You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast.
Galen Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you.
Happy May. It's May 2nd of 2025.
We got through April, Scott, Long month.
April was a long month. Lot happened in April, but only
30 days. I know.
But you know, we went from not having a roster in basketball to
having an almost complete roster in basketball.
And yeah, we got Little 5. We got a bunch of other stuff
with football, spring game. I mean, there's just a ton of
things that happened. I went on a bourbon tasting with
Mike Kadik and Sydney Parrish. A lot occurred.
That's the end of the honest era in Milwaukee.
Yes. I was at Game 5, as were you.
Yeah, yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll experience.
We'll chat about that a little bit later.
That's that's an experience. I think that's worth worth
retelling for the peeps out there.
But before we get started, just a reminder we're brought to you
by Home Field Apparel. Your place to go for the finest
in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs.
And as I often say, Scott, not just college fashions, but they
just launched an updated IMS. I know they come into race.
It's like they do the little 5 they do IMS.
They have a whole Ed Carpenter line.
It's it's like they're almost A at shirt brand for May and it's
like college is secondary. I mean, you know, that's a great
point. Yes, but this new IMS collection
looks awesome. I mean, the the last year's
looked awesome too. And so it's not like it's a
surprise that it looks awesome, but it's a maybe a mild surprise
of how awesome it looks. I'm gonna pop it up on the
screen here so the, the folks that are watching on YouTube or
Spotify can see you've got that greatest spectacle bomber
jacket. You can see there.
That thing is a spectacle. It is I, I'm not sure that I can
define what that bomber jacket looks like.
It's, it's a lot of colors, but it's cool looking, nice
checkered line snapback hat. You've got some tanks which I
will not be purchasing because because no one wants to see
that. You got some cool T-shirt
designs. You got some very basic like
those those straightforward heavyweight IMS TS that that
black one in particular looks awesome and just a bunch of
other cool apparel as well, including another hoodie from
the home field apparel who I think is.
Great wearing any of those at the track it's funny we're
taking our friends and neighbors they've never been to the 500
they moved here from Iowa. We're, we're taking them this
year and just just this week the, the wife texts like what
you know, should we coordinate outfits?
It looks fun. And I was like, what should we
wear? And I was like, you cannot be
underdressed or overdressed. Like there is just, there's no
way to dress wrong. And you will find somebody below
you or above you at IMS if you've not been to the race.
I mean, you'll see all those looks, everything you just saw
on the home field page, you'll see at the track.
And it's just like it is, I'm like, wait till you get there
because you can't explain what you're going to see.
It when you when you create a medium sized city in a day from
a bunch of people from all over the place, they're gonna look
different from each other as as people in a regular city would
look. But yes, the the only thing that
should really be dictating what you wear to the 500 is a
combination of the weather and your own comfort level and I.
Just said wear comfortable shoes, right?
That's the only given everything else is like, you could wear a
bikini and you won't be underdressed and you could wear
a suit and if somebody might have a better suit than you, so.
Go to homefieldapparel.com you can get part of their new or the
entire new collection. Use the code HOME 23 Get 15% off
your first order again home field apparel.com proud
presenting sponsor of the back home network.
Also just a reminder, we are on YouTube.
Go subscribe to search back home network on YouTube.
We're we're getting ever closer to that 8000 subscriber mark.
We're going to hit that over the summer as we get ready for
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We certainly appreciate any support you folks are willing to
give. So Scott, we put the bat signal
out for questions from the audience on both the back home
Network Discord and also on Twitter.
So we've got several questions that we want to try to tackle.
We're not going to be able to get to all of them.
We got a ton of questions from both areas.
So we'll try to hit the ones that make the most sense for
this context. I am going to, in case anybody
asks or is curious, I am going to have a separate podcast I'm
going to do at some point with Taylor Layman from Bite Sized
Bison as we breakdown some of these recruits that IE
football's getting. I did want to lead with the news
today, which I thought was really interesting and and
really highlights what a fundamentally different era we
are in right now. So news that occurred or news, I
mean news occurred, whatever news broke or whatever the
wording would be that about noon today, 11 O clock or noon that
Derek Owings, the strength and conditioning coach for IU
football, was being heavily courted by USC.
Normally when you see that kind of a message, it's like, well,
the guy's gone. And that's a big one 'cause, you
know, Owings clearly took IU strength and conditioning to a
completely different level this past year.
He'd been with Signetti at JMU. And then we got the news a
couple hours later from Pete Thammel that IU had gotten a big
pay raise and it signed a three-year extension basically.
And I just think we need to pump the brakes for a second and
think about like, IU just fended off USC, one of the top football
brands in the history of college football.
And paid him enough that he felt like, you know what I need to
stay in Bloomington and continue to work for IU football.
This is this is an, an incomprehensible era of IU
athletics and IU football. Scott, I don't even know how to
process this news that that should be the marketing slogan
for next year. An incomprehensible setting it
it used to be 1015 years ago. If USC just accidentally butt
dialed one of our coaches, that would be them Like, Oh yes,
I'll, I'll take the job. I mean, the idea that you know,
you're getting interest from USC is, is nuts.
Yes, all everything you just said.
I was talking to somebody else about this.
The the thing that I love that Signetti is doing is, you know,
I was talking to somebody else just about how some colleges
seem to be caught flat footed in this entire new realm of using
actually having to spend money at a pretty high clip for nil.
And some some colleges just look like, wow, we're not ready for
this and we have to actually spend our money.
What what are we doing? What I've really enjoyed is you
see Signetti in all of his interviews in the spring talk.
It's not even just a hey, we're doing well.
He always says we got to have continued support.
It's like we need, We've had great support and we need to
continue having support from the president athletic department.
Like, I love that Signeti's not taking, it's like the pressure's
not off. He's still putting pressure on
the team talking about, you know, the practice wasn't good
enough today in April. But I think he's still putting
pressure on Dolson and, you know, Pam Whitten and the
president and just everyone at IU like, hey, this was great,
Keep it up. And and what you see the results
are IU steps up and fends off USC and gets more money here.
And I think if you asked, you know, if you asked Signeti best
about this, he would say, that's great.
We need to continue showing support like this in the future.
I mean, that's what I love is it's not just, hey, we had a
great year. It's we had a good time.
We have good support. We've got to continue it.
But you saw it with a, a higher, you know, a, a rehire, a a raise
like this. Well, I think you're seeing it
also in the portal activity. IU's been able to pull a couple
of folks in in the portal and look, Signeti's 100% right.
Like this is not just about generating initial support.
It's about maintaining a base. And, and the, the weird thing
and the, the not great thing from a overall financial
perspective is that there is no median.
Like the median, the median keeps going up.
It feels like every, it's just, it's just endless.
Yeah, it's, it's, this is what happens with an unregulated
marketplace. And that is ultimately one of
those things where IU doesn't have a choice if they're going
to try to keep pace. And what I've been impressed
with is, you know, they I think it was earlier in the year, I
think it was Brian Haynes was getting courted.
They end up ponying up to keep him.
You know, Pitino Sinceri left, Pitino Sinceri went for a better
job, like a, a better a better title.
And, you know, you already had Mike Shanahan here and Kurt
Signetti, you know, helping to, to kind of pilot things.
And so I, I'm just thrilled. And like Wes Houston said on
Twitter, we used to roll over and give up when programs like
USC came calling. Now we pony up and figure out a
way to make it happen. We're in the multiverse now.
And it does kind of feel that way.
It just kind of feels like IU has decided almost overnight, we
are going to be a player. We are going, we're not just
going to let you take our best people.
And that this is where if you don't follow coaching moves or
player moves too closely, historically in college
football, this is what happens. Like it's not, it's not just
that Michigan has resources and Indiana doesn't have resources
historically. It's that when Indiana gets
somebody good or, you know, Alabama comes and takes them or
Michigan comes and takes them. And I use like whelp or.
