You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast,
Galen Clavio, Scott Caulfield joining you.
It is Saturday, November 16th. Scott.
It's the buy and yet Indiana still won as we get news this
morning early early on that Kurt Signetti has signed a contract
extension. Indiana stepping up to the
plate, getting it done. We are still digesting all of
the news right now, but we're excited to be talking about
this. I, I texted Scott, I was like,
Scott, we should do an emergency podcast.
And Scott's like, I just got out of bed.
Like, I haven't been on the Internet yet.
What's happening? So we're catching Scott up on
the way here. But this is great news right off
the bat, Scott, we can react to the top story.
Kurt Zignetti, according to reports.
Wait. It's not.
It's not about the Tyson. Fight it's not about the Tyson
yeah, I. Thought we were talking about
Tyson. That deserves a whole different
podcast, I think. But no, $8 million a year
average annual compensation for Kurt Signetti in this new deal
along with a $1 million annual retention bonus.
We'll talk about that a little bit later on and what that
means. Contract runs through 2032.
So, Scott, they have managed to lock up Kurt Signetti for the
rest of the decade and then some, basically two additional
years on to what he already had. And well, just First off, it's
great finally to be able when people say or ask like, well,
what are you gonna do when Kurt Signetti gets picked up by a
bigger school? Now we can say, hey, suck it.
Don't need to listen to you on that at this point.
I guess. Let me get your initial
reactions on all of this so far. Scott, what are your thoughts?
I mean, it's awesome. I mean, it's, it's, it's
fantastic. He's Signetti has a plan.
Signetti has obviously turned things around.
This is the best season Indiana's ever had.
And by the way, like it could get better, right?
Yeah, if they win next weekend, which isn't out of the realm of
possibility, then suddenly it's like this is, this is a pretty
good deal. I I have, I, I have a ton of
thoughts about him leaving. So if you've been asking about
it, you know, the last like 5 or 6 weeks.
So I definitely have takes. But here here's the high level
thing is, you know, initially people might think for, you
know, for those of us who are fans and like signetics, like
this is great. The other side of the coin is
like, oh man, you just lock yourself in.
It's like, well, yes, but you know, Indiana also needs someone
to drag them into high level football.
And so I'm not saying it's not going to work.
But even if things don't end great, like the the Tom Allen
thing wasn't awesome, but what it did do was raise the price of
our coach, which able to get us a coach like Signeti and so, and
I'm, I'm not I'm not already being negative, but it's like,
even if things don't work out fantastic, you're still showing
like, all right, IU's willing to pay 8 million a year for a
coach, which means we're in the echelon that we need to be in as
a football. Program I think that's a really
good way to to frame it Scott. You know, it's one of those
things where you have to keep in mind that what Indiana was
paying Signetti this season was a significant raise over what he
was making at James Madison. Like I heard a lot of people say
he's only the 49th highest paid coach in in the country.
But look, he's the 49th highest paid coach after having made
like $650,000 a year at JMU. Like he took a big jump there.
So, you know, this was not necessarily going to be somebody
who was only going to be cashing in because, you know, this was a
cash in already as far as he was concerned.
But the number that is being talked about here, $8 million a
year with a basically a $1 million a year kicker.
This is this is really interesting stuff.
You know, if you look at the the top highest paid coaches, I'm
going to go ahead and call this up.
I'm not sure how well it will actually show here, but for
those who aren't watching, actually that's not showing very
well at all. I'm just going to take it off
and move us back to where we were.
But if you go down the list of the highest paid coaches in
college football, Kirby Smart's the highest paid.
He makes about $13.2 million a year.
Dabo Sweeney's at 11,000,000, Steve Sarkisian's at 10, Lincoln
Riley's at 10, Mike Norvell and Kaylyn de Boer at 10.
Everybody else is in that the the under 10 million range.
And when you look at $8 million a year, that's 15th, 16th in the
country. That's more than Mario Cristobal
makes at Miami. It's more than Mike Gundy makes
at Oklahoma State. It's more than Jed Fish and Luke
Fickle are making. These are numbers that really do
indicate like this is a serious program that is going to go out
and pay top dollar for a successful coach.
And, you know, you look, there are SEC schools who are paying
their coaches less than annual salary billion.
Napier is only making 7.3 million.
Mike Elko at Texas A&M is making 7 million.
