketball. And, you know, you've got key
players coming in from outside. You had a couple of of holdovers
who it'll look like they were going to become role players.
It is really interesting, though, that this season ended
up almost getting saved by the guys who stuck around as
hypothetical role players, while many of the folks that got
brought in through the transfer portal ended up having to play
more supporting roles. Not it's not, you know, 100%
across the board. But if you don't have Trey
Galloway and Anthony Leal playing the way that they play
down the stretch, you're not even in conversation probably
for the NCAA tournament. So yeah, it is.
I think it's a sign of the times to some degree.
I mean, do you think obviously there was there's a lot of
question marks about how Mike Woodson got hired, what that
process was like? We've talked about that a bit
over time and that became a big talking point just in terms of
the job during this cycle. But it it does feel to some
degree like if the trajectory of college athletics had not
changed, you know, maybe this turns out differently, but it
did change. And Indiana suddenly found
itself in a spot where it it just wasn't measuring up from a
competitive level. And that is unfortunately Adna
that it shares with what happened in the Archie Miller
era and what looked like it started to happen at the tail
end of the Crean era, too. And I mean, it almost feels like
Indiana's been behind a step for a decade now.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's also really hard to contextualize
Woodson's hiring like #1 Scott Dolson's still in his first year
on the job. Or maybe like, I guess just the
other side of year one, number two, COVID.
I think we all forget Covid's still going on.
I mean, you know, I'm, I'm talking with other reporters
about what we're hearing at the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis.
We're all still wearing masks. The attendance is still, you
know, like 1/3 capacity. Nobody had any money then
because everybody was, was wondering just how big the
budget shortfall was going to be once kind of all the dust
settled and everyone could add up all the money they didn't
make on tickets and what they, you know, nobody knew quite what
they were going to lose from their TV inventory.
So like even that felt a little different.
And, and I think it was Scott Dolson, in fairness, trying to
embrace some of the more modern aspects of college basketball,
even though the problem, I think part of the problem was we
didn't really quite know what those were.
We could guess, you know, the idea it's going to look a little
bit more pro model. It's going to be a little bit
more like free agency and year to year.
And, you know, but I think that you still didn't know.
I mean, NIL didn't come into into effect in until that
summer. And really, I think it's
probably fair to say wasn't properly in place until the
following spring or summer for the most part in terms of, you
know, schools and, and what it eventually became their
affiliate collectives kind of understanding how to build up a
large scale NIL operation. You know, I, I remember talking
to, let's just say a mutual friend of ours, I think I'm
allowed to tell this story who, who runs a, a business and was
looking into open doors or one of those things kind of at the
advent of NIL. And there, there were athletes
who said that like the starting fee for NIO deal for him was
like $15,000. And that was for, you know, like
social media posts and things like nobody knew anything then.
It's kind of my point. And so, you know, in some ways
there is probably an extent to which like Woodson's tenure
almost kind of tracked a lot of the developments of this stuff.
And, you know, now Darren Devry's tenure will will kind of
bring revenue sharing into it. But I think that you make a
valid point about this team and this season about how, you know,
I mean, I think one of the quotes that really stuck out to
a lot of people on Wednesday when Darren Devries was talking
was that a roster isn't a collection of players.
It it has to fit together. And I think there was a feeling,
you know, that that this roster maybe didn't quite do that.
Now, that's always a little bit on the coach and a little bit on
the players. And, you know, I, I when when
we've kind of done our post mortems.
One thing I've said, you know, pretty consistently is I think
Mike Woodson thought he had this roster in a good place and then
it was clear that he didn't and it took too long for him to
rearrange it in a way that made sense and worked.
And, and ultimately, that's why Indiana kind of comes up just
short of making the tournament. But it, you know, in a lot of
ways, I think Woodson's Woodson's hiring is kind of like
something unto itself in this program's history because of the
place and time that it happened. But his tenure, I think has
tracked a a lot of sort of and reflected, as you would expect,
a lot of the developments in college athletics that, you
know, that we were all probably just kind of trying to get a
handle on as they were happening.
And now while we're, you know, now we have this brave new world
of revenue sharing, I think everyone is is probably able to
operate a with with a little more confidence in the ground
underneath their feet. That doesn't mean Darren Debris
is is going to, you know, immediately outperform Mike
Woodson, but I think that there's going to be a lot less
sort of, you know, figuring out as we go along essentially.
Obviously we've known officially since roughly the beginning of
February that Mike Woodson was not going to return.
