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We got some kind of random things to talk about throughout
the course of the show, but if you are watching live, you can
send in questions, comments via YouTube.
We're also on Facebook and everything.
We've got a Twitch stream going as well, but we'd love to hear
from you. We got a couple from earlier on
that we're going to answer. I want to start kind of by
talking some national scene stuff.
We'll talk some IU stuff, we'll talk some Bloomington stuff and
hopefully kind of an array of things that'll be of interest to
people. But a lot going on obviously on
the national scene as we are still awaiting a ruling in the
House case, which of course is the case.
That could end up finally pushing the NCAA a little bit
closer into the direction of directly compensating athletes,
but also has a whole bevy of issues that go along with it.
And so, you know, where we're at right now is essentially that
there's been a pause in the process.
I remember talking like back in January or February about how
the settlement date was supposedly set for April 8th,
you know, which was the OR April 7th, I guess it was which was
the national championship day. That was supposed to be the day
that everything got settled on this.
Well, it didn't largely because the judge didn't like the roster
limits that had popped up in the midst of all of this and then
and didn't like the the general idea that people had essentially
been pushed out of college athletics as athletes.
You know, whether or not that's a primary concern, it's
certainly a concern to the judge.
And I think, you know, one of the things with these class
action lawsuits often times is, you know, if you agree to
something that's already caused harm to a group of people, that
can be problematic. And the problem, though, is
like, you know, college athletics essentially just
assumed that this thing was going to get rubber stamped.
They'd already made a lot of roster changes.
They'd already eliminated several positions.
And this is where I think, you know, college athletics
continues to walk this razor thin line of trying to maintain
whatever they're trying to claim amateurism is, while also
simultaneously looking at their balance sheets because their
businesses and saying, gosh, this isn't going to work.
We got to do some cuts, especially if we got to pay 20
plus $1,000,000 a year in revenue sharing to athletes.
And so this is I think it kind of a curious spot right now for
the judge to be in, for college athletics to be in.
You've got in this situation essentially where so many of
the. Things that we thought we're
going to be settled by this point aren't a lot of the NIL
deals that were being signed. Are now just kind of ensconced
in in law like they're not going anywhere.
Whereas, you know, for a while there there was this mad rush to
try to get as many as many nil deals signed prior to the
settlement date because the theory was that there were
financial rules were going to change.
Now it looks like. The financial rules may not
change, period. And it's interesting because
there was a. I'm trying to get the best way
to describe this earlier, but several people tweeted about
this. Essentially the nil clearing
house that Deloitte, the consulting company, is supposed
to be providing. First of all, they're calling it
Nil go, which might be the single stupidest thing name wise
I've heard in this entire process.
Nil go? Like what that Darren Hytner on,
on Twitter got a, a good joke where he's like, you know, what
would you call something that's meant to stop NIL deals as much
as possible? Well, of course you call it NIL
go because we are living in the upside down.
But no, the Deloitte clearing house.
I'm going to actually call this up and put it on the screen for
those of you who are watching 'cause I think it's, it's
interesting to kind of dig into this.
Let me see if I can like zoom in on this a little bit so
everybody can see what I'm talking about.
Let's see, that is not really visible.
I apologize. This is what happens when I try
to blow up something on Twitter. Let me go back and and not put
that on the screen. It's actually more readable the
way that it is right there. So summary of nil go.
I can't believe I might have to call this stupid thing nil.
Go. Purpose of nil go to efficiently
clear legitimate third party nil deals parentheses contract slash
payments with a total value of $600.00 or more.
To reflect. True.
Market dynamics for NIL deals without arbitrary value
regulation and to support enforcement institutions and
student athletes as part of the evolving collegiate athletics
landscape. So basically what they are
setting forward as how this will work is that they're going to
try to evaluate whether an individual or an entity is the
person giving the, the, the payout for the nil amount,
whether there's a valid business purpose verification.
I'm supposing that they think this is going to stop people
from getting paid half $1,000,000 to like have their
picture on a website. And then a range of compensation
analysis for every deal, a 12 point analysis assessing A
compensation aligns with similarly situated individuals,
incomparable deals, the primary user groups, obviously student
athletes or just athletes as we should be calling them
representatives of the athletes, institutional users and payers,
which of of course of the people who are actually supplying the
money. And what's interesting about
this, I think, is that the the, the deal review outcomes at the
very end, you go through this process that I just outlined and
this clearing house is supposed to give one of three statuses
cleared, not cleared in review. I guess information needed is
the 4th status, but that's like a kind of a temporary thing.
And if a deal is not cleared because it doesn't pass muster
according to these totally not arbitrary things that they're
putting down, they can do one of four things, renegotiate and
resubmit, proceed at risk of eligibility consequences, cancel
the deal or request neutral arbitration.
It's interesting because this. Clearing House does not.
Actually appear to have any power to stop deals themselves.
All they can do is say, well, you might be ineligible if you
proceed with this deal. Which is a really.
Strange loophole if you think about it, because that
essentially means that this whole thing could essentially
just be a facade where yes, we're going to have NIL deals
and yes, there's going to be deals that we're going to say
are not fair market value. But then what are they going to
do? They're going to refer to the
NCAA and the NCAA is going to try to turn around and tell an
athlete, sorry, you are ineligible because you've been
given this deal. I see lawsuits out the wazoo on
this like this is this this looks whoever at Deloitte signed
up for this and signed up for the the amount of money they're
going to be paid. To do this deal and to not have
like executive authority to cancel deals unilaterally based
upon the findings like that person deserves a raise, a
promotion, whatever, because that is a smart cookie.
This, this looks very much like the NC double as legal approach
with everything, which is we're going to throw a ton of lawyers
at something and if we don't like the finding in court, we're
going to throw even more lawyers at it.
Which has led to, of course, 10s of millions, hundreds of
millions of dollars over the course of the last 15 years of
the NCAA throwing money at lawyers to fix things.
It's been great for the lawyers, hasn't been great for really
anybody else. But it's interesting because
there was another piece to this that got revealed last week,
which, you know, again, came from Deloitte as Deloitte I, I
was either asked questions or was there was something going
on? It was a meeting.
I'm sorry. This was from Ross Dellinger
from Yahoo. And so he had a tweet.