So, you know, Matt Rule is only making six and a half million at
Nebraska. Like these are big brand name
football programs. And for Indiana, where, you
know, 10 years ago, as you, as you kind of allude to, they're
not paying much at all for head coaches, for assistant coaches,
This is a huge amount of money. It's a huge investment in the
program. And as we look at what Zach
Osterman's tweet looked like earlier on, it's also about, you
know, continued capital improvements with the program.
We heard the news earlier this week about renovating the
stadium. It's about increasing the
assistant pool. I think I saw that in one of the
reportings as well. Just a lot of things being done
in a very short period of time as Indiana tries to jump start
this football program into an echelon financially where it can
actually compete with the top teams in the Big 10 and college
football as a whole. Well, the other thing that I saw
in there in in the Indy Star report that I'm just reading is
that you know, that IU is planning and going to get
together to do a financial Memorial Stadium renovation, as
you said, but you you need signetti to to run that program
like, and this is the kind of news that can help.
And it's, I also like it because you know, the, again, if you're
a naysayer, you could be like, man, it's only as he finished
his first season. It's like, well, it's been a
pretty good first season. Like if you're going to, if
you're going to ask someone to get extended in their first
year, like going 10 and O having college game day here, like just
doing everything that we've done.
This is pretty good. I mean, you've asked, this is
about everything you would ask for.
The other thing is something that you and I have talked about
for a while is, you know, for, for Indiana to get to where it
wants, where we want it all to be, you can't just continually
kind of go at a 2% increase every year.
You know, you, you have to understand that basically from
when we went to college until you know, kind of the Kevin
Wilson era, they just didn't focus on football.
I mean, I guess maybe with Hefner, they started with the
South end zone, but like for a 10 to 12 year span there, they
just really didn't focus on football.
And then it focus on funding football and then it focus on
paying the coaches, paying the assistance.
And so if you just go with normal increases, it's like,
great, you're still 10 years behind.
Like at some point you're going to have to make huge jumps up to
catch up with everybody else because you basically didn't run
the race for 10 years and now you have to catch up.
And so this is going to be needed at some point anyway if
you wanted to really compete at a high level.
And again, I go back to it's a short sample, but it's a pretty
damn good sample of what Signetti has done thus far.
And he's been, what I also like is that Indiana's has shown
they're not effing around because you've seen even in just
Signetti's interviews the last couple of weeks, it's like, you
know, how are you able to get a program like Indiana?
It's like, well, we have great support, but we got to continue
that support. I mean, that's basically
Signetti being like, hey, guys, let's let's keep this up.
Like, let's not lose the momentum we had, and this is not
losing the momentum. For sure.
So so let's go back in time a little bit.
You know, it was really very early on in the season where we
started hearing people asking questions about whether Kurt
Signetti was going to be leaving.
And you know, really I would say probably post Maryland or post
Northwestern, those things started.
They really picked up in earnest immediately after Nebraska.
And and that was probably the question I was getting most from
fans. We got the question on the
podcast all the time. I have family members
contacting, you know, asking about, you know, what was going
to happen, whether IU was going to be able to hold on to
Signetti. We never, or at least I, as we
talked on the show, I never really put a lot of credence in
the idea that Signetti was going to go somewhere else.
And there were a couple of reasons for that.
AI think people really underestimate the focus that
Indiana has on taking their football team to the next level.
And look, I understand why people would be skeptical that
that was actually what was happening.
It really is one of those situations after so many decades
of not properly supporting it, you know, leading up to, you
know, to like the 2000 tens, you have to show that you're
actually going to do it, not just talk about it.
But there were other things about Signetti and what I had
heard about him and his family and the kind of their overall
response to the situation here that just made me think he
wasn't going to be catching the first bus out or, you know,
hopping on the 1st opportunity one, He's got a really good deal
here at IU, you know, and what I mean by that is this, you have a
a lot of NIL money. You've got a great NIL
collective that has seen steady increases in the overall amount
of money they're able to throw around.
You know, is it SEC level money? No, but it's certainly
competitive money in the way that Signetti seems to like to
coach and the way that he likes to select players.
You may not need the absolute largest NIL budget, but this
will probably help even add more to the pile now that it's
secured that he's going to be the one managing the funds.