The timing of that a bit odd historically, you know, given
that a lot of times as we just saw with say Texas, Rodney Terry
just got fired today or this morning.
I. Didn't see that.
I wondered if he. I wondered if he was going to.
I didn't. Yeah, that.
That just got announced, but that's normally when these
announcements happen. Kevin Keats right before the ACC
tournament. I mean, are you getting a jump
start on things? And there was a lot of
speculation about the search and the way that the search went.
You and Michael Nazolik had a a really good article today in the
Star regarding kind of the background of that process.
And obviously, I want people to go read the article, but it was
interesting a how much it seems to mirror the process that they
used to hire Kurt Signeti. But also I think everybody's
curious about how the timing of this actually worked.
There was that little segment of the press conference on
Wednesday when Devries mentioned something about Pam Witten and
Scott Dolson being respectful of like him still focusing on his
team while things were going on, which seemed to indicate like
these talks have been going on for a while.
This wasn't something that just happened in the last week.
Yeah, I mean, and I think West Virginia fans have taken it a
certain way. And I guess I understand that.
I would point out, Will Wade literally said he was talking to
NC State in a press conference yesterday and then it was
confirmed about an hour later, I think that he's going to take
the NC State job at the end of the year.
And and a West Virginia fan might say, well, yes, but that's
different because he's at McNeese State.
And I understand that sentiment too.
But the process isn't different. And you know what is?
Look, I, I I thought about this in relation to the Archie Miller
hiring. Indiana Dismissed Tom Crean on
the first day of the tournament. Archie Miller lost, I think in
his first game that season or that that tournament against
Wichita State. Sean played to the second
weekend. And the way that the the way the
supposed timeline all worked out was Archie joined his family
wherever Sean was and said, well, they were all just kind of
having a quiet moment in a room together.
Said, you know, hey, I'd love your opinion.
I think I got a shot at this IU job.
And by the end of the weekend, I remember because I was I was
back home in Atlanta for some reason, by the end of the
weekend, it was all done. So you had a timeline of, you
know, coach fired on the 1st on the day of the tournament,
starts new, you know, next coach loses his first tournament game
and is hired basically coming out of the second weekend of the
tournament. That timeline doesn't exist
anymore because of the portal, especially this year.
And we don't have to get too in the weeds with it.
I know MM and I like always rolls his eyes when I start
talking about it too much. But I do think it's important
for people to understand at least a little bit the April 7th
deadline. That's going to be very, very
important for roster construction for basketball this
year and the ability to kind of, you know, operate under quote UN
quote old NIL for one more year. You know, that that timeline
just doesn't work anymore. That sort of, you know, we'll
we'll all wait until seasons end and then, you know, that's when
we'll talk to candidates and whatever else.
And listen, you know, even before all this, search firms
were having some of those conversations, even if athletics
directors weren't. But I think what you found is,
is a bit more of an ability. I think This is why search firms
have become so much more important and, and why you've
seen kind of their influence spread is that I think probably
more what you're talking about is the, you know, the, the, the
sort of hard and fast conversations you're setting,
the, you're sitting the table so that when everybody sits down,
that stuff can happen quickly. That's the stuff that tends to
happen, I think after a season is over, you know, is, is the
literal in person, I'm going to sit down with the president.
I'm going to sit down with the athletics director.
We're going to talk about the, you know, how this works, but so
much of the stuff that used to happen in person, you know,
after the fact or after, you know, between the end of a
season and the hiring just has to happen in a in a different
timeline now. And I don't know for a fact when
everyone spoke to everyone, but I don't think you can come away
from yesterday with any take away other than that that yes,
Indiana spoke to Darren Devries at some point while West
Virginia season was still going on.
But having said that, that is just the way it works now.
And if you aren't prepared to operate according to that
timeline, then you're going to suffer for it.
Because the other thing, you know, and and I, I would never
have said this five years ago, but I do think it's relevant
now. I think there's going to be an
expectation that Indiana is, you know, should be able to compete
pretty quickly here. You know, if you look at like
the Ken Palm top 20, you got a Florida team that's in year 2
under Todd Gold in 130 games. You got a Texas Tech team in
year 200, Grant Mccaslin, you know, 125 games.
You know, Saint John's in year 2, obviously under Rick Pitino's
been a big story. You know, we can keep going down
the list to to somebody like Mark Pope, obviously, yeah,
somebody like Louisville even. I mean, even throw in in
Illinois in the sense that Brad Underwood's been there a while,
but that roster turned over completely and there's still
20th and Ken Palm with 21 wins. There are six seed like that's
you know, you don't have to go out and win a national title in
year 1. But the idea that again, the old
timeline of and and this guy's going to come in and he's going
to retain a few players and then he's going to recruit his own
guys. And once those guys are
sophomores and juniors, that's when you're really going to see
the fruits of it. Dusty Mays, another example, you
know, it it, that timeline just doesn't fit anymore.