Unfortunately, for a lot of years, none of those programs
are even coming to take people because there's nobody worth
taking. Right.
I'm saying the rare, the rare occasion when you'd have
somebody that would be worth hanging on to, it just wouldn't
happen. Well, yeah, the thing that I'll
say because it will start to happen, you know, you you've you
mentioned this earlier, you've mentioned on different pods, you
know, these are kind of, you know, lateral moves like going
from strength and conditioning from IU to USC.
You can fight those off. If this, you know, if he had
been if if it's the, you know, strength and conditioning coach
to like to offensive coordinator, you can't stop
those moves like and I think we're going to start seeing.
So, you know, and Caleb de Boer left, he left to be a head
coach. And that's one of those where
there's really no, you know, IU fans need to be prepared because
I think we're going to start seeing in the next year or two,
our coaches are going to probably be leaving for moves
up. And those are things, you know,
if somebody offers you a head coaching job, there's only so
many of those. If you're not a coordinator,
somebody offers you a coordinator job, you got to take
those. But in these like, for like
situations, you, you're right. Normally we would just say, oh,
well, Congrats. Do you, do you want some
forwarding mailing address labels?
And it's like, no, we'll, we'll, we'll match that often.
We'll probably exceed it. Let's dive into some of the
questions that other folks asked and, and again, we had a a ton
of them and I think let's for the moment, we're going to kind
of get jump back and forth a little bit between football and
basketball. We had a lot of questions about
the football or the the basketball roster more than
anything else. And I guess maybe we'll dive in.
I'm going to see if I've got some football items that we can
tackle first and foremost. And as I'm looking through the
questions here, so who's your knight or who's your Dada asks
or Dada, any holes or positions of concerns for IU football
following spring ball? I mean, here's the thing, I feel
pretty good about who they brought in and the fact that
they still seem to be making some moves around the defensive
line. And this is something I'm going
to talk about with Taylor a bit more.
But the big thing with IU is this like they they clearly have
a good starting quarterback. This is a guy, as we'll talk
about in one of the other questions, who has gotten mocked
a couple of Times Now in the first round, right?
So this upcoming year, which the IU having first round draft pick
Costco as a quarterback is not a thing that occurs.
But I think people really are turned on by Fernando Mendoza's
physicality, His his, you know, his ability to throw the ball
effectively feels like a really great pick up in the portal,
like almost one that was undervalued at the time that it
occurred. But that it's one that I I
liked. I liked it at the time.
And the more film I watched, I've liked it even more.
You, you know, you go across the different skill positions.
I feel really good about what they did there.
I'm still, I'm interested to see how the tight end position works
out on offense because I think you've got some really good
possibilities there. But obviously you have to see
how it plays out. The offensive line is obviously
going to be one of the big ones. And again, they went out and got
guys, you know, they, they go out and, and they get a starting
center. They go out and get a guy who
hadn't played that much at Ohio State, but he's got a lot of
physical promise. You know, they, they seem to
have dudes there that they can roll with.
And it just is going to depend on how quickly they coalesce.
You know, I think Taylor's talked about this a lot, you
know, but there's questions around the secondary and who
steps up and what they're doing. You know, so I think that's
probably where the biggest question marks are, is, you
know, does the defense coalesce around the personnel sets that
they've got? And you know, that's that's
where the coaching staff, I think last year did just
tremendous work. I mean, you look what they did.
They, you know, CJ W was not on the team the previous year.
They had to integrate him into the guys that had come over from
JMU and the the returning players they were on the roster
and they did a really good job of that.
So I feel pretty good right now about where IU football is at in
terms of where the roster is. Now the the caveat I'll throw in
on that is that I don't think that you could really say for
sure that this is a team that could repeat, you know, 11 and
one or or do better, but that it may be a better roster, but it
might have a slightly worse outcome simply because the
schedule is it looks at least on paper right now, Scott, that
it's going to be a harder schedule than last year.
So I'm not really looking at anything and saying, well,
there's a major concern there or there's a major concern there.
But I like generally what they've done up to this point.
It's really just going to depend on how it meshes over the course
of the rest of the summer and into full ball.
Yeah, no, I, I would, I I'm going to kind of leave this one
for you and Taylor to and go more in depth in.
But I, I also like you, the more I've dug into Mendoza have been
really, really intrigued because watching the film from him on
Cal, it's like he does a lot of RPO.
He's just a little bit bigger and has seems to have a little
bit of a bigger arm than Rourke did.
And as we know, Rourke had a torn ACL the entire season.
And I continually go back to it just feels like if you are a
coach and you know your quarterback is a torn ACL,
you're probably throwing half your playbook out just like,
well, we can't run that. And.
So. He was, you know, we were
already kind of 1 hot hand tied behind our back.
So I'm, I'm excited that I'll let you pull it up.
There was a couple questions about football 1 about like what
we thought the the the attendance would be the first
couple games. I was going to get to that
second, but the next one I was going to get to from Hoosiers
7681. Where exactly is a fair slash
justifiable place for IU football fans expectations to be
for next season given last year's blockbuster contrasted by
the overall history of the program?
Well worded question there. So I think I said this when we
first really started looking at the schedule in earnest after
last year ended. I think right now it would be a
big disappointment if if the floor for the season wasn't
seven wins. Just given the way that things
lay out. I'm anticipating Indiana's
probably going to win 8 or 9. I wouldn't be shocked if they
went over that. I think it'll just require this
team to continue to take leaps in ways that, you know, they
they didn't even necessarily fully take last year.
And I guess what I mean by that is if you look at the schedule,
the the tough games, the home game against Illinois, the game
at Iowa, the game at Oregon, the game at Penn State, like those
are all really challenging games even for very, very good teams.
And you know, it's for Indiana. I think the big question mark is
going to be how how much of last year transfers over and how much
confidence does Indiana have going into these games and how
much, you know, consistent contribution can they get from
the new players? Can they do better in terms of
their overall offensive efficiency?
Can they do more in terms of, you know, continue to make stops
on defense and force turnovers and all the things that made
last season so special for IU? It is.
There's no question that when you look back at what Indiana
did last year, it was an amazing season.
But it also was one of those seasons where things broke like
exactly right. You, you know, UCLA was worse
than people thought that they would be.
Maryland was worse than people thought they would be.
Nebraska was worse than people thought they would be.
You know, Washington was about the same, maybe slightly worse.
Michigan was certainly worse. And Indiana deserves credit for
winning all of those games in the way that they did.
But, you know, I think relying on that to like go into Iowa,
where Indiana does not historically play well, or going
into Penn State where Indiana has never won a football game
might be a bridge too far. That said, you know, if Indiana
wins 8 or 9 games, as I've said over and over again, that is
already like one of the top five most successful seasons in IU
football history. And I don't.
Well, I've talked to a ton of IU football fans.
A ton of IU football fans talk to me.
I have not detected from anybody that they are concerned about an
8 or 9 win season. I think that would be a great
baseline and I think it's bonus. On top of that, but Scott, where
are you landing on this season so far?
Very similarly. I mean, the the thing that I've
been telling people is mostly, you know, non IU fans who are
trying to gaslight. It's like our goal isn't, is not
to make the College Football Playoff.
Like like if the goal of that of us making the College Football
Playoff going into a season is probably still 5 or 6 years
away. And that would be stacking 5 or
6 really good seasons on top of each other.
Last year was was an aberration. It was awesome even after last
year. And even I think we did really
well were we could, like you said, be a better team this
year. I don't go into the season
thinking well we should make the College Football Playoff.
Like that is just a, a bar in a different area.
I'm in a very similar spot where, you know, I would always
say, dude, we, we've been bad for so long.