You know the second you're able to basically run the program
however you want. I don't think people realize how
unusual that it is that a coach is hired at a Big 10 program and
gets to bring almost his entire staff from a Group of Five
school that wasn't in Division One like 5 or 6 years ago.
It wasn't an FBS at at least for him being able to come in,
establish the program the way that he wants run it, you know,
not have a lot of booster interference.
That's something that you deal with a lot of SEC schools and
and certain ACC schools where, you know, the people that
control the purse strings, the people that paid for you to be
there in the 1st place, want to have a lot of oversized control
of the program you're running, want to have a lot of access
that doesn't really exist at IU. There's not a booster network
that's set up for that. So you get kind of a blank check
to do what you want with the program.
And I think, you know both, that is both an advantage for
Signetti, but it's also to some degree, I think why IU has
capitalized so much on hiring him in the 1st place because he
was able to basically import his entire culture without having to
deal with a bunch of outside influence.
And, and that is a, a big thing that you're not going to get at
a lot of other places. Well, let me can I expand on
this first, because I, it's something I've been thinking
about. I've talked to a lot of people
off the. Air I just I I think you and I
have the same mindset. I didn't want to get into a big
signetti leaving discussion on our pod because I didn't think
he was leaving. So it's like, what, what are we
talking about? And I'm not really worried about
it. You know, I, I I like you.
My answer has been I I actually frame it very similar to my
discussion for the Pacers with Pascal Siakam.
And, and here's what I mean is when this offseason everyone's
like, oh man, the Pacers going to resign Siakam.
Like that's yeah, like that's, that's not, not really the
question. The question is where would
Siakam go if he Pacers, if he doesn't even go to the Pacers?
It's like start looking at the teams that have the salary cap
and that have a need for a guy like Siakam.
And there's not a lot of options.
And that's what I was thinking with Signeti is that I, I felt
like if you look around college football, if you're Cignetti,
you're not going to leave for a school that isn't in the Big 10
of the SEC. Like all those other schools are
just not in the same echelon. So then you've already narrowed
the pool down to like 40 schools.
And then if you're Cignetti, you're not going to leave to go
to Purdue or Maryland or Mississippi State.
You, you want, if you left, you'd want a school that was
better than where you're at in Indiana.
And and the the list gets really small really quick when you
start looking at it that way. Now, on the flip side, Indiana
would have to step up. Like Indiana can't just take for
granted like, well, you're not going to go to Florida and leave
here for all the reasons you said they have to step up.
But I also felt that was at our advantage as well.
Is it if you're signeti, it's like you look at it, it's like
maybe Ohio State would be a place you would go.
Maybe, you know, Auburn or Florida, But then everything you
said is true. You go there, there's going to
be strings attached to the money here in Indiana.
You basically in a matter of 10 weeks recreated Bob Knight in
the on the football side, you can kind of do whatever you want
to do. The the last thing that I would
say about it is, you know, that and I, I just to frame this a
little. And again, this is, this is now
no longer, you know, no longer makes sense because he got the
extension. But the other thing to think
about too, is for as much as we love Signeti and and as much as
I think he's the best coach in America, if if you're, let's
just pretend you know, Florida, Auburn or Ohio State, you're
Auburn. OK, if you want to make a run at
Signet, but you can't do it now. But this is what I was thinking
two or three weeks ago. If you're Auburn, those fans
would be like, hey, man, So what are we hiring a 63 year old guy
who two years ago was at JMU, had a good run at Indiana on a
soft schedule, you know, air quote, soft schedule.
And that's who we're hiring. We're not going after Kirby
Smart. Like there's an arrogance those
other teams that I'm not even sure they would want Signetti
because they all could have had him last year and nobody went
after him. I mean, it would have been a
wild hire for, you know, Auburn to do that.
But that there's something there too where even within his
resume, there's just kind of a this isn't a top level coach,
which I think is helping Indiana get him and now Indiana stepping
up to keep him. But those are all the reasons
that I thought he's not going to leave.
But my only fear was, you know, Indiana, the university can't F
around on this. Like you.
You have lightning in a bottle. Let's keep the momentum going
and. Dude, they did it, they did it
well. And look, we've, we've heard
that Signetti's wife really likes Bloomington, you know,
and, and actually Signetti just kind of verified that in the
statement that he made where, you know, he talks about how
appreciative he is and his family is.
I'm going to just read the statement here.