On the 13th. So I think a couple days ago in
a meeting. With Deloitte officials at ACC
spring meetings. The company shared with a DS and
coaches interesting features on the NIL Clearinghouse, which is
kind of what I just quoted you, but according to their analysis,
based upon the criteria, 70% of past deals from Booster.
Collectives would have been denied, while 90% of deals from
public companies would have been approved.
Now this is a really interesting thing because obviously you know
one of the things that makes. NIL work or dare I say it, one
of the things that makes NIL go in this whole process is private
donors, private companies, you know, organizations of people or
people who are organizing themselves would be a better way
of putting it. Who are putting money towards
these NIL deals or individuals like the oil magnet at Texas
Tech or you know, some other folks that we could mention?
Who are amassing significant amounts of money in order to pay
for recruits, pay for transfers, pay for rosters and, you know,
for the clearing house to be set up in a way where it says, well,
sorry, the booster collectives aren't going to be allowed to do
this, but public companies can. I think really is an interesting
indicator of where the NCAA and the school's mindsets are at.
Which is where. The money is at that these
companies are looking for, or they did the athletic
departments are looking for. It's all from public companies,
it's all from businesses. The money that the athletic
departments would like to keep is the money from boosters.
It's the money from individual. Because that's if.
You know anything about college athletics, you know that, you
know, varsity clubs and you know all these, all the revenue
you're getting off of tickets and sweets and, and you know,
special dispensations for tickets and things like that.
It's all coming from individuals, often times rich
individuals. And yes, boosters have been used
essentially as a gigantic slush fund.
But that's because ultimately the power and how that money is
spread around is largely laying in the hands of the the athletic
departments and the individual schools and the coaches.
And to watch that flip to where it's going directly to athletes,
I think is is a real problem in the eyes of the NCAA.
So again, one of those things I saw that and I'm immediately
like, there's no way that some of these private individuals or
booster collectives are going to just sit back and allow the NCAA
through this third party, you know, clearing house to say,
sorry, your money's no good here.
But their money is there's it's it's unenforceable.
So we're going to wait to see what the final verdict looks
like in in the house case. They're they're supposed to be,
there was supposed to be a ruling tomorrow or at least the
final like rebuttal statements in what is supposed to be done
about the situation involving the roster limits.
But I don't know if the judge is going to find something there.
There was an early statement submitted by the plaintiffs,
which is housed and like that those lawyers saying, you know,
this works for the majority of people.
Why don't we continue with this? It's very fascinating how all of
this is is coming together. So I don't know if we're going
to see a resolution on this in the short term or not, but
that's kind of where things are at right now.
And I'm still promising to do a large deep dive on this is a
podcast series and just waiting for the dust to settle so we can
have a sense of what we're looking at officially.
But that's kind of where things are at with all of that.
And just kind of a curious set up here.
By and large, I don't think anybody really knows where it's
going to land. And so that is going to be quite
fascinating. I did and we had a couple of
comments here, William, saying ignorant fans will never view
athletes as employees, even though that's exactly what
they've become. It's why people like me catch up
because I demand productivity and excellence.
You know, it's, it's interesting.
I, I, I've often, often question this with the idea of, oh,
you're an employee, you know, you need to produce at a high
level. Like so much of this is now, I
think, misdirected at, at the idea that athletes at the
college level aren't trying hard.
Like organizations make decisions about athletes and
sport all the time. You know, and that isn't, that's
not just a domestic thing in the US.
This happens overseas. Like there's plenty of roster
spots given to guys who have a lot of value or good athletes.
Maybe they're not playing well. But you know, the idea that I, I
keep hearing floated about, oh, you're an employee, you're going
to have to play or act differently.
Like the culture of the sport is the culture of the sport.
And what I find interesting about this whole setup right now
in terms of how people perceive college athletes and the idea
that somehow that perception is going to fundamentally change if
they're classified as employees. I mean, look, I like, I, I have
employees that are students at Indiana in my roles by the
various roles that I do in media.
Like I have people that get paid to do work.
You know, the idea that you're getting paid and not doing work
is just not realistic. And with a team and with a team
full of, of athletes, a player having a series of bad games is
not the same as not performing and therefore not deserving the
money that you were you were granted.
Like that's what a contract is all about.
We, we pay you this money, you go do this and then we re
evaluate at the end of the contract unless you do something
egregious to break the contract. That's just how employment
works. So I I don't think that the
employment switch over is going to make that big of a
difference. It's a lot more accurate to the
actual situation with things with college athletics, at least
at the the highest levels of revenue producing sports than
what we have currently, which is essentially almost like, you
know, I would, I would actually argue right now by not being
listed as employees, by not having collective bargaining,
you're letting more athletes get away with, you know, not
performing or not doing what they should do because there is
no real way to officially say the money is tied to work.
The whole idea of employment is, well, the money's tied to work
right now. It's not.
And you've heard these stories from around college sports,
especially in the last year of NIL deals that were signed with
no enforcement provision on the part of the colleges because
they can't, because you, you're not supposed to be paying
athletes like for all of this. Like we don't want pay for play.
Anybody that's a fan that says you don't want pay for play,
you're, you actually do want pay for play Like you do want
somebody to play and have money tied to their actual execution
of that. You don't want a situation like
you've got right now where you got unenforceable contracts
because you can't tie it to the actual performance on the field
or even the performance of going out and doing autograph sessions
or whatever on behalf of the, of the university.
And so that's, there's a lot of paradoxes with the way that
people think about this. And it really does require, for
a lot of folks, I think, a real shift in mentality.
And I don't blame people for being confused about it.
It's just kind of a curious thing to think about in terms of
the the public perception of all of this.
Greg Lamont asks any thoughts on state legislation for NILIE,
Arkansas? So, you know what, I've been
fascinated. It's a great question, Greg.
I've been fascinated throughout the course of this entire saga
about this idea of states trying to leverage NIL legislation at
the state level to give the schools in their state a
competitive advantage in recruiting or in the transfer
portal or whatnot. And this happened before NIL was
actually a thing, you know, so before the Supreme Court
decision in Alston in two in 2021 that essentially threw the
doors open, it didn't, it didn't start NIL.
It simply said you can't regulate this the way that
you've been regulating at NCAA. You don't have any legal
standing. But prior to that, you started
to see and, and really in the immediate aftermath, a lot of
states passing NIL laws that they thought were going to give
them an advantage, but a lot of them had catches.