You just got to make a bowl and win a bowl game, which by the
way, we still haven't done. Like I still would like to see
us win a bowl. Not knocking last year at all,
but just like there, there's still that piece out there, like
let's try and win a bowl game for the first time since what,
like 91. So, you know, I, I do think the
floor has raised in that six wins would probably, even when
we go to like the Motor City Bowl, it's like, all right, that
would be something maybe didn't go right that, that the floor
has raised to seven. But we're splitting hairs.
You know, to me, I, I think very similarly to what you said, 7-8
wins feels like a really good season that again, would still
be a historically better season. We've had most years out of the
last 2025 years. That's nothing to scoff at.
That's a really good year. And I think the way the schedule
lays out, I think it's reasonable to say a very
successful season would be as if you defend Memorial Stadium, you
know, the Illinois game is going to be tough.
It's not insurmountable. The Wisconsin game, you know,
I'm not again, the history of playing football against
Wisconsin. I can't just I'm scared of
getting hit by lightning on this beautiful sunny day saying,
well, you know, that's not insurmountable because we've
seen that. Oh never beat them outside of a
couple of random years. But it's not insurmountable to
say we can beat Wisconsin at home.
I think that's a really good spot to say, can you go 7 and O
or six and one at home and start continuing?
You know, last year they go undefeated at home.
Can you start to show Memorial Stadium is a place where you
can't just come in and kick Indiana around.
This is a place where we're going to have a winning record
and most years will be undefeated or have maybe one
loss. It's not going to be a place
where we're having 5-6 losses. I think that's another good
place to go. So I think those are all really
good benchmarks. And you know, if you get seven
or eight wins, you're going to one of the 7 best bowls
Indiana's ever been to. Six, We've only been to like 12,
but you're one of the five best bowls Indiana's ever been to.
So you know, I, I would say for anybody who's saying, you know,
we don't meet the expectation, we don't meet the results of
last year, it's like that. That's not what Indiana is
looking to do. But I do think for me, the floor
is raised. We're normally out, you know, 12
months ago, I would always say we just got to win six games.
Like that's our, that's, that's the baseline.
I think last year raised the floor to me to like, all right,
we can go to seven. Yeah.
Well, the one other thing I'll note on, I think you, you summed
up a lot of that very well. I think the one other thing I
would note is that, you know, Indiana's got those four games
that I would consider to be really tough games.
And it's not that the other ones are going to be pushovers by any
means. They got Wisconsin at home,
they're going to be tough. They've got Michigan State will
be better, UCLA will probably be better.
But you know, the, the games I read off at home versus Illinois
at Iowa, at Oregon, at Penn State, that's a, that's a pretty
tough sled. But the other contending teams
in the conference also have tough slates.
Like so you know, Ohio State, who lost a ton, and I mean, it's
Ohio State. So they're going to reload, but
they've got Texas at home. They've got to go to Washington,
which is tricky. They've got to go to Illinois,
they've got to go to Wisconsin. They've got Penn State at home
and Penn State's loaded for bear and they got to go to Michigan.
I mean, that's a they don't. Have any in?
That's, that's right. Well, then they don't have
Indiana, you know, Penn State, they've got Oregon at home.
They've got, they're at Iowa, they're at Ohio State.
They may have the easiest schedule of the group.
Illinois, who everybody's been, you know, essentially shining
for this entire offseason. They've got to go to Indiana,
which is I think a tough game for Illinois.
Clearly Ohio State at home, they're at Wisconsin, they're at
Washington. So, you know, and even Michigan,
who I think people are expecting to have a bounce back here, got
to go to Nebraska, got to go to USC, got to go to Michigan
State, got Ohio State at home. So that what I'm saying in this
is like if Indiana can find a pathway to get to 10 and two,
which I think is very reasonable, like I could see
Indiana, you know, they could beat Illinois and they, they
could, you know, maybe knock off Iowa on the road cause Iowa's
kind of been hit or miss. I think Indiana could outscore
them. You lose at Oregon and you lose
at Penn State, but you win the rest of your games.
Like you're right in the mix, not just for a Big 10
championship game appearance. You're in the mix for College
Football Playoff at 10 and two, like 10 and 2 is, you know,
might be on the fringes, but you collect a couple of top 25 wins,
you get yourself in the top ten, top 15 early and you're able to
stay there. That's a pretty good spot to be
in Indiana. I, I think, you know, so much of
last year's narrative was that the fact that Indiana started on
the outside of the top 25 and really had to fight to get that
consideration. They're going to be starting
with a much higher floor in the eyes of the committee.
And I do think that that matters a lot in terms of College
Football Playoff aspirations. But even beyond that, like you
said, you know, even an 8 or 9 win season would get you to a
really good spot. So after 10 and 2, you know,
you, you're going to have a win either at Oregon, at Iowa or at
Penn State. So, so the, the narrative of
all, they haven't beaten anybody.
It's like, well, we will have beaten somebody.
But I, I will just say this to Indiana fans who, who had to
deal with all of that last year. If we're ten and two, and let's
say we lose at Oregon and lose at Ohio at Iowa, or maybe lose,
let's say we lose at Oregon, lose at Penn State, but we, we
win at Iowa. And maybe Iowa isn't where
they've always been. You know, they're, they're
outside of the top 25, you know, unfortunately, just be prepared
for probably some residual national annoyance from last
year coming back to this year. It's like we still haven't
played anybody. It's like some of that might
come over. And if we, if we get punted from
a College Football Playoff because of just crappy
narrative, so be it. Like, you know, it's, it's not
the end of the world, But I just I, I, I can already kind of
foresee that happening. Is that if that's the way that
we get to 10 and two it, it could be there.
But I like you mentioned, that scenario might be good enough to
get us into the Big 10 title game, which is also pretty cool.
Let's keep knocking off things we've never done before.
You're kidding. We had another question.
I, I have a question for you. I'm going to, I'm, I'm pulling
rank and I'm putting in a Twitter question.
We're on a, you know, it's, it's, I have a note here like,
you know, days since Galen has not been to an, to an IU
football game. We have a calendar going there.
There's the days. It's, you know, 365 days.
You went to all games last year. I look back the end of the 2023
season ended at Purdue. So I'm assuming you didn't go to
that game. I don't think you went to that
game. I did.
I did not go to that game. Year of the the Allen era.
So. You will start next season.
You know you have season tickets as do I.
You'll go to Old Dominion, go to Kennesaw State, Indiana State,
you go to Illinois. The 1st Rd. game is Iowa.
Like is September 27th when your year long streak is?
Are we going to hit 400 days? Like what?
What's the street going to end of days you get?
You haven't been to an IU football game.
You know, you, you're putting a lot of pressure on me with this.
I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but you're right.
It, it's, I need to think through this a little bit more
because I, I don't think I'm making it out to Iowa because
Iowa, which sucks, going to Iowa always sucks.
Like it's, it's not just the journey, it's also the
destination that sucks. But but the but and there may be
some other things going on that I need to be in Bloomington for
which might preclude me from going right.
That's a tease out there, folks. I can't tell you what the tease
is, but at that, just just know that there may be some things in
Bloomington that weekend, but I that might put pressure on me to
head out there for that game. But that that's the first one.
Now I am going to go to Oregon. That's the plan.
And then then from there you're you're looking at.
Michigan State, you see. Your home games, you know, Then
the the Next Rd. game is that game at Maryland.
Maryland's a tough sled. That's a tough place.
Like if you can fly there, you can't really drive there.
You almost have to go to Maryland and then stay and kind
of work your way back to hit State College.
That would be tough with my job. But you know, the, the Penn
State game's an interesting one because what's fascinating about
that week is that Indiana plays at Penn State in football.
That's Week 11 on a Saturday. We don't know what time.
We won't know what time until probably about two weeks before.
Then the next day, Indiana's in Chicago basketball playing
Marquette at the United Center. So I, I am tempted to like rent
an RV or a sprinter van and do the, the double like, you know,
drive to State College, go to the football game and then drive
to Chicago and do the basketball game and then come back to
Bloomington. I don't think I'm actually going
to do it, but I'm I'm really contemplating it right now.