Actually, this was Signetti and their response to the the
signing of the contract. I am beyond I have beyond
appreciative for the tremendous commitment, confidence and
support from President Pam Whit and Athletic Director Scott
Dolson. Minette, his wife and I love
Bloomington and are grateful for how the IU community has
embraced us. I look forward to leading this
outstanding program and doing my part to continue the momentum
for Hoosier football and and every statement and Purdue
sucks. Yeah, Purdue's been doing this
IU sucks for years. Like just he's like, make that
ours. Anyway, You know, I, I think,
and actually Patrick brought it up.
I think it's a good point. You know, there's a legacy
possibility here with Signeti and it it's interesting that he
would be willing because, you know, again, what I think
everything you said was correct about would he have been a a
viable candidate at some other places?
But I think absolutely, like there would have been some big
football brands, traditional football brands that would have
have gone after him because they wouldn't have been that worried
about the money. But for him to say, you know
what, we're not even going to wait until bowl season or
playoff season. We're going to go ahead and get
this done, you know, in the middle of November.
I, I think part of that has to be this idea of here we are,
we're at a place that kind of mirrors my own career pathway in
some ways. You know, this is, this is not
landing at a top level institution and doing this.
You know, Signetti, you listen to all these interviews he's
done over the course of the last several weeks and months.
And he talks so much about his journey and how unusual it's
been and how he had to bet on himself and go to a small
school, another Indiana PA, and then slowly work his way up this
ladder. And he gets this power for job.
And it's, you know, it's arguably, you know, one of the
least attractive power for jobs, particularly from a legacy
perspective. And he does this in the first
year. I mean, you know, people, I
don't think that if you can see that you can do this and you can
win here. And if you're convinced that,
hey, they're they're going to increase nil, they're going to
increase, you know, do things with the stadium to make the
stadium situation even better. You know, we're going to get the
practice facility situation taken care of, whatever it is.
You know, I think that there is a, an attitude from Signetti
where it's like, I would love to shove it in the face of the
college football establishment that ignored me for so long and
do it at Indiana, a place that nobody thought that you could do
it. I mean, I, I, I got to think
that in some ways, you know, and it's, and this is actually where
I think fans really stepped up after those first couple of
games where there wasn't a lot of attendance.
The, the way that the fan base reacted, almost filling for the
Maryland game, the way they reacted for big noon, the way
that they reacted for game day, the atmosphere that's been in
there the last three games in particular that the fans
traveling on the road. I got to think he looked at that
and said, this could be my place like this did the support is
there. People are excited.
People do care about football in Indiana.
This is potentially a place kind of like a, a Barry Alvarez at
Wisconsin where you can essentially become the the
reason why you became nationally relevant.
And you know that that's really a fascinating thing to think
about because that's not how most people think.
But so much about this signeti hire for Indiana has been
unusual. You hire a 62 year old who
that's a very old age for a Power 4 coach.
I mean, go down the list, look at the number of people who got
hired. Most of them got hired in their
40s or 50s, you know, to to hire a guy from James Madison.
That's a bit of a risk, especially when there were, you
know, probably higher level coaches or assistants you could
have gone after. But this is just another kind of
step in the unusual but awesome nature of how all this has come
together for Indiana And and yeah, you just can't help but be
excited by it. You mentioned something too
about, you know, I, I've heard this thrown around that, you
know, the Indiana Nil collective, even for football,
has more money than you would really expect for a team that's
bad. The success that we've had up to
this year. And I think that's something
that's also kind of funny is, you know, people might look at
this like, Oh my God, Indiana, what are you doing?
It's like, well, Indiana's got a lot of money.
Like there is a lot of money there.
You know, we are part of the Big 10.
We get our checks too. And, you know, this is not, this
is not, you know, funds that we don't have.
We have it. And I, I, I know the amount of
money that they're making at every home game now is
exponentially more than they ever made before.
And the train's going. And, you know, you also have to
give credit to Scott Dolson, you know, Whitten as president.
You know, I, I, I would say with Whitten, you know it, it's
definitely shown she's at almost every game.
She's down there whenever they announce, you know, a, you know,
a, a, a championship for like a golf team last game.
Like she's down there. We definitely have support
across the administration for athletics, which I think it's
fair to say has not always been the case in Indiana.
Yeah, I mean, there has been presidential support.