Like, you know, Texas passed a law saying you can make money on
NIL as a college athlete, but you can't make any as a high
school athlete. Which is what led Quin Ewers to
decommit from Texas, graduate high school a year early, move
to Ohio, commit to Ohio State, make NIL money there, only to
then transfer back to Texas once they once he was eligible to
make it, he made extra money that way.
California had a law that looked like it was going to be
inclusive, but there were all these restrictions in it.
The states that didn't have NIL laws that they passed, Indiana
being one of them, actually ended up giving their schools a
competitive advantage. Not everybody took advantage of
the competitive advantage, but the the the states that didn't
have laws essentially allowed the schools to make their own
decisions about name, image and likeness and how that was going
to flow. And now this is a little bit of
a different thing because what Greg is referring to about
Arkansas was a bill that was passed and I think was signed by
the governor of Arkansas that basically exempts NIL deals from
state taxes and also exempts them from FOIA requests.
So for those who don't know, a FOIA request is a Freedom of
Information Act request. And essentially what that says
is. Public records or records tied
to public entities like universities.
Can be subject to open records request because they are in the
the public sphere and and therefore are things that are of
public interest. So, you know, you've seen a
situation like it in Georgia where technically NIL deals are
subject to FOIA, but the university has slow walked or
just not responded to some of those FOIA requests.
This actually ensconces in Arkansas law, you know, you
know, basically publicity rights.
And I don't think Arkansas may not have had any publicity
rights at this prior to this. A lot of states don't have
publicity right laws. But basically it says if you
make money through NIL now you cannot FOIA the contract and you
also are exempt from being taxed at the state level off of that
income. And, you know, I think that's
one of those fascinating things where athletes might have a
minor, a minorly less financial burden for a large NIL deal.
And and look, any money that's taxed is going to be some money
that you're not having to deal with.
But like, it's not as big of an advantage as people might think.
For instance, like Florida doesn't have any income tax
period. You know, Texas doesn't have any
income tax. I think Tennessee doesn't have
any income tax either. I think they've just got a state
sales tax. And so there's, there's already
some protections built into some of the places that have income
taxes about protecting money like this from those items.
Greg, Greg apparently an expert on Arkansas income tax.
I'll save a 4% income tax above 25,000 a year.
Well, that's, that's a fairly sizable chunk of money.
So this does help from that perspective.
I don't know that it's going to make that big of a difference
though in as much as at the end of the day, you know, you're not
talking about something that couldn't be overcome with a a
slightly better deal being offered from somebody else.
Like you're not talking about an insane difference in money.
You know, if you're, if you're going to give somebody say a
$500,000 NIL deal and you know, you're looking at a situation
where you need to overcome the fact that Arkansas isn't taxing
them on the 4%, you're talking about extra $20,000.
Now that does add up after a while, but how many, how many
battles does every school need to win against Arkansas in
recruiting? So it might help Arkansas a
little bit, but I think Arkansas, the, the city, the,
the, the schools in Arkansas have bigger problems than just
their income tax in terms of trying to attract talent.
You know a lot of that being. You know it's.
Just not a premier location in the SEC and you're fighting a
lot of other reputational items there that that, you know, if
you you get a small advantage. I just don't know that it's
enough. But I do think that you're going
to see states continuing to jockey for this.
And that I think is the most important thing is like what
people don't understand. And, and this is where the,
this, this Commission that Donald Trump wants to put
together that would involve Nick Saban and others.
It's, it's not something that can be solved at the federal
level because there's no federal right of publicity laws.
There's no, I mean, you got federal income tax that applies
to everybody, but every state has the ability to individually
self regulate some of these things.
You can't fix all of that at the national level unless you put in
like a national right of publicity law, which is very
much unlikely to happen given that right of publicity extends
well beyond athletics and extends to things like acting.
And you know the? The other performing arts, you
know, that's where a lot of this originally came from.
So I do think it's going to be really fascinating watching all
of this play out. I think the Arkansas things
worth keeping an eye on. But like many of those NIL based
laws that we saw pop up, you know, right around 2019-2020,
2021, I don't know that they made that big of a difference.
Like we haven't seen any states or any schools in particular,
states making out like gangbusters because of the laws
that were passed in their states.
They're making out like gangbusters because like in
Texas Tech's case, they have a rich guy who really wants Texas
Tech to be good at football and basketball.
And he's just, you know, essentially just making it rain
in Lubbock. And that's bringing athletes in.
That's really the big thing at this point.
The question is, how much are you making it rain?
I mean, I don't know if you folks have seen this, but there
was a note I saw the other day, I think it was Kurt Signetti
that mentioned it. Like the salary cap, even though
there's not supposed to be 1, but like, what's what it's
costing to have a roster at the top levels of college football
right now? Ryan Day two years ago said it
was about 15 to $17 million. Kurt Signetti this summer said
it was 40 million. Dollars $40 million, I mean
that's that's crazy That is that is a lot of money that's come in
and it's one of those situations where that's got that's the
thing that's got you got to get a handle on and I don't know I I
I. I'll back up.
I do know the NCAA and its schools are not up to that task
because they consistently refuse to acknowledge what business
they're in, except for maybe Kentucky, as Kent Beckman points
out, Kentucky forming an LLCA viable alternative.
So here's the thing about the LLC with Kentucky Athletic.
So for those who didn't see and don't know, like a limited
liability corporation, this is a private entity which they are
forming, which will allow them, they think to raise more money
than they would as a public entity.
And So what they've planned on doing, and I'm kind of borrowing
this off of an SI article that was written by James Parks.
But so the the trustees of University of Kentucky approved
a proposal to transfer their entire athletic department into
a limited liability corporation, which they believe will allow
them to explore things like public private partnerships,
handling expenses, as you know, through that process rather than
handling them as a public entity.
And you know what I think is going to be fascinating about
this? You know, Kentucky makes about
$160 million in revenue every year.
They are not up in the Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Texas A&M
echelon. But there are solidly in that
next year Indiana's in this tier as well.
And what's going to be interesting with the LLC model?
There are upsides and downsides to this approach.
The upside is obviously you do have a lot more flexibility.