And so you have got to be prepared to move really, really
quickly. And Indiana is, I would be very
surprised if we're not talking about, you know, by the
beginning of next week, staffing being in place, maybe even one
or two transfers, you know, sort of if not on campus, maybe
already committed. We'll see.
This stuff moves really fast anymore.
That's just the way it works. We heard Scott Dolson, we heard
Pam Witten talk about why they felt Darren Devries was a good
fit for IU basketball. You know, they talked about a
coach that could operate as Aceo.
They, they talked about his, his process based nature.
Again, very, very reminiscent of their comments on Kurt Signetti
and not just their comments, but what we saw out of Kurt Signetti
this entire year. From your perspective, not, not
Witten, not Dolson, but from your perspective,
observationally, both with IU basketball and nationwide, do
you feel like Debris is a very good fit for IU basketball?
And, and you know, what is it about him that makes you think
one way or the other about how he fits within this particular
structure and what IU wants to be?
I think I mean, I, I, I can see it both ways.
And you know, on the one hand, I don't know that you would have
looked at Darren Devries, you know, at the beginning of the
search and said that's an absolute home run.
On the other hand, number one, I'm I'm very much the person
that bangs the drum for the idea that nearly always coaches or
programs like this hire coaches that then become, you know,
great, become elite in those jobs.
You know, Bill Self to Kansas, John Calipari to to to Kentucky.
Those are the outliers and you know, and I said this to people,
to IU fans I knew at the front end of this process, I said,
look what Louisville did last year.
Look what Kentucky did last year.
Those are programs that are your peers in terms of the way they
expect their basketball team to perform, the way they support
it, the the energy of their fan base, the money behind it.
Those are Indiana's peers and one of them hired BYU's head
coach, who probably, you know, if Mark Pope had played his his
college basketball at UCLA, maybe he probably, you know, he
might still take the Kentucky job.
But obviously that's still very influential in him being the guy
there. And the other one hired a coach
who'd been at Winthrop and Charleston.
So and they both did great. I'm not criticizing either hire.
My point is they both hired coaches that they were going to
have to make into what they wanted them to be.
And we can. I won't go through the whole
list, but history says that is kind of the common task that
coaches walk here. If anything, hiring from another
high major program is not super common.
Now we can we can also have a philosophical discussion about
whether the Big 10 and the Big 12 really operate, you know, on
the same playing field anymore. In some ways they don't.
Well, on that real quick, I think some Big 12 schools do
well and granted there's going to be some revenue differences,
but I think if you look at like the Kansas, Houston, Arizona
maybe, but but this is where the Big 12's this interesting body
because there's no argument that West Virginia is in that upper
echelon. So you know, even within that
and I think to some degree within the ACC, you've almost
got a bifurcation within the conferences about who the haves
and the have nots are. And I guess what I meant was
more, you know, if you're a coach, you're thinking about
next year, but you're also thinking about 5 years from now
and five years from now, 8 years from now, 10 years from now.
The Big 12 in the ACCI suspect are not going to feel
necessarily like direct competitors to the big 10 and
the SEC financially. And and and not just financially
like, oh, how much literal money they have, but for example, how
much money they can put into revenue sharing and how they can
split it up and how NIL can support different things.
So on the like, I I look at their in debris and I see
reasons why some people might be skeptical or at least cautious.
I also just generally think, and I said this at the outset of the
search, that, you know, this job to me is a bit of a, a paradox.
And one of the elements of that, one of the, the, the, the core
sort of elements of that paradox to me anyway, was that on the
one hand, I think it's going to be easier for the next head
coach to kind of make the fan base happy quickly.
Like just just find a competitive level that in a
consistency that the team hasn't seen, especially like stop
getting blown out, you know, like on the road and stuff like
that. But on the other hand, I, I also
thought like it was going to be very hard to hire someone that
everyone wouldn't look at and be like, OK, prove it.
Because 25 years of this now, we've tried all these different
head coaches, you know, at this point, we're done just kind of
blindly buying. And you, you kind of got to
prove it to us essentially that that you're, you've got that
level in you. And I think both of those things
kind of exist. And that's why I think on the
one hand, you look at this hiring, you say, OK, he is going
to have to prove it a little bit.