At times it feels like there hasn't even been athletic
director support for football. You know, that that's what I
also am very happy with is that you you see across the board,
the administration understands, hey, this is important, this is
special. And you know, it's it's what you
and I have talked about the entire time we've done this
podcast is how does Indiana turn it around?
They have to have support. But then you need to get that
coach like the Barry Alvarez, like God, the guy at Kansas
State. Snyder Yeah.
Bill Snyder, Yeah. You, you have to find that one
coach who can come in, turn it around and stay.
And if you do that, you can get a nice little run.
And if you're Wisconsin, you can change the paradigm.
I mean, but, you know, Wisconsin was nothing before Barry out.
They they were just kind of like any other Big 10 school.
Alvarez comes and then suddenly they're Wisconsin and they are
just a perennial year in, year out power and then it actually
extends to the entire athletic department at Wisconsin.
You know, so these can be seismic changes.
So I just think you have to give credit for the administration
for understanding this. But again, I go back to this
isn't like we just made him the highest paid coach in the
country. Like this makes us a competitive
mid to high mid level big 10 team.
So the idea of like, Oh my God, what are you guys doing?
Like just so quick? It's like, well, we, we, we took
an advantage to kind of use a situation that's very
advantageous to help pull us into the the strata that we
already needed to be in anyway. You know, there's a couple of
things I think that are worth reminding people of, and I've
talked about these on the podcast before.
I was talking with some friends within the university the other
day and they said applications for freshmen at IU are up like
10 to 12% over this time last year.
That is football doing that. I mean that.
And this is something that when you think about that cinematic
open for the Michigan game on CBS.
Oh, I know. It's awesome you.
You think about, you think, you think about all of those images
coming from the Washington game, coming from the Nebraska game,
the amount of free advertising that you're getting for the
entire university through the conduit of the football program.
This is the thing that people often forget about when we talk
about the high salaries that are getting paid to coaches or the
money being paid now to players via NIL.
Is that the reason why there's so much money in this?
The reason why Indiana makes so much money from television is
that there's, you know, what you're trying to do is a college
athletic department or as a university in general.
Why do you do college athletics in the 1st place if you're a
university? Think about the universities
that don't really like the Ivy League schools.
They don't need to go advertise themselves.
They already have the name recognition.
Everybody wants to get into Yale or get into Harvard or whatnot.
For the rest of the schools that are out there, you're engaged in
essentially a marketing war with every other major school in the
country. And, you know, I've told the
story before, like when Butler went to those back-to-back
national championship games and basketball, they saw a huge
increase in applications, particularly out of state
applications. You've got kids from Indiana
going to Alabama, going to Georgia, you know, going to
Florida, going to these Southern schools.
Why are they doing that, even if they're not necessarily the,
like, top academic programs? Well, because it's fun to be on
a campus that has a great football program.
And you cannot have been in Bloomington or on campus at any
point this fall without having felt the palpable buzz that is
coming directly from the football program.
I was walking out of my office the other day walking through
the sample gates and there's like 2 what look like college
freshman girls with taking videos of themselves, you know,
saying like we win Google us out of the blue randomly.
It's like we got people doing cig memes in front of the sample
gates on like a Thursday in a bye week.
Like that. That level of, of culture and
excitement is what students want.
You know, I mean, all of these universities they have they're,
they're great points and they're not so great points in terms of
their academics. You know, Indiana's got a lot of
great academic schools. I teach in one of them.
But you, you, you have to understand how this business
works. And this is where this
administration, I think has made the investments that kind of get
Indiana back to where they were in the 80s and 90s when they
were a national brand because of how prominent the football or
the basketball program was. You know, you're on television
constantly, you're winning titles, you got people that are
coming from all over the country to come to IU because they want
to be part of that. That's exactly what you're
seeing. But football is just so much
exponentially bigger, Scott, and it it attracts so many more
people. It includes so many more people.
And that's why it's exciting that Indiana over the course
really of the last 15 years, but absolutely with what we've seen
over the last 12 months has finally decided that this is the
business we have to be in and we're not going to take any half
measures in doing it. Yeah.
And and as you said, the money's exponential.
I, I heard this from someone within IU that, you know, up to
this year, the most money that they'd ever made from
concessions at one game was $450,000.
Now, obviously you have beer sales and and inflation added to
some of this, but this season alone at just the Washington and
Nebraska games, they made $800,000 at each game.