Like I don't think people understand how absolutely
complicated trying to do partnerships at the college
level is if it's not directly related to education.
It's doable, but it's very Byzantine at at a bunch of
places, Indiana being among them.
And at the end of the day, an athletic department is not a for
profit entity. It is a nonprofit entity.
That's that's all essentially outside of the private schools
who have a different model. Often times you're not supposed
to make money as an athletic department.
This is always why, you know when when you'd get people who
would loudly proclaim, well, nobody's making money in college
athletics, like only 5 athletic departments were profitable.
It's like, yes, congratulations, that's the point.
What's like, Why do you think that that's a special thing for
you to say? You know if.
Indiana makes $100 million in revenue in athletics.
They need to spend $100 million in, in, in, in cash to
demonstrate that they're not turning a profit because like
the where else is it going to go?
So what you've seen over the course of time is these athletic
departments not being able to do what businesses would do and
hoard cash or invest things or, you know, do the traditional
capital improvements because they're they're supposed to be
as close to budget neutral as possible.
And So what you end up is, is with this situation where you
can't operate like a business. You have to operate in this
weird nether region between a public entity and a private
entity, but with all of the negatives of the public entity
and none of the vantages of the private entity.
Now, the the flip side of that is you don't pay taxes money,
what you do have to do as a private entity.
And that's going to be kind of the interesting thing, you know,
can Kentucky square this where they're not paying taxes on the
money that they're bringing in through the LOCII?
Don't think that's going to happen.
But the flip side of it is, you know, there's, there's likely
ways that they can attribute this to an educational process,
provided we keep the current system where there's a direct
connection in terms of enrollment and whatnot with the
athletes and the university. So I think it's an interesting
strategy. I do think that the fact that
maybe maybe there's another school that's done this, but
this is the first one that I've seen, the fact that everybody
isn't jumping on this bandwagon immediately should tell you that
this is perhaps not a universally accepted or
preferred method of going about handling this.
And I think it's going to be interesting to see how all that
plays out as we see what the house settlement ends up being.
So, So I don't know if they've actually done the transfer yet
or if they've got the approval for it and they're just waiting.
It could be that you've got other schools.
Ready to do something similar to what Kentucky's doing.
But gosh, who knows at this point.
It's it's really wild. John Kaluter, our old friend.
True or false? All this nil miss mess can be
traced back to Ricky Rowe and the tractor.
I think maybe John Huber Ozzi chiming in.
Oh, let me find this here. I'm old enough to know that
unregulated commerce brings along thieves and scams.
Who's looking out for the players?
So this is an interesting thing. There have been no more strident
opponents to agents in college sports than college athletic
departments. And this is something it's funny
if you go back and you watch, I can't remember if it's the 87
semi final against UNLV or the 87 final against Syracuse.
The Indiana games halftime show of one of those games.
There's like a special that they do and it's on the the YouTube
copy that I put up on on YouTube where they're interviewing like
Dale Brown and a couple of other people.
And even during the game, there's mentions of like the
agents, you know, Brent Musburger calls them flesh
peddlers who go on campus and basically talk basketball
players into committing for the draft.
And then they never get drafted. And they're they're, you know,
basketball dreams are over. It's a very parochial way of
going about things and thinking about agents as being the evil
ones. And you know, college was where
they were safe. College they were going to be
taking care of. They were going to get an
education. Everything was fought.
Of course, this is also this is the mid 80s when you know,
Memphis State has an entire team like not graduate.
I think Villanova won the national title and maybe like
half their players were epidemically eligible the next
year. Maybe it wasn't Villanova, It
might have been somebody else. But you know, it's, it's
hilarious thinking about that, thinking about SMU, thinking
about the entire back story of the mid 80s and then all of this
like, well, agents are bad. You shouldn't trust agents.
One of my big complaints through this entire process has been the
unwillingness of colleges and universities to assist their own
athletes in legal advice, tax advice, all of the things that
you need and often times that not just an athlete, but an
athlete's family is not prepared for.
And this is completely on purpose by the NCAA.
And its member schools, they want this to be as hard as
possible. They want making money as a
college athlete to be as hard as possible.
And they want to be able to turn around and say, see, we told you
you're getting screwed by this agent.
And and as Super Ozzy points out, rumors are players are
paying like between 8% and 20%. Agents add taxes and family.
You can see why kids want more and more.
I mean, that's half of it. The other half is the price
keeps going up because market value is much greater and
everybody wants to win in college sports.
So I don't think it's just the students.
Here we go. Devil D saving me here.
It was the title game. He was referring to Derek
Coleman. So there you go.
But the but The thing is this like the the agent side of
things, the NCAA wants to introduce like an agent registry
and all of this, but they want to approve all of the people.
And I think that a lot of actual agents who are representing
athletes right now have made some really good points.
Which is that the NCAA is notorious for watching out for
the NCAA schools are notorious for watching out for themselves.
And this fiction that somehow you can't trust an agent, but
you can trust the athletic department.
And if you're an athlete is is silly.
And it's not to say that all athletic departments are bad,
but look, at the end of the day, it's business and business
decisions get made. And the idea that, you know,
that I've seen floated that athletes shouldn't be allowed to
have agents. It's like, so you want a
situation where only one side has representation.
I saw Bubba Cunningham had a quote about this kind of
obliquely, where he's like, well, you know, I'm in favor of
collective bargaining, but I don't think athletes should be
employees. And it's like, well.
Who are you collectively? Bargaining with then like what's
the, what's the class of people that you're bargaining with at
that point? And if they're not allowed to
unionize and you, you have to and then Bubarazzi just just
brought that up. If you're not allowed, if you're
not employees, you can't unionize.
And if you can't? Unionize.
You don't have collective representation, so you want to
have a situation where the colleges and the universities
and their athletic departments have all of the power in the
negotiation process, but the other party can't use an agent
or has to use an agent that the other side has approved.
That's that's take that out of college athletics.
And put it in any other form of business in the United States
and tell me how long that lasts before getting sued into
oblivion is would be what I would say there.
These are again, these are emancipated adults.
These are 18 year olds. And this is a business where you
can make a lot of money and it costs money.
I mean, anybody that's got money, like, I don't know, a
millionaire that doesn't have an attorney and an accountant.