But you look at it on the on another.
And I think there are some, some justifiable reasons for, for
optimism. So you know, Tony Adronia, your
friend and mine had a good point, which was that I think, I
think in only maybe one of his seven seasons as a head coach
did debris not improve his Torvic rating in the court
season. Now, I think it's a good point.
I think it's a little dangerous because the problem is the
computers, especially in the portal era, are are going to
tend to naturally downgrade mid majors at the expense of high
majors. Cause high majors will spend the
offseason bolstering their roster with players that the the
computers say should make them a lot better.
This is why, for example, you've seen Indiana struggle against
it's it's pre season Kim pom number in the last two 3-4 years
consistently under Mike Woodson. But I think Tony's point is
valid, which is his teams have consistently gotten better
against the formulas that you need to like you to make life
easier in February and March in college basketball and that we
don't need to get into a debate. I I have thoughts on those
formulas as well, but that's that's a a conversation unto
itself. You're not a not a big BPI guy
these days like. I, I think I, I mean my elevator
speech is that I think the, I think the net, Ken Palm,
etcetera, need to be reconfigured for a world with
super conferences. Because I think what, what we
are seeing here is that you, you have these conferences that are
so large and are so naturally inflated in those numbers by the
quality of coaches and and players etcetera, that they just
sort of it's a closed loop. Exactly.
They, they feed on themselves and we say, my God, these
conferences are amazing. But the problem is that they're
just beating each other. And like, I had a friend
yesterday who said Oklahoma's a 19, the only one, six games in
the SEC, What are we doing? I said, I have bad news for you
about Texas. You know, the formula needs to
be reworked a little bit if it's saying that 6 and 12 in any
conference is good enough. But that's set that to one side.
I thought one thing that was interesting about Indiana's own
analysis. I know Scott Dolson sort of
trumpeted the the the record in close games.
And I'm always a little bit skeptical of stuff like that
because there's so many things that can turn a close game.
But one of the things that that struck me was I, I, I think
Indiana did this, you know, kind of specifically to make sure if
it was looking at a coach who had a big body of work in the
mid major that they weren't kind of hiring another Archie Miller
type where the numbers looked good.
But the performances that the the underlying performances were
were more concerning. Archie won 90 games, I think, in
his first Four Seasons at Dayton.
He inherited that job from a coach who'd won 97.
I think Drake won. If I'm remembering the numbers
right there in our story, I just don't have them in front of me.
Drake won 40 games in the four years that the preceding
Devreese's hiring said. They won 977 and 17 in the four
year. Yes, and he he won like 95.
He won 2420262527 and 28 in a six year span.
So the point is, you know, that that what they were looking for
is proof that someone built something, not just that they
inherited and sustained and maybe sort of refashioned in
their own, you know, through their own image or their own
philosophies, something that they built something and Debris
very much did it. Drake and I know there are
people who say, well, it's 'cause he had his son.
Well, he didn't for the first three years.
So, you know, it it, I mean, you know, he goes to the NCAA
tournament in, in 2021. There are people who have
reservations about his lack of, of NCAA tournament wins.
And I understand that. You know, I don't think that's
that's completely unfair. But here's where I come back to
the idea that the job kind of makes the coach a little bit.
Danny Hurley had not won an NCAA Tournament game for anyone until
he won the first one on the road to his first national title.
He had been to the NCAA tournament four times, twice at
Rhode Island, twice at UConn, and he'd not won.
Unless there was a First four-game in there somewhere
that I can't, I don't see. Excuse me, I'm sorry, I take it
back. He did win two games at Rhode
Island. Then he went Four Seasons at
UConn without winning a tournament game before he won,
before he won the first game in his first win at UConn was
during the 2023 run to his first to the two national title.
So my point is, you know, you can kind of see those sorts of
things both ways. What Indiana felt like it was
confident in was it was getting somebody who was who had made
his own success. And West Virginia's a small
sample size, but I think I think A10 win improvement was the best
single season turn around in that program's history.
And you know, you can certainly see some marker points in in
West Virginia's sort of metric performances, particularly
defensively from last season to this season.
And that was with a pretty substantial roster turnover.
And then, of course, he lost probably his best player, Tucker
Devries, his son after eight games.
So Indiana felt good about the idea that they were getting
somebody who was kind of the author of his own success.
And I thought that was and a really interesting way of
looking at why someone like Darren Devries might and and
listen, Ben McCollum might wind up having a better career.