So you know you're you're doubling concession sales.
Those are real numbers and those are things that can continue.
And you know that this is also, you know, you're getting to a
point. And I, I think we joked about it
a couple weeks ago. But as they talk about this
Memorial Stadium refresh, there is a world where it's like, all
right, if, if you can, you know, obviously you're not going to
keep this level of, you know, we're not going to be in the
college floor playoff every year.
But if you can keep the floor at six or seven or eight wins, you
know, there's a world where we're like, all right, maybe we
not only refresh the Memorial Stadium, let's add another
20,000 seats. Because now you, you get, you
know, that that becomes 1.21.4 million a game at, you know,
concession sales and ticket sales.
And it's not, it's not an absurd thought at this point now.
Yeah, well, it's funny because one of the there's always
trolls, there's always people who are like, oh, are they going
to keep the assistants or hey, well, what happens if the if
this is like Mel Tucker, which it won't be Mel Tucker 2 point O
but like what you and I think talked about this or maybe it
was somebody else I was talking with.
I'll note if Kurt Signetti wins one less game next year than
he's already won this year with Indiana, that season would be
tied for the second best season in program history.
You know, I mean, that's, that's where you're at at this point
with this program and the stability you get from this, the
ability to go out and get recruits.
We saw last night Indiana flips a cornerback from Colorado, 4
star. It hops their recruiting ranking
up to 39th in the country. You know, now's the time.
You mentioned like expanding the stadium.
You know, this is where I think you you get the luxury boxes
that we that we've needed forever.
You, you figure out a way to build those in, you know, the,
the capacity of Memorial Stadium.
I think you wait a few years because you want to make sure
that you can build this momentum, you know, make the
make the ticket a harder ticket to get.
Then you can think about what do we need to expand the stadium.
Most people are going the other direction, the live in person
audience across the country. Unless you've got one of those
mega stadiums, it's probably at about the 6570 thousand range
regularly, you know, But to me it's about how do you capitalize
on bigger ticket items within the stadium?
How do you get donors? It's so easy now, as you know,
Scott, to get down here from Indianapolis.
You know, it is, it is, it's like a suburb basically at this
point with the Interstate, you know, to be able to say to the
business owners up there and the people that are interested in
watching good football, you know, let's get you some sweets
in Memorial Stadium. And hey, you drop, you know, 20,
five, $30,000 or whatever on one of those where you, you bought a
lot of concessions just with that, you know, in terms of
equivalencies. So Salubi suites, Salubi suites,
yes, exactly. So look, there's, there's a lot
of things I think that Indiana can go with from here, but
getting Signeti nailed down was important.
And this is where you know what, what I think we've seen it
Indiana as much as anywhere. And you, you see this at a bunch
of other places, certainly, but, but you look at the examples of
Indiana, the argument that a program wins or loses or that a
program is ultimately responsible for the success or
failure of of itself. I think it's always been a bit
of a misnomer. There are a couple of programs
where it seems like that, but realistically, it's all about
who the coach is, What can the coach do?
And that is more important. And I would I would say, you
know, look around the country at some of the places where people
are having success, like Georgia for years was a contender, but
was never a team that could win beyond a certain level.
They hire Kirby Smart, they give him a few years runway.
He wins multiple national titles.
You know, Clemson had the exact same issue, you know, and and
you know, they hire a coach that's able to get it done.
But you flip the script, you know, you look at what Lincoln
Riley is struggling with at USC, you would think USC that's a
program that just wins on its own and it doesn't matter who
the coach is. And yet since Pete Carroll, they
have struggled time and time again to properly hire somebody.
We saw this with Alabama, you know, post Gene Stallings, where
they went through coach after coach after coach until they
finally landed on Nick Saban and Saban made them great.
But a lot of people conflate that with just Alabama being
great, You know, and I think you can go down the list with a lot
of the coaches that are out there.
So when you have a coach like Signeti, when you've when you've
lucked into hiring him. And I mean, look, Scott Dolson
deserves a ton of credit, but it's still luck that he happened
to be available and interested at that particular time and that
Indiana managed to scrape together the funds to fire their
coach a year early at a a huge expense, a $15 million
ultimately expense. Like the stars had to align just
right. So when you align those stars
just right and you get a coach like this, the worst thing you
can do is, you know, pussyfoot around with the money and say,
well, is this guy actually worth that much money?