You know, this is just, this is part of the cost of doing
business. But it kind of reminds me of
that argument that I we heard for years that athletes wouldn't
want to be paid because athletes would have to pay taxes on the
money. And it's like, would you rather
have the money and pay some of it in taxes or not have the
money at all? I know which one I would choose.
So to go back to the original question about who's looking out
for the athletes right now, sadly, it's only the athletes
that are watching out for themselves because they haven't
been permitted to classify as employees and have a union.
And it would be a complicated thing to do.
But it's why I don't really feel bad about these colleges and
universities who are dealing with agents who are looking out
for their clients. They're looking out for their
best interests. They're shopping them around.
And, you know, we've gotten used to laughing at guys.
There was one guy that just committed, I think to Vanderbilt
who had been committed to Oklahoma, who had been committed
to several other places. And people were joking about it.
But you know, even with the amalavela stuff at the end of
the day. A lot of these contracts aren't
enforceable. And they're very one sided in as
much as the schools have a lot of power to do what they want.
Athletes are exercising that power.
And shockingly, the schools don't like that.
So this is where, again, you either need as an industry,
college sports needs to just agree that, hey, guess what?
We're a business. These are professional athletes.
They make money off of this. We have to set something up
that's going to allow us to deal with it honestly.
And we need to recognize that the people that are playing our
employees now, it's funny, people are complaining about the
escalating costs. I, I saw something today that
like the estimation is, I think it was Evan Miyakawa had this,
that IU has spent like 10.1 million in portal signings so
far, which is the highest in new portal signings.
Obviously, you know, you've got players that are likely getting
paid a lot of money to stay at their schools.
But you know, the rumor that I think Boogie Flan might be
commanding like 6 or $7,000,000 to go land somewhere at college.
And that's why I pulled out of the draft.
I pull out of the draft too 'cause that's more money in one
year than I would make in my first year.
Really I think in my first two years as like a mid first round
draft pick and and like more money you'd earn in three years
if you were a low first round pick.
And so the money is stupid right now, but people are missing why
the money is stupid. The money is not stupid because
athletes are greedy. The money is stupid because
colleges are stupid, OK, Colleges are acting stupidly
about this and that, you know, we keep getting walked down this
pathway of no return where you're going to have a
completely unregulated marketplace and it's going to
shove a ton of. Schools off the table who are
just going to be like, we literally can't compete.
It essentially is kind of what happened with European soccer
where if you know, unless you are really lucky.
You the Champions League is off limits, your domestic league is
off limits. There's a lot of that.
You know, you really just need to take a hard, honest look at
and standardize. And obviously a lot of it is
waiting on what happens with this house settlement.
Even if the house settlement gets blown up after a short
period of time, you know, William saying how soon before
school start trading athletes? I mean, that's, it's an
interesting question. It kind of comes along the same
lines of one of the things I've floated on this podcast before,
which is this idea of, well, maybe, maybe you need a
developmental system much like you have in baseball or much
like you have in soccer, where, you know, instead of a free
agency and a practice roster. What if Indiana, I'm sorry for
those of you who have heard me say this before, what if Indiana
in Indiana State got together and said, all right, we're going
to recruit 150 football players to be part of what, you know,
what we're doing. And we're going to send our
developmental squad or our guys that haven't really performed
over to Terre Haute and they're going to play in, what is it,
the Ohio Valley Conference. I think they're going to play at
the one AA level. They're going to season, they're
going to get better. They're going to get practice.
They're going to play against live competition.
And then we can call people up as we want to.
We can send people down, we can do.
The same thing with basketball. We got 20 guys, we got some
developmental guys. They'll go play in the home and
center. We'll have the rest of the
players here in Bloomington. You know, that system kind of
makes sense because there's no way in the.
Estate is going to be able to compete in this system.
There's no way Ball State's going to be able to compete in
this system. You can still get some good, you
know, fringe players that fall through the cracks.
But as we've seen. By Indiana's own roster, they
are going to be tricky laid up. Why not have a more stable
system, which is what the NBA does?
You know, it's like there's so many examples in.
Professional sports of how to do this effectively that the NCAA
should just embrace or a successor organization that says
we can't keep doing what we're doing.
We need to do something different if we want to retain
the spirit of this as a developmental league that a lot
of people really love because they have emotional attachment
to the teams. They may, you know, they have
emotional attachment with the players.
But we also can't have Walter Clayton or not Walter Clayton.
We can't have Boogie Flan making more money than the first
overall pick in the draft. Like, that's stupid, but it also
kind of underlines how much of A business college athletics is
the fact that Florida, who just won the national title, could
scrape enough money together in NIL just to easily pay Boogie
Flan $7,000,000 for one year and flush out a roster that's going
to contend for. A title, that is.
Truly stupid, but it also truly indicates how much money is in
college sports, and so let's just acknowledge it as opposed
to keep acting like it's not existing would be how I would
look at it. So anyway, I didn't want to talk
all college sports on this. I didn't want to talk about a
couple of other things. One of them is the impressive
week that we've seen out of IU basketball in terms of the
offers that they're making across the board for those who
have not been following IU, been throwing a ton of offers all
out. And it just kind of it
underlines, I think both the ambition of this staff and I
think kind of how they are looking at moving forward.
Like this is not, you know, we heard so much from the defenders
of the Woodson regime that. There was no value in going
after high school players, right?
It was just go in the portal. That's where you're going to
find players. And as we've talked about on
this show, you can do that to some degree and you're going to
have to fill spots. I think everybody's doing that
right now, but the flip side of it is you got to get good young
players like top level, you know, and again, this is you're
talking about players one through 80, the the mythical
sweet spot that Mike Weemuth talks about on X's and Joe's, a
great podcast about college basketball that many of you
should watch. It's on the back home network,
you know, the, the, you have to have that mix.
You have to have top 80 players, ideally top 30 through 80, maybe
slightly more because now you can pay guys.
So now it's not a matter of you get a top 30 guys on it
automatically going to commit to the draft.
You can keep some of those guys if you got the financial
wherewithal under the current system to keep them rolling.
But some of the names that Indiana's pulled in, and I'm
going to credit Mike Schumann in the Daily Hoosier, they've been
doing a good job of, of keeping a list of the offers that I use
made. Latrelle Allman, 6 foot 8
forward from Virginia, Sammy Jackson, 6 foot 7 wing from
Philadelphia, Ethan Taylor, 7 foot one center, Jordan Smith,
junior, who's a guard out of Virginia.