Let me in on the the planning for that because you and I in
college, we, we had the idea of ballparks across America.
I think it was what we called. No, it was the Take Me Out to
the ballpark store. Scott and I were both on the
WIUS Sports Broadcasting staff and we would just kind of sit
around and BS during meetings, much to the consternation of
Sean Bartel and Mike Petrie about the ballparks.
Yeah, but we had this idea, and this was in 1998, I want to say
it was where we wanted to rent a bus.
We wanted, or it was a bus originally, and we were going to
go visit all of the ballparks in Major League Baseball, which now
like people do that all the time.
But at the time it felt kind of it was like Rd. rule, you know,
like Rd. rules or whatever, you know, for, for the sports scene.
And we wanted to visit a bunch of parks we thought might close
down relatively soon. Like Tiger Stadium was one that
we wanted to hit. There were a couple of others
and we never knew. The prices right too.
It's like we want to throw in the prices right visit and and
honestly, it's one of the, you know, we have a lot of younger
listeners. If you're in college, they do it
like I, I don't have a lot of regrets in my life.
I was like, dude, what, what did I do that summer that would be
more memorable than that. That would have been.
And it's like you, we get to be in your, you have to be in your
40s. You have kids like me doing that
is off the table. Well, I, I, I think thinking
back on it, our primary restraint is probably the reason
why most college age students don't do it, which is money.
Like, I had to get a job that summer.
Yeah, so did I I worked at a summer camp.
Yeah. You can only give so much blood,
you know and and still like drive with any level of effect.
That could be that could be take us out to the ballpark tour to
do do duo right yeah, Penn State and the market anyway, all all
I'm saying is, you know, if you if you go to Oregon and then
your home Michigan State, UCLA to go to like having the whole
of Iowa there, it's just a big hole.
No, Galen. Let's, let's not.
Nothing's decided yet. Let's just put it that way, OK?
Nothing's decided yet. Question from another question
on Twitter. What do you anticipate the
intendants being for the first three IU football games?
I'd imagine it's much higher than last year's non con, but
are we talking 60% full? 90% full?
You know, here's the thing, I think the attendance is going to
be significantly higher, you know, for those first three
games because I think Cignetti is going to wave his his magic
wand and get people out and people people want to view.
So like last year, if you want to see this team last year, the
official attendance for those first three games, which you can
only trust to a small degree, I know, but it was 44,150 for the
FIU game, it was 39,000 and 82 for the Western Illinois game.
And then for the Charlotte game, which was a blazing hot day, if
you will recall, it was 43,000 one O 9 and we were kind of
wondering if anybody was going to show up.
And then they showed up for the Maryland game, which had some
weather issues. Obviously you had some remnants
of a tropical storm that were blowing through at that point.
But that is 48,000. And from there, attendance,
Indiana sold out all the remaining games.
I will be surprised if the first game of the season, which is the
Old Dominion game, if that doesn't have close to 50,000
people, I don't know if it'll be a complete sell out.
I think there's going to be a ton of things there's there's
already a ton of things I know about that people are going to
want to be in the stands for for that game.
And so I think that that's going to draw a lot of people.
Hopefully it's an evening game. It'd be nice to not have
something in the blazing sun on August 30th.
I think Kennesaw State will probably also be pretty well
attended. That's Labor Day weekend, so
that's always an interesting one.
Just in terms of people going on vacation, I could see it dipping
a bit for Indiana State, 'cause it's Week 3 and then back in
earnest for that Illinois game. That Illinois game's going to be
a sellout. But I wouldn't be shocked if all
those games were in the 46 to 50,000 range, which we haven't
had a lot of games in early September against, you know,
that level of competition. Get up to that mark.
I mean, you, you go back last, not last year, two years ago,
that opener against Ohio State drew 50,000 and 50, but it was
Ohio State and then it was back to 42,000 when Indiana played
Indiana State the following day. So I, I do think there'll be a
lot of people though, a lot more than we're used to seeing just
because there's going to be so much excitement about the team.
And I think tickets will be a little more affordable for
people. I I agree with all that.
I think the other thing that you have in play is, you know, you
go back and look at last season, the games against FIU, Western
Illinois and Charlotte, kind of the three Gimme or you know, non
big Ted games. We won them, but the scores were
31 to 777 to 3, 52 to 14. I mean, just just ass kickings
across the board. I remember us having the pod
after Western Illinois where it's like, that's just fun.
And we don't get to do that a lot.
It's like it's fun watching our team go and just kick somebody
out. Versus 2023, we played Akron and
we won in quadruple overtime, 29 to 27, where it's like, you
know, games like that is when people are like, I, I, you know,
do I want to go watch Indiana almost lose to Kennesaw State?
You know, if they, if they have a tough time against Old
Dominion, that's what that's not going to happen.
Like Signeti has shown that he's going to take these games
seriously and that he's going to come out and we're probably
going to lay the smack down to Old Dominion, Kennesaw State and
Indiana State. And that's going to get its own
level of excitement. You know, it's like, oh wow,
this is kind of fun to watch IU score 5 touchdowns at like so I
I agree with you on those numbers, but it's all leading up
to that Illinois game is going to be awesome.
So it's going it should be. I'm pretty sure Illinois don't
have their schedule in front. I think they have a pretty easy
Rd. into that game as well. That should be two top 20 or 25
teams. It is leading up to kind of a
very early big 10 matchup. That could honestly be another
big noon Saturday, Saturday, just like keep keep stacking
those up. But I, I think that alone
knowing that's kind of on the way, like I remember this a long
time ago, the, you know, the year we played Michigan and we
were four and oh, and they were four and oh, it was like the Ben
Chapel year that there was excitement building up in the
games leading up to it. Like, oh, we just got to keep
winning. And like we, that Michigan game
is going to be big. I think you'll see something
similar with Kennesaw State and Indiana State where you see the
crowd start to grow because it's like, all right, I want to start
getting my feel for this team because we got a real 1 coming
up on September 20th. Yeah, I mean, I, I just think
the vibe will be really good and I think it'll stay that way
until people feel like they, they don't have a reason for the
vibe to be good anymore. But you know, that's, I don't
anticipate that being that big of an issue, at least not in the
short term. So let's let's jump to some
other questions. As again, we had we had a ton of
them across the board. So let's jump over to basketball
as, as we had a ton of questions there.
So we had a question from Robbie Malkinson.
Could the summer trip for the men's basketball team to play
overseas help with building early team chemistry?
And the rumor is, I think somewhere in the Caribbean.
Yes. I mean, the question is
absolutely yes. And I think, you know, we, we've
seen Indiana do trips every now and again.
You, you're, you can only, and under the current NCAA rules,
you can only do a certain number or like you do 1 and then you
have to wait a couple years before you can do another one.
But I think for IU, it's going to be really, really important
that they get one of these under their belt and the guys can
learn how to play with each other in an actual game setting.
You know, you, you can do informal, you know, games, you
can do, you know, certain limited amounts of practices,
but you just, you can't substitute what you get when you
actually put everybody on the floor.
They get used to what their roles are and how it works.
And so I think it absolutely helps with chemistry.
And I think it may actually just be a necessity to get this team
up and running, given that it is a bunch of guys who largely have
not played with each other up to this point.
I, I agree or I tend to agree, but you know, I, I go back to
like, was it 2000? I'm looking up right now 2021
the team went to the Bahamas before the season and a lot of
it came out like, oh, are they, they kind of gelled and
coalesced and that was a team that think that's a team that
went 7:00 and 12:00. If I have my years right, team
ended in 2021. I mean that was either the last
year of Archie or the first year of Woodson.
It's like it's first year of Woodson.
The midterm. It's I, it's like, I think these
pre season trips, you can kind of bend them to whatever the
result of the season is that if the team ends up looking pretty
good, it's like, oh, that trip made the difference.
If it doesn't, the team is not great.