But might, you know, separate from someone like Ben McCollum,
right? The other interesting aspect,
like if you looked at the names that were getting mentioned in
the search, I mean, there's other factors at play just
besides success. You brought up a really good
point earlier, which we brought up on the show as well, which is
this is an era of college basketball where if you have the
financial backing and you're already getting recruits and
you're already having success, there's a bunch more programs
that you can potentially win a national title at or at least
get to national prominence than there were 20 years ago.
And you know, as much as people would be like, well, why, why
wouldn't they'd be able to go out and get like a Scott Drew or
ATJ Olzenberger? It's like you can get to a Final
Four at Baylor or win a national title.
As we've seen, you can get to a Final Four at Iowa State.
No one would have, I mean, you grew up in the South, like a
very occasionally in Auburn or in Alabama would have a great
season and settle back into the mire.
That's not how it is now. And, and the idea that you had
to get to an Indiana or a North Carolina or a Kansas in order to
actually be competitive for a national title, it just isn't
the case. So as much as I think for a lot
of IU fans, the initial rejection of debris and there
weren't as many it act the, the response was actually a lot
better than I thought it would be among the fan base.
But for those who were skeptical, a lot of it was,
well, why couldn't Scott Dolson pull a bigger name?
And and that's just unfortunately, I think for a lot
of IU fans, egos like it's just not as important to be at an IU
in order to have national success.
Why move if you've already got a good thing going where you're
currently at? No.
And I think there's I think there's a few layers to that.
I mean, first of all, like, OK, so look at the look at the the
teams that won the national title in the 90s, UNLV, Duke,
Duke, North Carolina, Arkansas, UCLA, Kentucky, Arizona,
Kentucky, UConn. And that decade, sort of you
want to see it this way, wraps off with Michigan State.
And then after that comes Duke, Maryland, Syracuse, UConn, UNC,
and you don't like you're only three real interlopers.
There are UNLV, which had been so good in the 80s and 1990 was
kind of the they went to a yeah, they.
They've been good for 15 years at that point. 90 Arkansas in
94, which was you had a generational coach.
And then if you, if you kind of want to see Florida as an
interloper again with the generational coach, point is,
you know, you, you, you get up into, you know, more recent
years. Yes, you have your Kansas's and
you have your Yukons, but you've also got Virginia in there.
You've got Villanova pulling back up in there.
You've got Louisville coming back to a level of prominence
that you really had lost for probably 20 years under Denny
Crum. And then the other thing you
haven't, I guess I that sounded really harsh on Denny Crum.
He was a great coach. At the end of his tenure,
Louisville had he had dipped a little bit of his.
Career, like it, fell apart. Yes, it was, and Denny was a
delightful interview too, by the way.
We all miss him, but you know it.
The other thing that has happened here too is the money
has changed in all the ways you would imagine what these
programs can do. So for example, Alabama can pay
Natoats an amount of money that A, makes it hard to pull Natoats
out of Alabama and B, also gets convinces Natoats to say, yeah,
you can put an, an 8 figure buyout in my contract.
Because the flip side is not only are you going to pay me the
money I need, not only are you going to pay my assistants the
money they need, but like, I've heard anecdotally that most NCC
programs are going to start at 4 or 5 million in revenue share.
You know, and I, I, I, I think that at least near term, I think
their thought process is NIL can cover the gap in football.
We'll put a little more toward basketball than people expect.
Obviously we'll see if that works long term, but there's
just more money in especially the SEC.
The SEC is kind of the big one here.
Again, the Big 12, I think. And, and I'd point out Indiana
did just take a coach out of the Big 12.
You know, the Big 12 is 1 where maybe 578 years from now it
looks different, but the SEC is the one where it's like, you
know, Todd Golden 8 figure buyout.
Bruce Pearl, I don't know what his buyout is, but he's
incredibly comfortable at, at Auburn.
And Nate Oates has an 8 figure buyout.
You know, I, I don't know what Dennis Gates buyout is, but I
don't think Indiana was necessarily ever as as sort of
intensely, you know, locked in on somebody.
I think Mark Byington has like a $12 million.
Yeah, his his Buyouts 12 if I'm not mistaken.
If that's the bill, basketball coach has a $12 million buyout.
I mean, yeah, it's that's that's.
The point is both because of the ways that these schools, the
money these schools have allows them on the one hand, to keep
these coaches comfortable and competitive.
You know, whether it's their own salaries, their own staffing
pools, their own resources, or it's NIL, it's revenue sharing,
whatever. And then it also gives these,
you know, these these athletics departments the leverage to be
able to protect themselves with enormous buyouts.