These are not places Indiana's been recruiting lately.
They can you can just absolutely feel the, the, the Kenny Johnson
influence here. You can feel the Drew Adams
influence. Prince Alexander Moody, 6 foot 4
guard from Virginia, 6 foot 8 forward from Florida.
Caleb Gaskins, Davian Adkins, 6 foot 8 forward from Texas.
Anthony Thompson. Now, no, not that Anthony
Thompson, but a six foot 7 wing from Ohio.
Tay Kenny 6 foot guard from Kentucky.
I mean, and you've got rumors of other offers and these are all
the 2026 class. So you've got like I.
Think it's like. 16 or 17 offers right now, like Indiana is
really pumping these out at this point.
And they're also looking at offering players in the 2027
class Ryan Hampton, Chase Branham, Jason Gardner, Junior.
So this is a really, this is exactly what I thought you would
see. And this is where we were
preaching patients with IU, this idea that they were getting a
slow start. They were really just getting
the the staff together. You know, you got Rod Clark in
from Tennessee. Now you've got you've got a
recruiting staff. You got a group that's out there
hitting the pavement, selling the vision that Darren Devries
has for what he wants this roster to be.
And I think that what we're seeing.
Out of all of this is that. Yeah.
And it's, I don't think this is a Tom Crane approach as, as
Super Ozzy just asked, I don't think this is a Tom Crane
approach. It's not all for everybody.
What I think they're trying to do is get a sense of where
Indiana's money and reputation are right now in this mix.
And if you look at this roster, this 2526 roster.
That Indiana's. Got this is probably the last
time we're ever going to see under Darren Devries this type
of an approach because they won't need it next time.
Like I, you know, let's be frank, like Indiana, the, the,
the cupboard was really bare of players that matched Aaron
Devries's system and matched, I think, his ideal of how players
play together and work together. And So what?
You've got is this situation where now he's got a chance.
He's got a whole recruiting cycle in front of him.
He's got ace recruiters who know different parts of the country
can sell that vision, can get him in rooms with people.
And now it's a matter of they can showcase what he's done at
Drake, they can showcase what he's done at West Virginia.
But it'll take, I think, some initial looks at what's going on
at IU to sell those guys on the idea of what it looks like for
them in an Indiana uniform. And there's a lot of players
here. I just don't think that you
would have seen Mike Woodson and his staff offering because they
were going off of a completely different model.
And I don't think that's the model that they were pursuing.
Works in college basketball today.
So I'm excited about the fact that you've seen this explosion
and offers. It's like they hit the ground
running as soon as May got started.
I don't know what that's going to mean, but the one thing I'm
noticing with a lot of these guys is, you know, with a couple
of exceptions aside, it's a ton of guys between 6 foot 5 and 6
foot 8. They they all look like they can
shoot and. Defend it.
It reminds me a lot of the way the Pacers put their roster
together. And it reminds me a lot of this
idea of let's have exchangeable parts, which we're we've seen in
the way that Debris has pieced together his portal roster for
this upcoming year. But we're going to call this the
portal roster. I think from this point forward,
this idea of you got a couple of ace shooters, you got a couple
of guys that can distribute, you got guys that can run to the
rim. You're going to focus a lot on
shooting percentage offensively. You're going to focus on tempo.
You're going to focus on trying to create mismatches on the
perimeter, which should open up the interior.
And by doing that, you create a situation where you're very hard
to defect and yeah, you're going to run into situations where you
have a real big guy that's a problem or like a do everything
combo guard. But this is a winning formula
just in terms of what I'm seeing them offer now.
Obviously they've got to land them.
But I'm really encouraged by what we're seeing with IU
basketball and the way that they're doing recruiting at this
point. So I'm excited to see where that
lands. And you know, that, you know, I
don't know that we would anticipate any commits anytime
soon. I think that comes later on,
obviously in the fall. But I'm really interested to see
who buys in early because as we've seen, that can really lead
to getting a nice cluster of players that buy into the vision
simultaneously, see how they work as complementary parts.
And there's going to be playing time because one of the things
that we've noted in this portal class is it's an old class, lot
of 4th and 5th year guys think there's a sixth year guy.
These are not players are going to be around Bloomington very
long. There's going to be a couple of
pieces that should stick around for two years as a transition
point. But I think what you're seeing
out of these offers with additional portal signings next
year, you're going to see a lot more of a mix.
And so you know this approach. I think by year three, maybe
even year 2, you could be a really, really competitive team
athletically shooting wise. You know, I this could really
accelerate the growth curve of what the debris era looks like
if it all fits together. And obviously all of this is
speculative, but I like what I'm seeing so far.
And at the end of the day, it's, it's May 15th.
We've got plenty of time to kind of go through all of this stuff.
Greg. Lamont asked.
Curious when waivers will be determined.
Unless it's early June, I wonder if Goody and Leo travel for the
summer trip. So, you know, the Leo and Goody
things are fascinating from a, you know, I think I still think
Goody has a better argument than Leo And you know, I, but I also
think Indiana's pretty much done pulling people in right now.
I think if they were going to pull a 12th and 13th person on
the roster, they would have done it already.
I still think Goody is going to get his waiver.
I think some of the things that we're seeing elsewhere indicate
that that's the case. Leo, maybe, you know, and, and
that's going to be an interesting one just 'cause I, I
don't know that the NCAA is completely dead in terms of
being able to say sorry that does that does count versus that
doesn't count. I think with injuries it's a
little bit different. Now Leo may have actually been
injured. There may be paperwork that goes
along with that, but you know, this is where you really get
into Gray areas as far as evaluating whether somebody was
eligible versus whether they were not.
And we'll see. But to your answer, your
question, no, I, you know, I, I think that if they're, I think
if they're eligible, they'll go to Puerto Rico regardless of
when the waivers come down. I am anticipating we'll probably
know something about goodies situation.
I have no inside info, but I think by I would be surprised if
we didn't hear something by say, the end of May, maybe even the
end of next week. Again, no inside info, just a
gut feeling based upon some of the rulings that I'm seeing
coming down, some of which I think look pretty favorable to
the case. Of of goody.