It's like, well, that didn't do much.
I I agree, I think it's going to hurt.
And I agree that with 12 guys who don't really know each
other, putting together more time in the Crucible together is
going to be good. But I think it ends up coming
down to, you know, if, if you have the right coaching staff in
place, these trips are going to matter.
And I, I think we both, I have the hope that Derezza is the
right answer to that. I just, we, we've done these
before and had seasons that are kind of lackluster of seasons
where it's like, man, this team doesn't look connected.
I guess that Bahamas trip didn't matter, but I don't think it can
hurt. That's my whole thing.
I don't see it hurting at all. And I and I think ultimately you
just got to have some kind of an environment, especially with how
quickly the season starts. I mean, you're playing Marquette
on what I think November 9th. You, you know, you're, you're
going to have to figure out a way to mesh a little bit ahead
of time. And look, even with that, it's
going to be a work in progress through the first month or so.
Not too different from football last year.
You know, people forget there was some questions after that
FIU game and it was like, we'll pump the brakes because they're
rounding into shape. And that's exactly what
happened. And I think with this point, you
got to give Darren Devries and his staff some, some credit and
some grace, I guess, in trying to put piece all this together.
But I, I do think the trip will be helpful.
Let's see, we had a question regarding some other items with
IU basketball. I'll just kind of digging into
some of these here. Someone asked, does IU is lore
StarCraft? Does IU need a rim protector to
compete in the Big 10? So, so here's the thing, like I
feel like rim protection is both important and overemphasized
because when you look at the last couple of years, you know,
if you're looking at it from the perspective of block percentage,
like, you know, are you, are you collecting blocks at the rim?
Are you altering shots? You know, last year the, the top
two teams in the league, Michigan State and, and Maryland
was tied for second. They were, they were #1 and #2IN
block percentage. But I think it's important to
keep in mind that the third best team in block percentage in the
conference last year was Minnesota, who was not a good
team. You know, that that was a team
that was not particularly talented.
They, they struggled quite a bit throughout the course of the
year. And, and even when you look at,
you know, something like offensive rebounding percentage,
it wasn't an exact correlation to teams necessarily being
great. You know, defensive rebounding
percentage and things like that. I I don't think you necessarily
need A7 footer or like a, a hyper large big in there doing
that. I think if you can, if you have
two athletic post players who can rebound and defend
effectively, I think that's more important than having a quote UN
quote rim protector. You know, certainly rim
protection's nice, but again, it's like, I'll point back to
the 2022 season when Indiana's rim protection that whole season
was a six, nine guy in Trace Jackson Davis and a six, eight
guy in Race Thompson. And that's essentially the sizes
of what Indiana's got out there going into this upcoming year.
So, you know, I keep hearing this refrain like they got to
get a rim protector and they may still like they're not done
building the roster, but I could absolutely see a scenario where
Indiana's like we would rather have a a more agile, slightly
smaller frontline. Because it might be easier for
them to rebound, you know, and, and look, there's so many
different ways to win basketball games.
And I've talked about this on the show before.
You're, you know, Indiana has kind of largely predicated a lot
of what it's done the last few years on this idea that they
were going to focus on certain aspects of defense and, and of
offense. And, you know, if you look at
Mike Woodson's statistical profile, it was like, we're
going to have a high assist rate offensively and we're going to
try to shoot the ball relative relatively well and we're going
to try to hold the opposition down to a lower shooting
percentage. And that kind of worked.
It didn't work the last two years.
It worked the first two. But the flip side of that is,
you know, Indiana, you know, kind of voluntarily chose not to
be particularly great at offensive rebounding.
They they didn't really focus on limiting their own turnovers or
turning the opposition over. Those are just as important ways
to win if you look at the four factors of basketball and what
contributes statistically to victory.
So, you know, look, there's still time to add to the roster.
I'm still interested to see if they had somebody else.
But if the roster that they have now is what they go in with
primarily, I think you can be a very successful team in the
conference with that type of a roster if you've got the right
system and you're coaching it properly.
Yeah, you you took one of the, one of the thoughts right out of
my mind is that, you know, the, the most successful season we
had in the last four years was 2022.
And that was Trey Jackson Davis, who had a block percentage of,
you know, he was 24th in the country in block percentage, but
he's 69. You know, then the years after
that, you had Khalil Ware at 7 foot and Omar Balo at 7 foot or
seven One, you'd be like, oh, just that's a better rim
defensive. And it's like, Nope, the the
results weren't there. I would also say that, you know,
you look at just a quick NBA corollary.
You know, the Pacers just played the Bucks Giannis Anton and Kupo
is definitely a rim protector. But I, I think this is something
that you see with the way that Indiana basketball is putting IU
college basketball is putting their roster together is similar
in a way to what the Pacers are doing is that the last couple
years the Pacers have been fun because they're using offense as
defense. And what I mean by that is their
offense scores very, very high points per possession.
And they're also very efficient. Don't turn the ball over.
So, you know, it's like they're playing the Bucks like, great,
we're going to hit a three, hit a 2.
Great, we're going to hit a two, you're going to turn it over.
Great. We're going to hit a 2, you're
going to turn it over. We're going to hit a three,
you're going to hit 2. Suddenly you're down 6 points.
The Bucks are down 6 points. And it's like we now have to do
way more on offense. Not because the Pacers defense
is awesome, it's just the Pacers offense is so efficient and
scores at a high clip that it puts a lot of pressure on the
other team's offense. And I think the way that Devries
is in building this roster, scoring is at a premium and
shooting is at a premium. And I think that, you know,
you're not going to fill all of the holes.
But if Indiana can score a little bit more, a little more
effectively and a with a little more points per possession,
that's going to put pressure on other teams when they hit Lols
even more than a rim protector would.
That's the thing, if if you if you're shooting well, it takes a
lot of pressure off of your offense and your defense.
And it's clear from my evaluation of what they're doing
in the portal that that's what they're aiming at.
They're aiming at shooting. They're aiming at being able to
switch effectively on defense and and they're aiming at having
guys that can drive to the basket and create both
opportunities for themselves and space for their teammates.
So again, it's a different style and it does kind of beg the
question and and this was actually, I think asked by
Patrick, can you build a roster for modern basketball
parentheses the tournament and the Big 10 or does there have to
be a shift in the conference style first?
You know, I I would look at it like this.
I don't think Indiana is built right now to compete for the Big
10 title unless a bunch of stuff goes right.
And that's fine. Now they might and, and I'm not
trying to put an artificial cap on them, but you know, I think
Indiana, just like the, the, the talent floor is probably a
little too low for that. Just in terms of, you know, if
you've got questions about the players Indiana's brought into
the portal, they're all pretty high performance guys at lower
levels. And then the question becomes,
well, how do they transition to the higher level?
I think they're going to transition pretty well.
But even with that, there's just going to be certain teams that
are going to have a higher caliber of athlete and higher
caliber of, of, you know, basketball ability.
But I do think that this Indiana team is built really well to be
a good shooting team. That would be a really difficult
out in the NCAA tournament. And then it's really just about
matchups. So I, I think that, you know,
there are circumstances where you can compete and do both.
I think it's frankly what John Beeline did the best at Michigan
was he figured out a way to kind of have it where he could be a
competitive team in the Big 10 but could still compete in the
NCAA Tournament. I think Beau Ryan figured that
out very late in his tenure and and that was really what
elevated Wisconsin. You know, Purdue has done it.
I mean, I think you got to give them credit, but they've done it
by kind of like taking the Big 10 style and making it work in
the NCAA. Tournament and Michigan State
both kind of just pushed the Big 10 style as far as it can go in
the tournament, so. Look, I, I, there's, there's a
lot of question marks. We had another question that I,
I'm not going to try to tackle right now about like what are
the early power rankings when it comes to the teams in the Big 10
for the upcoming year? I mean, it's hard to say like
the rosters aren't even complete yet.