You know, Mark Pope and and Darren Devries, I believe are at
least publicly known to basically kind of now be the
joint highest bought out coaches to be high.
Like if it's a hiring buyout, not a firing buyout, Pope was at
six million last year. Indiana's going to be with
taxes, I think just a little bit.
And they're also going to assume a bit of a little bit of the
duty to Drake from West Virginia.
So they're going to go a little more than 6,000,000.
I think that's basically about as high.
The only one that's possibly higher is Ed Cooley to
Georgetown. But we'll never know those
numbers exactly because he went from 1:00 private school to
another. So it it there are people who
think that might be the highest buyout that's ever been paid.
These schools just have the money to keep the the coaches
comfortable and also to protect themselves, to not let the
coaches get poached. Like, Illinois would never lose
a coach to Kansas now. They would just have too much
money to be able to do it. Yeah.
Well, and it's interesting because there's an argument, I
mean, there, there was a lot of rumors that debris was Iowa's
number one target and that Iowa just could not come up with
enough money on the NIL front. Now, that doesn't necessarily
mean I Iowa doesn't have money. It means Iowa's spending that
money elsewhere like they're they're putting that money
towards football. I mean, there's a theory I've
heard and maybe it's been confirmed already, I'm not sure.
But you know, West Virginia just hired Rich Rodriguez as their
head football coach. They do not have an
inexhaustible supply of available money to spread
around. And cultural perspective, I
think you can make an argument that football at West Virginia
is just more more vital to their culture than basketball.
You know, there's a possibility that there were NIL commitments
that weren't going to be able to be kept because that money now
had to go to support the football program, that there are
resource allocation issues at a lot of these schools.
It's why I thought, well, you know, even somebody like Tommy
Lloyd might be a possibility in the search because of the huge
financial issues Arizona's got and the idea that at some point
they have to choose where are we putting the money and where is
it going to have its biggest impact.
So there's a lot of you, you bring up a lot of great points.
There's a lot of financial data points that end up entering into
some of these decisions that the average fan is still not really
attuned to a program to think about.
Because I don't even think the industry has really gotten its
head wrapped around how all of this is supposed to work.
And you know even how the post settlement realities financially
of college sports are going to shake themselves out.
And where the soft power is compared to the hard power.
So like for example, the Big 12 right now, if you ask me for my,
my greatest fear about if, if I'm, if I'm the Big 12, a fan of
the Big 12 or a conference in the, or a team in just a Big 12
fan, I wear a Big 12 cap everywhere.
That's a conference without a single team, single program
right now that can legitimately compete for a national
championship in football. And like that, I mean, that that
is the currency in college sports.
It's, it's why the ACC, you know, sort of a went through a
prolonged legal battle and B eventually willingly sort of
ripped up its, its, its previous, you know, revenue
sharing structure, not revenue with, with athletes, but within
its own conference to make sure that it kept the two or three
programs that it has right now that give it currency and agency
in a College Football Playoff role in a College Football
Playoff conversation. Because that is, that is the
next great frontier in, in, you know, basically who who controls
the keys to the Kingdom in college athletics.
Big 12 doesn't have that. So if I'm the Big 12 school, to
your point, and I've got to figure out how to cut my cloth,
I, I'm probably in most places, maybe not Kansas, maybe not
Arizona, but in most places, I'm leaning toward football and
trying to say we've got to be better at this.
Because then you look at like the Big East, for example, where
there are people who think these, there are going to be
some Big E like the, in all likelihood the, the big E
schools are going to be the ones with the most money in just raw
Rev share because they don't have to serve football.
They don't have to feed football.
But the flip side of that is the Big East is going to have
precious little political power going forward.
And things like tournament expansion or when the tournament
expands, when it's time here in four or five years to start
renegotiating, you know, NCAA tournament television revenues
and things like that, how that money gets spread around.
And so, you know, it's it's you have all of these.
You have a lot of different sort of constituencies within what we
would call in basketball terms, the high major conferences that
basically all look at the same problem trying to find their own
solution. The only two conferences that
don't really have a big problem or at least have the least
number of problems by far, are the SEC and the Big 10.
And that is why you see, you know, schools when you see, you
see coaches trying to get into those conferences and why, you
know, West Virginia fans might be upset that Darren Devries
leaves after just one season. But Darren Devries might say,
listen, you know, hey, culturally it's probably a
better fit for him, right? He's from Iowa.
Like I, I, I heard that when he took the Drake job, part of it
was just like, I'm just so happy to be close to my family and,
and, you know, yadda, yadda, yadda.