Chad asking, I'm not going to answer that, not let's see here.
Let's switch to football real quick.
So Greg asks Illinois football seemingly riding the Indiana
away from last year all the way into the top 15 of the early top
25 seems a little fabricated. It is interesting that when you
look at the over unders that Vegas is setting and then you
look at the top 20 fives, you can see like media tend to buy
into narratives and the narrative all like coming out of
last year. Coming out of bowl season was,
oh, Illinois is going. To be great next year because
they bring back Altmire, they bring back a bunch of other
folks and yet, you know, and they're ranked I think somewhere
between 10th and 12th in most polls.
I think I got 1 poll. I saw that in. 8th.
Which like, OK, but then you look at the over unders that
Vegas sets and you know, Vegas is paid to know how these things
work. Brett Mcmurphy put this up the
other day. But the over unders, Ohio State
and Oregon both at 10 1/2. Penn State 10 and then Indiana
and Michigan are 4th and 5th. They're tied for fourth, I guess
in the conference at 8 1/2 wins. Where is Illinois, 7 1/2 tied
with Washington, who nobody's talking about as a ranked team?
Iowa, who's on the fringes? Nebraska and USC get talked
about because they're Nebraska and USC.
But it is interesting, like we've seen polls where Indiana
isn't in them at all. And, you know, this is this is I
I would almost liken what's happening with Indiana football
in the polls to this is the backlash.
And there's this idea that, oh, Indiana lost Curtis Rourke.
They lost, you know, several key pieces.
They're not going to be as good. Last year was lightning in a
bottle. The schedule was too easy.
All of this. And realistically, when I look
at what Indiana brought in, I mean, they've got, I mean, it is
fascinating trying to take that narrative in the college media
space where the frankly, it seems like there's a ton of
people, especially at CBS, who have a vested interest in
arguing that Indiana's not good. I don't get it.
I really don't understand the mentality.
But they they're, I don't know if there's like an internal
like. Bonus pool that.
CBS is paying out. I'm mostly kidding about this,
but like I I've yet to see any real good commentary about
Indiana from anybody at CBS, and they almost seem like hurt that
Indiana was good last year and they don't want to take them
seriously this year. And yet you you bring in
Fernando Mendoza, who after some initial confusion, people have
largely settled on as being one of the best quarterback
acquisitions in the entire portal, maybe the best one.
You bring in Pat Coogan, You keep Mikhail Kamara.
You keep Aiden Fisher. You keep D Angelo Pons.
You've got a really strong running backroom, you've got
Elijah Serrat, you've got Omar Cooper Junior, you've got, you
know, all of these pieces. And you know, even the parts
that are concerning. And first of all, I wanted to
say my condolences to Taylor Lehman.
We were supposed to do a football Q&A pod Taylor out of
death in the families tending to that.
We're going to get him on the pod soon to talk through
recruiting in depth about IU and what they did in the spring
session. But you know, the the thing
about Indiana at this point, the thing that that I think most
should be concerned about is even though Signetti, as I've
seen in interviews, has been very sanguine about the
offensive line, the offensive line is still a concern.
You lose Mike Kadik, you do bring Carter Smith back, you've
got Pat Coogan, you've got Mikalski.
You know, you've got good pieces, but you don't know if
they're going to mesh together. But I would argue that most of
the teams that Indiana is going to be playing have similar
questions on the offensive line. Like there's very few teams that
I look at and say that offensive line is going to be great.
Ohio State? Sure, Indiana doesn't play Ohio
State in the regular season. Michigan, OK, sure.
Michigan always has a great offensive line.
Indiana doesn't play Michigan either.
I have a hard time looking at Illinois's offensive line and
saying that's going to be a great offensive line.
Indiana plays them in Week 4 and you go down the list, Penn
State, you know, Penn State, the offensive line is good, but
they're protecting Drew Aller, who I, I mean, did you watch
Drew Aller last year? And they don't have Tom Allen,
who's a very good defensive coordinator.
I do. You know, there's, there's
question marks about everybody that Indiana plays, including
Oregon. You know, you look down the
list. I mean, you know the, so
Indiana, they play Oregon, they play Penn State.
Those are two very tough games. They don't play Ohio State.
They don't play Michigan. They don't play Washington.
They play Illinois at home. They Iowa on the road and I
think it's a winnable game. They don't play USC, they don't
play Minnesota, and then they play Michigan State.
There's the over unders 5 1/2. They don't play Rutgers.
They do play UCLA at home. Who's who's over unders 5 1/2.
They do play Wisconsin at home. They're over unders 5 1/2.
They play Maryland on the road. They're over under 4 1/2.
They don't play Northwestern and they play Purdue on the road and
they have the worst over under in the conference.
So you know, Chad asked. What my opinion if I if I was as
high on. Illinois as others.
My thing is this, I think you can look at these teams in
isolation and you can say well. Illinois was really good last
year. They didn't lose a lot of
pieces. They'll probably be better.
Does that mean that Illinois is going to be better this year?
I don't know that it does because if you look at the Big
10 schedules for football across the board, it's a pretty tough
row for Illinois to hoe. I mean, I'm going to call this
up. I think I did this on a previous
pod, but we'll do it again because it's my pod.
I'm going to do what the hell I want with it.
But let me let me call up the Big 10 schedules here.
Let's get this up. OK?
I think, I think you can all see this and we'll zoom in a little.
Bit just for the folks. Who can't see as well.
So let's look at Illinois schedule because I think to me
the the question Chad asked is a good one, but it's it's not
really a question that you can answer without looking at the
schedule. So what's Illinois got?
They got Western Illinois week one.
They got to go to Duke. It's such a.
Strange game for them to be doing.
That's a tough game, actually. Potentially.
They got Western Michigan at home.
They got to go to Indiana. They got USC at home, which is
not a cakewalk. Purdue on the road is a cakewalk
probably, but they got a post Ohio State.
They're going to beat Ohio State.
At home, seems unlikely, could happen, but then they got to go
to Washington and then they have a relatively easy stretch.
But they got that game at the end of the season out Wisconsin,
which I don't care how bad Wisconsin is a given year,
that's a tough place to play. So you can look at Indiana
schedule and you can say, wow, they got four really tough games
and they got, you know, Illinois at home and they got Iowa,
Oregon and Penn State on the road.