And until the dust settles, it's almost a fool's errand to try to
evaluate that. But I do think Indiana's in a
good spot right now because they've got interchangeable
parts. They've got parts that look like
they can step up and, and, and be the leading scorer one night
and then step into the background for the next couple
of nights and not have to be that big of a deal.
But that's the kind of thing I think to keep an eye on.
And as you try to cobble a roster together this year, it's
going to be different than what you're going to have moving
forward. There was another question that
really ties into this is what our.
Rankings just got me thinking of I.
I do love it. Just tangential but I love the
meme of the Brad Underwood in like the 80s.
That is 80s, but he looks like he's like coaching in Belgrade.
Yeah, I know it's pretty. You haven't seen his photo yet.
I must see if I can call it up. They.
Sign they sign like a bunch of just euro players with names
that are, you know, like Akovic and but the picture is just
great that's been going around. It's like the the Russian
assistant coach from 88 or. Something.
Yeah, it's it's pretty remarkable how I, I always
appreciate when we get coaches. I I think I've found it here.
Here we go. Let me let me call this up real
quick. Know their know their like they
know what they like. Well, not just that, but I like,
I like coaches that will go along.
There we go. Yeah.
That that's just a great photo right there for those of you who
are watching on YouTube or Spotify.
I mean a little John C Reilly. It's like, I think that looks
like John C Reilly's next role. Yeah.
See, people thought this was AI. That's actually what Illinois
campus looks like. I mean, if you've been and if
you've been, you know exactly what I'm talking about that that
that, you know, champagne or Urbana, right?
Well, they're both depressing would be what I would say.
But no, look, there's going to be a lot of teams in the mix.
But like this year is a great example.
Like, I don't know that anybody would have guessed that the
particular mix of teams that were good played the way that
they played this year. And you also have teams like
Oregon that were just hot and cold all year, and they'd win a
game. You'd be like, wow, that's
incredible. And then they'd lose by 20 at
home to Illinois. And it's like, what?
And this. Goes into, you know, for IE like
you're, you're building a team. You know, the, it's, it's tough
to project. It's also tough to get too
concerned about what you see on paper.
Cause to your point this year, Rutgers should have been
awesome. It's like 2 top five picks in
the draft like that. That's awesome.
Every team would take that. It's like, well, but maybe
they're going to suck. We had another question from the
Discord. This is from camera 26.
Would love your perspective on the perfect mix between Portal
and high school recruits going forward.
How should someone like Devries handle that, especially in a
basketball rich state like Indiana versus Pitino's comments
on not worrying about high school recruiting?
So I don't think anybody really knows what the best.
Approach is here, yeah. And let me try to explain it
this way. Like there are going to be some
surefire freshman that you're going to want to bring in.
But the problem that I think you're going to run into with
high school recruiting is in order to like look at what
Indiana's done. Like most of the players that
they brought in in the portal are they have, they have one
year left, they might have two years left.
There's there's not very many players with multiple years of
eligibility that are going to be on the roster.
Trent Cisley being one of them, obviously is the is the lone
incoming recruit as of right now.
So the question is less about, well, what's the balance of high
school recruiting and portal acquisition and more.
Let's say you go get two or three really good high school
players. What are you going to tell them?
Hey, come here, but you're not as good as the upper class
players that we have brought in. So you're going to sit, are they
going to be like, wow, coach, that sounds great.
Now, maybe maybe with NIL in a different way and maybe with
some more ironclad contracts, they'd be willing to do that.
But a lot of those players would be like, well, why don't I just
go play at another major school that's lower down in the in the
pecking order, get a year of training and then figure out who
wants me the following year? Because the flip side is you
could go be a freshman somewhere.
Think of all the freshmen that Indiana have had over the course
of the last five or six seasons that didn't pan out and
transferred either eventually or immediately.
You know you can and you can just, you know, you go through
the rosters. I'll, I'll skip this past year's
roster because it's not really a fair one to think about.
But like look at look at the roster last year and the guys
who were high school recruits that Indiana brought in.
See it Gabe Cups who's gone, Caleb Banks gone, CJ Gunn gone,
McKenzie and Bacco now gone. Although you got 2 good years
out of him, you know, you go back to a, a couple of years
prior you had Lake Renew also a recruit gone well, right.
But, but that's a different category.
I think the, the Renew, what I'm talking about is not the guys
that can come in and start right away with the guys who are
growers. You know, the, the Jordan
Geronimo is an example of that type of player.
Like are you going to roll the dice on a guy like Jordan
Geronimo that is a developmental player?
Or are you going to be like maybe go play at Iona for a year
and then we'll see where things land?
So that's where I don't really know what the balance is going
to be for a school like Indiana, which the expectation is going
to be that Indiana is going to be back up to a level where
they're competing for, you know, at the very least, single digit
seeds in the NCAA tournament under the debris there and
hopefully a lot more than that. So I wish I had a good answer.
I would like to see Indiana have enough recruiting juice to bring
in a couple of stud high school recruits every year, like 2,
maybe three, if you can guarantee that they're going to
be better than the people that you could get in the portal and
go ahead and roll the dice with them.
And and then the rest of the guys are guys that you're
filling in portal positions with over, you know, over the the
spring session. But there's going to be coaches
like Patina who are going to be like, why would I even bother
with high school recruiting when I can go get players that have
already gotten a chance to scout for two years at the college
level? And I just have to make sure
that they're the right fits for my system.
You know, I think you can't take a lot of what Debris is doing
right now as necessarily what Debris is going to do in the
future because Debris is trying to build something from scratch
right now. Not just a new roster, but a new
roster that fits a new system. It won't be a new system next
year. And it'll be more about, OK,
what can we plug in? What pieces do you lose?
How does all that reconcile? I think it's a really
fascinating question and I wish I was smart enough to have the
answer to it right now. But I think it's really going to
depend on circumstance and the way that you like.
You're always going to learn lessons based upon what happened
the first time. And that might end up like
impacting the way you decide to approach it the next time.
I mean, the answer is you want to have 72% transfers, not
random numbers. This is great.
Yeah, 70, maybe 71%. But if they're if they're over
that, you know, you're you're screwed.
No, it, it's not only going to be basis year to year, it's also
circumstantial. So, I mean, you know, I, I think
there's some, it, it's very similar like to Indiana, you
know, recruiting Indiana, like the the years that, you know,
Greg Owen and Mike Conley are seniors in, in Indiana high
school basketball. It's like, yeah, you should
probably get those guys on your team.
The years where, you know, it's there's not a great player,
maybe you don't recruit Indiana that year.
I I think again, this this is a a very circumstantial year for
debris. He's doing what he has to do to
me. I think the answer is you.
I don't think the answer is going to be all one way or all
the other way. Like I think the coaches who are
kind of, you know, askewing the transfer portal, we're doing
this straight the old way with nothing but recruits.
I think they're going to struggle for for a lot of the
reasons we talked about. It's like it's just tough to to
know, you know, what you're getting with high school
recruits. But I also look at, you know,
guys like Pitino who are just saying apps screw it, we'll just
do nothing but transfers. I think they're going to
struggle for for other reasons. I, I think it's always going to
be best to have a mix, but I think that mix alchemy is going
to change every year based on who are the recruits you're
getting? Is your recruiting base?
Are there a lot of five stars that year that you're in the mix
for? Then maybe that's a year you go
heavy recruiting. If it's not, then maybe it's a
year you go heavy transfers. Do you feel like there's some
transfers coming in that you're going to get it the handle on?
So I, I think the answer, you know, the answer is both
interesting but kind of boring and that it's, it's probably,
it's going to be a mix and it probably should be a mix that
changes year over year. And I just think to me, the
answer is, I don't want a coach who's stuck hard one way or the
other because I don't think that's the right answer.
I think the right answer is going to change in some years.
It might be we should have 7 high school recruits because we
got a ton of great five stars who all can come in and start.