But also part of it is just you've got to find your way into
one of those two conferences. If you can use this as an
example, West Virginia was rumored to be considering a
coaching change in football. Throughout last season, West
Virginia had a prominent alum who was having a remarkable
amount of success at a program that historically does not
measure up to West Virginia in football.
Doesn't even really come close, right?
If we're talking about, you know, 30 years, 50 years, 75
years, the cultural importance of football at West Virginia
compared to where this coach was, the, you know, the, what
would be perceived to be sort of the infrastructure around those
programs. And yet at no point did it ever
seem like Kurt Signetti was going to seriously entertain the
possibility of leaving Indiana for his alma mater.
But the flows reversed almost immediately when Indiana
basketball called. Yes, part of it is the prestige
of IU basketball, but it's also that life in the Big 10.
Five years, three years from now, five years from now, 10
years from now is a lot more manageable than life in the mid
12. Final question for you on the
podcast today, Zach, Indiana acted relatively early.
They get their coach hired essentially 6 days before the
portal opens. Do you have any thoughts right
now about the timetable from now until, let's say, the beginning
of June in terms of, you know, when do you anticipate we're
going to hear news on what the staff looks like?
When do you anticipate we're going to hear?
And are you surprised we haven't seen more IU players enter the
portal yet? And, you know, how would you
expect or how would you you suggest IU fans approach looking
at the way the roster will likely come together in terms of
the timetable over the next 6 to 10 weeks?
Yeah. I mean, I think we're probably
talking more than that or fewer than that, right?
Like like quicker than that is, is what I'm trying to say.
You know, staffing I think will happen relatively quickly.
There's different things you got to solve here.
Debris had, by my understanding, a pretty large staff of West
Virginia. Indiana had the number one
staffing pool in the Big 10 last year.
So whether he wants to pull staffers from West Virginia,
whether he wants to go hire someone from somewhere else, I
think, you know, that's going to happen fairly quickly.
I would expect there to be some sort of general manager type
person within that, you know, and The thing is every program
has somebody like that. It's just that some programs now
are making a big deal of calling it general manager and and
boasting about how much they're paying that person.
You know, like how you football has like AI forget what the
exact title is, but basically like a director of, you know,
like recruiting and player personnel.
It's the same idea. It's someone who is trying to be
a fence for this is these are the qualities we're looking for.
I'm going to scout all these players.
I'm going to bring these players to, you know, the, the, I'm the
talent evaluator and my staff are the talent evaluators and
we're going to bring these players that we find to the
staff to the head coach. They're going to say, let's
pursue him, let's pursue him, you know, and so forth.
It's, it's the same process. It's just that some people are,
are making, I think A, and I'm not saying that like maybe some
of these general managers aren't going to have a little bit more,
you know, influence or whatever. But I, I think there is also
kind of an element of, you know, just sort of making a big deal
about the title. When a lot of these programs
have someone like that, it just maybe they call it something
different. Because let's let's be very
clear that there is a demonstrable difference between
the general manager and college who is directly answerable to
the head coach and a general manager or a president of
operations in the pros who probably has, at least at a
fundamental level, the the authority to fire the head
coach. So you can call him a general
manager, but it's not what a general manager is in in the NBA
or the NFL. As for the roster, I guess I
will take people in the weeds with us now because you probably
know this. Again, Mike always rolls his
eyes when I start into this conversation.
But I do think it's important for people to understand the
house settlement is scheduled to be approved on April 7th.
It may not be, but as of right now, that's the deadline
everyone has to work with. The NCAA has said that it's NIL
clearing house will go into effect April 7th.
I don't think it actually opens its doors until like July 1st or
June something. But the NCAA has said every NIL
deal signed on or after April 7th will be subject to fair
market value analysis by Deloitte via the clearing house.
Which means if you sign in an IL deal for $500,000, then if it's
on or after April 7th, Deloitte gets to look at that.
It gets to look at your profile, your, you know, your brand, how,
how good you are, how many social media followers you have,
whatever. And say either A, yes, for, for
the work done here, for the, you know, the, the scope of these
deals. That's a fair number.
That's, you know, that's his, his or her fair market value or
B, No, it's not. And then the clearing house can
reject the deal and basically send it back and say we don't
approve this. Now, everyone obviously expects
that at some point someone will challenge the the Clearing
House's power to to to do this total.
Hours are salivating right now over.
This then we'll then we'll see what happens.
But it's everyone is operating or attempting to operate in a
world where for the next, what is that like 3 weeks basically?