Or is it six or seven? You've got to.
And and I think we know enough about Signeti now, this isn't
like a one hit wonder. This is sustainable.
The you know, the fact that he's doing all of this with an array
of transfers and leftovers from the previous roster.
This isn't even a a chance for him to build his own roster yet.
He's basically had to Scrabble all this together.
You know that the fact that IU was smart enough to get on this
early because they had to have been working on this for a
couple of months leading into this, the fact that they got
this done early is so key. You don't even let a guy like
that like consider going out the door.
What do you need to do to make it worth his while?
To be here? That is, It's so important and
you all you have to do is look around college football to see
why. Well, and I also look at it, you
know, I, I, I, I often think of this when we're, you know,
playing a game, it's like, what does the other team not want us
to? It's like a fourth and two.
And it's like the other team would hate for us to go for it.
Like that's what I want to do is to go for it.
You think of the other teams in, you know, our, our phylum of,
you know, we're still probably not at the level of Ohio State
or Penn State, but you look at, you know, Purdue, Illinois,
Northwestern, you know, Michigan State, those teams, yeah,
they're looking at this, you know, like, like I kind of how
we looked at Jeff Brohm at Purdue.
It's like, man, he, he's got something going though, like
he's, he's figuring some stuff out.
What I want is an Indiana fan is for him to leave.
Like I, I would like to see them have to try and recreate that
again. If you're a Purdue, Illinois,
Michigan State fan, you know, you look at this and it's like
you're, you're probably talking about all I, he's gonna go to
Florida. Like you, you want that to
happen. The Purdue fans are not happy on
Reddit right now that that is. This is not been received
particularly well by them, Yes, So.
What's their take? IU sucks.
Let me guess. Well, no, they're just, I think
one of them said like this is the worst possible timeline or
something like that. It's but, but yeah, no, I mean,
that's the thing. You're you want your team to
make the right hire and then do what they need to do to retain
that hire. And it's a little more of a
blank slate with a place like Indiana.
Yeah. And we'll see.
You know, you never can tell how these things are going to work
out long term. But I don't know that you would.
I don't know anybody wouldn't be love to be in Indiana's position
right now with all of this and that I.
Agree and I mean I I stand by you know, we did a similar
podcast. Let's let's call everything
true. We did a similar, maybe not with
as much love, but a similarly positive podcast when they
signed Alan to his extension because at that time Alan had
turned things around. And you know, I stand by our
feeling at that point because again, we are so far behind in
spending on coaches and assistant coaches that you just,
you need someone to drag you there.
And even if it didn't work out with Alan, that was good because
now we were paying, you know, 3 to 4 million a coach, which
allowed us to get Signeti like I talked about before.
And if this, you know, if, if things don't work out in a
couple years, I, I still will stand by this podcast because
it, it shows that Indiana's a place that commits to football.
And if you do things right, we will really commit to you.
Again, I, I think there's more things at play here where this
feels like this is going to work for the next couple of years.
But, you know, the only thing I would tell fans and is that, you
know, next year is key. But it's also like just 'cause
we don't go, you know, if we win seven or eight games next year,
that's not a step down. Like this year is so special and
every year we're not going to be competing for a Big 10 title or
the College Football Playoff. You know, Indiana, our goal is
to get to six or seven wins a year, go to a bowl and then
every couple years can you pop and have the season that we're
having now? And I think that's that's what
we got to get get keep at. But I think we need to keep that
in mind next year because I don't I'm I'm assuming next
year. We're also not going to start 10
and O and have the same run. You know, there might be a
couple more bumps. That doesn't mean that we made a
mistake. Yeah.
I mean, and to wrap things up, because I mean we've kind of hit
all the salient points here, but you know, my feeling on that is
as follows. If you're, if you're going to be
in the business of doing this stuff, you better do it right.
And you know, the, again, when you're talking about donations,
when you're talking about people being invested in the program
both emotionally and financially, that doesn't just
happen on its own. This is now the opportunity to
build a culture around football the way that there's a culture
around basketball that still exists.
I mean, basketball, you know, even though basketball hasn't
had anywhere close to the level of success in the last 2530
years that it had in the 30 years before that, it's still,
you know, draws huge crowds. It still draws a lot of money, a
lot of donors, a lot of interest.