And then some years maybe we go nothing but portal because we
have no good recruits coming in. And I think you have, if
anything you're seeing now, you need coaches who are flexible
and, and not so tied to a system or a viewpoint, but I want my
coach to be flexible and basically to build the team the
way that they're going to get the best players on that team or
the best players. That fit what they're trying to
do with that team. I should say no, I think that's
reasonable. And and again, it's it's going
to be very situational and I think I always know what it
comes down to. Like, you know, even Duke relied
on a a couple of of transfers from elsewhere this year.
We did a scion James had been at Tulane, Mason Gillis, who came
off the bench a decent amount was obviously at Purdue.
Malik Brown came in from Syracuse and they were, you
know, Gillis and Brown were more like bit players.
But even Duke, who, you know, probably can get whatever five
stars they want in any given year, wasn't afraid to dip into
the portal a bit. But I think their ratio is
likely going to be OK. We'll suck up the five stars.
And I think for a lot of other teams, it's like, well, we got
to figure out some other approaches to doing things.
Yeah. And I, I, you are right.
But it's also like they're like they're getting guys like Cooper
flag. It's like that's that's a five
star that you know, is going to be a five star.
Who can start. Yeah.
Crimson Fire asked on Twitter. Beyond year one, do you see IE
men's basketball bringing in more high end true freshmen?
They're just going to roll with one or two yearly with Clark,
Adams and Johnson, the assistant coaching group, which is a
really good recruiting group. Rod Clark, I hope so.
Rod Clark the the the Tennessee recruiting coach now an IU coach
and obviously Drew Adams and Kenny Johnson.
We know, but you have three guys that can get dudes, especially
high end freshmen. Look, here's the thing.
Indiana's kind of starting from scratch with a lot of these
recruits, right? New coaching staff, but also a
coaching staff that was struggling to land these
players. They know they end up going to
Connecticut or they end up going to other places, Maryland and so
Kentucky, you know, and you've got to build relationships early
with those players. And I think I saw news the other
day, like Drew Adams was up at Lawrence North or something
seeing a top. Level prospect like a four-star
center that's, that's going to take a little bit of time.
Yeah. You're, you're looking right now
at freshman and sophomore, which means you're not getting them
till what, the 20/28/2020 nine class.
The one thing though is, I mean, Indiana is, is in really good
NIL shape. I don't think people realize how
good of NIL shape Indiana is in Indiana has spent a ton of money
on on both football and basketball.
But but a basketball, I mean it, it significantly exceeds what
they spent last year. And that's going to help in this
process as well because that does ultimately resonate with
with people and you would expect that.
So let's see a couple of other questions.
I, I wanted to get us out roughly after an hour.
I didn't want to go too far on this, but but some good
questions from people overall. Hoosier Lee on the Discord ask.
Curious about your take on the IU basketball staff.
To me, it seems reflective of Debris's general approach.
Solid, not flashy, ready to do the heavy lifting.
I mean, it's a fairly flashy group in terms of like you've
got you've got a guy in Drew Adams who has a pretty sizeable
recruiting footprint. You've got Kenny Johnson, who
obviously we're very familiar with, has a has a lot of
connections to the DMV where you've got a ton of recruits to
come out every year. And Indiana's gotten some some
pretty good players out of there, including Victor Oladipo.
And you know, Rod Clark coming in from Tennessee was heavily
involved with the Dalton Connect recruitment, which Indiana lost
just heavily involved with, you know, a couple of other
recruitments of note. I'm, I would call them more than
just solid. I think that's a really, really
formidable recruiting group that all has different strengths.
And you know, you got Nick Norton and you've the, the other
coach whose name had just escaped me.
I apologize. Who I'm assuming you're going to
be focusing more on on court coaching and training.
I think that's the kind of mix that you need moving forward.
So I, I really like the staff. It's a, it's a fascinating
staff. It's a staff that's got a lot of
different facets to it. And again, you a, you never
really know how all of that's going to fit together, as we
talked about with some other things.
But on paper, you know, you think about some of the names
that were tossed around earlier for some of the assistance.
This is a pretty good spot to land with this group, it feels
like, all things considered. Agreed.
I agree with you. Yeah.
Couple of other quick questions. So we had a question from
Hoosier in Japan and this I I promised everybody that I was
going to be doing a series on nil and the house settlement.
I've been waiting on the House settlement to actually settle so
I can do that podcast series. But in the meantime, Hoosier in
Japan asked, is it possible to have a regulated, fair and
equitable system for player payment and portal transfers
that promotes parentheses, not buys allegiance to a school or
team? So here's how I will say my
answer to this I I think it's absolutely possible to have an
equitable system for player payment and portal transfer, but
it requires the schools and the conferences involved to create
rules. And these cannot be one way
unilaterally imposed rules like the NCAA and its member schools
have gotten used to doing. It has to be a system where
there's some collective bargaining involved with the
athletes. This cannot be a situation where
all these things are being dictated to people.
Because I just, I think we've seen consistently now that the
courts are like, your business is not that special.
College athletics, like your business is not so unique and so
dependent on. I mean, remember the big
argument was if players get paid, people will stop watching
college sports. Meanwhile, we just had like the
highest rated Final Four in a while.
I think it was, I mean, like it's ludicrous that, and it
always was ludicrous, this idea that somehow people were going
to stop watching college sports because there was money
involved. So the, the NCAA has gotten so
used to dictating these terms that there is a pathway to a, a
more equitable system, but it requires what the professional
leagues have, which is a player union or something similar and
collective bargaining between that and the teams in the
conferences involved. I don't know that we'll get
there with the way that the current leadership of the NCAA
is approaching things because their answer to everything
really for the last 15 years has been, well, we'll just throw
more lawyers at it, which is not, that's not a system that's
going to produce anything fair and equitable.
Now, the one other thing I'll say, though, about what Hoosier
in Japan asked about, you know, a, a, a system that promotes
you've. Been real quick on that.
This is more your expertise than mine, but I'm just as a, as a
sideline fan. But knowing how it all works, I,
I love hearing this. I also get in these debates of
how we can set it up and all this.
But I think in the end it is all just wasted breath.
Because even if what you need is exactly what you mentioned,
which is collective bargaining, but you need a league and you
know, the NBA has a commissioner and a commissioner can dictate
terms. And in the end, the Pacers and
Bucks are, are competing, but they are also part of a
collective. And they, they do things that
are for the best of the NBA and the owners, you know that
they're, they're competing against other, but they are also
collectively working together to make the NBA better because they
all make money that way. Unfortunately, the NCAA is like
Bloodsport. It's just everyone is out for
their own. Like Indiana University is
theoretically kind of partnered with other Big 10 schools, but
they're not. And if they can do things that
kills Michigan State or Michigan, it's like they will do
that. The the conferences are
theoretically working together for the collective good of the
NCAA, but they're not. And if the Big 10 can RIP out
schools from the PAC 12, they will do it in an instant.
And then suddenly those schools are now in the Big 10 and
they're blood sporty against these other schools.
And they're just. And then, you know, you also
have, you know, as you've mentioned many times, you have
the TV partners, which are in their own battles between each
other, using schools as proxies to fight their own battles.
And a lot of times they're the ones pulling the strings.
There's I don't just, I just don't see a way of having all of
this being put together in a spot where everyone who's been
kind of acting as their own sheriff for 140 years, you're
going to get someone to be the commissioner of all of this.
And everyone's going to kind of work in the best interest of the
overarching good. And so I unfortunately think
it's just going to be little band aids here and there.
And you're going to have, these are all interesting ideas.
We can talk about it. Not to pour cold water on it,
but I just, I don't see how it ever gets kind of resolved in a
way that makes sense. Well, it'll just be kind of
these theories of every year. It's like, man, this is really
stupid. And that kid got 5 million.