Yeah, it's, it's a little over. It's about 2 1/2 weeks.
For the next like 2 1/2 weeks, you can have your cake and eat
it too. You can have NIL the old way,
which is you can just, you can decide what the number is.
You know, like the the number I've heard is that basically
it's about 85 fifteen, 85% collective money, 15% like the
true NIL that you just go find because you're AIU basketball
player or, you know, an Ohio State football player or
whatever. So you can you know, you can
have those numbers as they already are right now, but then
you can also have revenue sharing, which is going to be
you know, it probably at least a few $1,000,000 in a place like
Indiana after April 7th. You can have Rev share, but the
NI LS probably going to be reined in a little bit, at least
for now. So I think the I know the goal
is going to be for everybody, and This is why Indiana making
their hire as quickly as they did helps is you want to get as
much of that roster in place as possible by April 7th.
And you know, yes, there are sort of waves of portal players
and do you want to wait for somebody to come off of final
four team or you know, you always see some mid major
players that go into the portal, declare for the draft, go
through the draft process knowing that they're going to
come back out again. Well, here's The thing is the
players are going to have to respond to this too, because
their agents, their representation are going to be
saying, listen, you know, the financial opportunity for you is
much greater if we get in ahead of this deadline.
So let's get these visits done. You know, let's get all this.
But if if you're committed to planning college next season,
I'm just telling you there is a a demonstrable financial
difference between the opportunities available to you
before April 7th and after April 7th.
And so I think you are going to see things speed up pretty
quickly on the roster front. The since I have gotten and that
you you mentioned only a couple of Indiana players are in the
portal so far. You know, you're in the breeze
even said yesterday a lot of them are on spring break.
The since I've gotten is that there's an expectation most of
the roster will turn over. Obviously already Indiana was
was looking at a fair number of outs just based on, you know,
graduation and things. But I think there were, I think
there were like 9 players that in theory could come back, two
of whom have gone into the portal.
We don't know what Lou Goody's status is, but you'd like to get
the year back. You know, I would be surprised
if you see more than just a small handful of those back next
year already. Of course, everyone expects
Tucker Debris to to come out of the portal to Indiana.
I think a couple of other intriguing West Virginia players
have hit the portal that I would imagine like Jonathan Powell's a
six six for the wing shooter that actually played high school
basketball cave cups. I I wouldn't be stunned if if
Indiana would would like to get involved there.
I believe, and this is more tenuous, but I believe Darren
Debris has some sort of connection to Josh Dix, the
shooting guard who's in the portal from Iowa.
So you know, they're going to be a lot of names as there always
are. But expect the portal in
particular to move quickly because everyone's going to
understand that it's going to be easier and for players, probably
more lucrative to get in before the April 7th deadline and still
be operating under the old rules plus the new rules rather than
the new rules, and then amending the old rules to just kind of
see what happens with the clearing house.
So staffing I think will happen fairly quickly.
You know, roster I think is going to move really fast.
And if you if you told me, for example, that, you know,
Indiana's already got, you know, half its roster locked down by
the end of next week, You know, again, also remember, like
Prince Cecily still in maybe a couple currently committed West
Virginia signees open their process back up, that kind of
thing. I would not be surprised if
Indiana's already got a sizeable chunk of its 2026 roster kind of
sewn up by, let's say, a week from today or a week from
tomorrow. Well, I think that'll be good
news for a lot of IU fans is I think everybody's ready to turn
the page. I think everybody's excited to
see what the roster is going to look like and what the coaching
staff is going to look like. So after a lengthy coaching
search, a coaching search that felt like it went on forever as
the season was going on, it would be nice to just kind of
turn the the the to the next chapter and let IU fans dream a
little bit in the offseason. So Zach, I appreciate you taking
the time to join me on the show as always, and we'll look
forward to chatting with you maybe at the end of the the
roster cycle to see where Indiana landed on all these
things. No thanks for having me.
I mean, it's, it's been finally kind of coming up for air.
It's been a a busy few days. So I think we're going to we we
were going to podcast yesterday and that turned out to be a, a
fool's errand. So that we're going to I think
we're going to I think we're going to huddle today as well.
So. Well, I appreciate you taking
the time to join us and we appreciate Zach Ostrom and being
on the show. IU Insider for the Indy Star
joining us here. Be sure to check out Mind Your
banners and all Zach's work at indystar.com.
I'm Galen Clavio for Crimson cast in the back home network.
Thanks for our presenting sponsor, Home Field apparel.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, staying ever
daunted. Bring back the Bison.
So everybody.