You're starting at the ground floor essentially here with
football, but you're doing it with a guy who's already grabbed
the attention not just of IU and who's your nation, but of the
nation, the entire nation of college football.
Indiana has become like the feel good story of the season.
Everybody's paying attention to them.
The and this, as you said, like this shows assistants, you know,
that might be coming here because certainly a lot of these
assistants that Kurt Signetti has brought with them are going
to be getting looks as head coaches in various places.
You know, you want to try to hang on to Mike Shanahan if if
he doesn't have a head coaching job that's out there, you know,
you don't want him to be tempted to go to an SEC school.
You want to hang on to a Brian Haynes.
I mean, you got all these people who are clearly integral parts
of the success, and I'm sure Kurt Signetti can replace some
of them if they end up going. And then the natural order of
assistance is they're going to go find, you know, new vistas or
try to get head coaching jobs of their own.
But to be able to be competitive in the salary pool for
assistance is certainly something that we're going to be
seeing. Indiana, you know, if they're
going to make this much of an investment in the head coach,
you're almost certain that they're going to make the same
levels of investment with the assistant coach pool.
And that's been kind of the big leverage point for a lot of
college football programs is we can pay our offensive and
defensive coordinators 7 figures.
We can pay, you know, our, you know, a really good strategist
on either side of the ball a really high amount of money and
retain them rather than constantly having to go out and
try to find new people to fit in.
This is it's going to be fascinating to watch Indiana
compete in this environment because it's just not something
we're used to seeing. And let's just call it what it
is. You know, they have the big 10
TV money, but you know, the signetti towel right there,
those are selling for 150 bucks on eBay.
So if you're IU, you just, you just make, buy another batch of
50,000 towels, throw them on eBay and like, there you go.
You, you got the money you need to make.
I mean, they've they, they have it there.
Sig towels are going to pay for all of this.
Well, Scott, you know, I'm glad I was able to to roust you out
of bed and and onto an emergency podcast this morning.
Great news for Indiana, obviously, and Congrats.
Yeah, and Congrats to the Signetti's.
I mean, it's, it's been a joy watching this thing develop over
the course of the first few months of the rain.
I'm just excited that this is going to be something that will
extend for quite a while into the future.
Now. I was talking with some friends
last night and one of them said on text, you know, it was
something that I, I also agreed with, which is I don't think I
can go back to what Indiana football was before what we've
experienced this season. You know, and, and look, I'm not
expecting 1011 win, 12 win seasons every year.
That would be ridiculous anywhere.
But to be consistently in the 8910 win range, to be able to
jump up to that next level and be competitive because right now
you've got that set up. And to have a coach that
clearly, I think is going to be someone that can continually put
Indiana in that spot, that is really exciting.
And to to be able to not have that hanging over us as we roll
into this offseason is really, really one of those things that
I'm, I can't put it into words how happy I am that this has
been taken care of by the institution.
And, and I just want to yes, yes.
And let's just take a moment because we don't, I don't
normally hop on all the but previews with you.
You know, there's a world where Indiana beats Ohio State.
Like it it, it feels insane because you know, we're still in
the season and it's like us going into Columbus winning is
crazy. But I've been telling people
this, you know, I, I think that we'll compete.
I think we'll play well. I don't think we'll win.
But if you talk this, this is fever dream level.
If we win, if we win this next Saturday, First off, it's like
this looks like chump change, like this is like, all right,
this is the greatest deal ever. But secondly, I will come out on
after that game being like, we're the number one team in the
country. I mean, Oregon's got to win at
home against Penn State. We got one on the road.
We're better than everybody. And I mean, it's, it's like
that's what's insane is that's what's at our feet right now,
Indiana. Signs Kurt Stignetti to an
extension. He'll be here through 2030.
Two, $8 million a year, plus A $1 million retention bonus every
year. So effectively $9 million a
year. Heady times in IU football land
and certainly about the best news Indiana could have gotten
on the bye week. Thanks to all you folks for
tuning in. We will be back later with more
content surrounding this. We'll talk about it more during
the week. We'll also have some previews as
Indiana gets ready to face Ohio State at the Horseshoe.
For Scott, I'm Galen. This is Crimson cast.
Thanks for joining us, folks. We'll catch you folks.
On the flip side, Bring Back the Bison, Stay never Daunted song,
everybody.