What the hell? Like, they're getting underpaid
and they have so much money and like, man, they're blowing a lot
of money. And like, that's the way it's
going to be because everyone is there.
There is no person who's leading the collective.
Charge it requires there to be adults in the room who who I'm
seriously, it requires because you're, you're right.
And I'm going to talk about this a lot more in depth on the NIL
series. But it requires people
acknowledging that, hey, what we have done doesn't work anymore
and the courts have said that it doesn't work anymore.
And we're not going to get somebody in Congress to wave a
magic wand and fix it for us, which has been the entire
strategy of the NCAA, it seems like, for the last four years.
Well, even in the sorry, even in the NBA, they put rules in to
like protect the owners from themselves.
Like they'll do this. Like you can't trade 5 future
draft draft. You only trade like every other
year 'cause it's a fun story. They get the owner of the Cavs
traded literally every draft pick in the 80s just one off
these and just try and like this sucks.
And so they put factors in to stop themselves from kind of
being themselves. You just don't have any of that
in the instant way. So the, the one other thing I'll
note just in terms of the, the, the question that Hoosier in
Japan asked about, you know, the, the loyalty being, you
know, promoting loyalty as opposed to buying allegiance.
And I just, here's the thing that I think we have to keep in
mind on all of this. People have jobs.
Why do we work where we work? You know, why do we do?
You're different, you're self-employed, but you know, you
know, for those of us who have to work for other people, why do
you do what you do? Do you do it because of an
abiding loyalty to the company? If that's your primary
motivating factor, you're probably not getting paid your
actual market value. And that isn't to say that that
that's wrong or that that's bad, but I think you you can't.
I've never felt like in these sorts of circumstances where
there is significant value of what you do.
And let's be honest, like college basketball players,
college football players, the reason why there's so much money
is because there's so much interest.
And the reason there's so much interest is that these are very,
very elite people at something that's very, very public.
It's not a whole lot different than why do movie stars get paid
a lot of money, you know, or, or why do people in other pursuits
where there's a very finite small number of people that have
the opportunities? So, you know, the idea that a
lot of people have that, you know, loyalty needs to be the
primary factor here is I think part of the issue with the way
that people are viewing the whole NIL situation in the
transfer portal, 'cause you'll see people entering the transfer
portal still and it'll be like, oh, that, you know, that guy
quit or that guy left his team and is chasing something.
And you see this even in the NBA, You know, when LeBron James
leaves the Cavs and goes to the Heat or leaves the Cavs and goes
to the Lakers, it's like, well, you're just ring chasing.
And it's like, well, the the flip side of that is what you
see with Giannis right now where, you know, here's, you
know, Giannis, they win a title and they've watched their entire
roster collapse around them due to bad management.
And there's been some bad luck. Obviously, if Giannis leaves
this offseason to go to another team, there's going to be people
who will be like, oh, he just, you know, left to go chase a
ring. And it's like, he already won a
ring. Like, like, loyalty only goes so
far. You have to watch out for
yourself to some degree. And I don't think it's fair in
college athletics to hold players accountable on a loyalty
perspective to teams that the coaches themselves do not have
much loyalty to beyond whatever the paycheck is.
And there are certainly exceptions to that, but most of
the exceptions are people that are paid incredibly well and
have set up a system that is very successful for themselves
to stay at that point. You know, So this is where I, I
do think as you, as we go into this era, we don't like if a, if
a, if a, a regular college student decides after a year of
going to Indiana that they don't want to go there anymore and
they want to transfer to Butler or Ball State or or Iowa or
something like that. We're not like, well, gosh,
where's your allegiance? And we're just like, well, OK,
they just, they, they went somewhere else.
It wasn't for them. But, you know, but we have this
psychological issue with sports where we feel like the athletes
owe the fans something above and beyond what we would expect out
of any other employee. And I just don't think that
that's healthy because I don't think it's realistic.
And I think ultimately it's a two way St.
We want players to be loyal and have like, you know, unbought
allegiance to schools. And yet the schools will get rid
of a player at the drop of a hat if they're not good enough.
It's. Not a four year scholarship.
Right, you know, so, so that's where the you know, the the
questions are really good one, but it's like a two-part
question and both parts are really complicated because I
don't if I'm a player and I'm looking at this current system,
it's like, what exactly am I supposed to be loyal to?
Look at all the coaching movement that happened in the
offseason this year. You know it, it's there.
There's so much going on that I don't even know with a
collective bargaining system like you would you would you
would still be buying allegiance at that point because what you
would be doing is you would be signing a contract and you would
be saying I'm staying here for two years or three years or
however long, which would actually be better for the
player than the system that existed before, like you just
said, which is 1 where it's one year renewable, but it could be
not renewed for whatever reason. That's the thing I think people
have to understand is like this is not players suddenly getting
disloyal because they're greedy. It's players seeking out their
market value because now they have the chance to do so for the
first time. And unless the schools are
willing to say you're an employee, we're willing to pay
you as such. I don't know where the loyalty
exactly is coming from on that side.
Well, yeah, I'm, I'm just going to re quote you in like 12
different times. It's like the, the, the analogy
to people in their jobs is, is perfect 'cause people have their
jobs and they get paid. It, it reminds me of one of my
get to a point here, but it reminds me of one of my quotes
from the, the show Mad Men, where, you know, the, the, the
character of Peggy is like, well, you got an award and like,
I gave you all the ideas and you never said thank you.
And he's like, that's what the money's for.
Like that's why you get paid. Like that's your thank you is
the money. But you know, the the reason I
think people get and for the most part, people understand pro
sports. It's like, oh, well, you're
going to go, you know, if if Miles Turner this you get a lot
of Pacers talk. But if Miles Turner gets a, you
know, 5, you know, three-year, $45 million deal and the Pacers
can't match it, it's like, well, yeah, he's got to take that.
It's more money. People understand that because
these are employees and everyone has a job and they know that
this goes back something you said ad nauseam, but it's so
true. Part of the problem is the NCAA
doesn't like they don't know what business they're in.
And because they no one can just say these are employees.
It's like it's well, they're student athletes and they're
doing it for the like. When you start talking about all
the things that I think fans forget the connection to
employees like, well, they should have allegiance just but
but they shouldn't. If you're just like, oh, these
are employees. These are guys who work for IU,
just like, you know, Tyrese Halliburton, I'm sure he likes
the Pacers, but he also gets paid by the Pacers and he's an
employee of the Pacers. You know, I just, I think that
because nobody can just come out and say their employees, you
start to when you start talking in all these other terms, I
think that's where it gets mixed up.
But if you look at them just as employees, everyone understands
like, yeah, that's you're, you're doing it for the money
and you have allegiance. Some people probably like here.
It's like some students love going there and love the
university, and most people who play for it, they probably care
about it, but in the end, it's still transactional.
Good place to stop. We'll we'll obviously have a lot
more on this. We're we're waiting for more is
the thing today where I guess Donald Trump met with Nick Saban
and and now he's talking about an executive order about who,
who knows about college pay. For athletes, Bill Simmons could
finally get his sports bar. Sports is our job.
Amazing. Wow.
So a lot to talk about with this as we move forward and a lot of
other questions that we couldn't get to, which we will get to
again at some point in the near future.
We will have more podcasts coming.
Schedules are starting to settle down a little bit.
We're into May little lighter time, but we got plenty to talk
about here. So be sure to keep staying like
tuning in to the back home network.
Be sure to subscribe to us here on on Crimson cast and we'll go
ahead and wrap things up. Scott, it's always a pleasure.
Great to talk to you on a Friday afternoon and I hope you have a
good rest of the weekend. You too, man.
All right. Thanks for watching or listening
to Crimson Cast or both. We will catch you folks.
On the flip side, stay never daunted, Bring back the Bison
and just remember, folks, we got the Indy 500 at the end of the
month. Always the best month of the
year. Pacers in the playoffs, plenty
of good things catch you on the flip side.
So everybody.