But I think everybody's got 3 or 4 tough.
Games. Even Ohio State's got some tough
ones. They got Texas at home.
They got to go to Illinois. They got to go to Wisconsin.
They got Penn State at home. They got to go to Michigan.
That's five tough games in the season.
Michigan, we got to go to Oklahoma.
I don't know who the hell scheduled that.
That's a fascinating one. They got to go to Nebraska, they
got to go to USC. They got to go to Michigan
State. They got Ohio State at home.
They got 5 tough games. And you can go down the list
with the other. Contenders.
I mean, Oregon is another one. They got to go to Penn State.
Before they play Indiana at home, they got to go to Iowa,
they got to go to Washington, who always plays them tough.
So these are the things that I think we need to keep in mind.
And, and I was talking to Taylor about this the other day.
My perspective on it right now is that Indiana has as good of a
chance of anybody in the conference of making it to the
Big 10 title game if you look at the schedules.
Because I think there's a real good.
Chance of Indiana going 10 and two and you know, I think you
know, 8 1/2's the over under at a lot of the books.
I've seen 9 1/2 in a couple of spots, you know, and, and as as,
as as pointed out by Hooperazi, 9 and three would be a
tremendous season 8 and four. Would you know, like Chad
pointed out, if you if you were on Indiana, you know, sitting at
eight wins, if Indiana wins eight games, it's one of the top
five or six schedules in the school's history.
And I really like the the fact that Kurt Zignetti's had a whole
year to continue to mold this team to get new guys in.
We continue to see some of the Allen guys like filter out.
They've got a pretty strong roster.
Is it a perfect roster? No, they've got questions at
offensive line, they've got questions in the secondary.
Those are questions that have got to be answered.
But I love their skill position players.
I love what they've got, you know, in the pass rush and the
linebacker, you know, interior both lines is an open question.
But I think that a lot of teams have that question.
And I think you look across college football right now,
they're just are not a lot of teams that I would look at and
say, you know, undefeated, undefeated.
It's very much not like last year where you clearly had like
a big echelon of top teams, Indiana being one of them and
then a bunch of of fall off around 11 or 12.
So look, I, I like what I'm seeing.
I, I don't buy the Illinois hype.
I think Indiana has as much of A justification for being ranked
in the top 15 as Illinois does. But I also like the fact that
Indiana's going to be able to go into the season with a little
bit of a chip on their shoulder. That is really helpful.
So that's something that we'll keep an eye on as we move
forward. And I love the fact Indiana's
got a nice long runway as they get into things.
You know, they've got those three games at the beginning of
the year to iron out the kinks. HWF 3 notes.
I wholeheartedly believe last season team goes 10 and 2 with
this schedule. I think you're right.
Like, you know, that's the thing.
I I don't think as much as Indiana got criticized last year
for not having a tough schedule, I think it, it underrates how
unlucky a couple of the teams Indiana played were Washington
and Nebraska specifically, who probably should have had a
couple more wins than they did. But I also think Indiana, you
know, the take the Ohio State game aside, Ohio State won the
national title. They didn't really get a chance
to play against anybody of high quality.
I think Indiana last year could have beaten Iowa at Iowa.
I don't know. I mean, I'm not saying that they
would have, but I think they could have.
I don't think that that was out of the question.
You know, I, I'm very, I'm still, I'm always going to be
curious how Indiana would have fared against Penn State.
You know, and if the draw had gone differently and Indiana
played Penn State in the first round of the College Football
Playoff, I think that really would have been a fascinating 1
to see how that would have played out because I think
Indiana had some things on Penn State that they just.
Didn't quite have against Notre Dame for a variety of reasons.
So we had a lot more to talk about with football.
I wanted to save some of the football talk till we got Taylor
back. And and so we're lame for that
next week, obviously. But I appreciate all all the
comments and questions. And we've got a big deep dive
into the roster coming up here relatively soon.
So look, you know, 9 and 310 and two, eight and four.
I'm still riding that. Like I was curious how spring
was going to go. I like what I saw out of spring.
I like what I'm hearing the coaching staff talk about and
particularly Signetti. It's a long summer.
And I think it right now, like, you know, it's it's film study,
it's it's studying tendencies of opponents, you know, Signetti
breaking down everybody on this schedule, not taking anybody for
granted. You know, I mean, this is where
you make your money as a football coach.
And I think that the mentality shift that Indiana went through
last year is still something a lot of us are trying to get our
heads around with this idea of how much do you trust an IU
football team? A lot of people I know still
feel burned by what happened in 2021.
But that was a much different mentality as far as that
football program was concerned than what we see right now.
And at this point, I think they've earned the benefit of
the doubt. And I think the fact that there
seems to be a lot of juice on the recruiting front.
Again, I'm I'm we're holding our powder until we get Taylor.
But man, IU has been making some nice moves in state in
recruiting. Like they have been cleaning up
in a way. I have not seen an IU program
clean up since like maybe the 80s back before recruiting
rankings existed. I think it really bodes well.
And let's give Greg a round of applause.
First time football season ticket holder for Greg.
Nice, good. Good on you Sir.
We will see you in Memorial Stadium.
I did my season tickets yesterday, same section.
If you know where I am in the stadium.
I'm not. I'm sadly not above the
Astroturf cut out this time, but I'm right over to the right of
it, so I'll look forward to seeing you all there.
It should be a lot of fun. We had a couple of quick other
questions that came in earlier today on Twitter that I wanted
to hit. One from Huperazzi, actually.
Can Max's Place help to save the pizza scene in Bloomington?
In my opinion, the pizza in town is the worst it's been in
decades. Well, we lost Cafe Pizzeria,
that hurt. I will.
I do heavily recommend going to Max's Place, the revitalized
Max's Place, which is located at 17th and College.
So Roddy's are coming into town. It's where swing in pizza had
moved to and then gradually got taken over by that whole Hank's
pizza Mac catastrophe. The pizza's really good and
they've got open mic night. It's a nice relatively cozy
space. It's it's it's relatively new.
It's right next to square Donuts.
Go check it out. I do think that they they do a
really good pizza. The pizza scene in Bloomington's
fascinating right now because it's really split into a couple
of camps. You got your stalwart, you know,
you the pizza X is still here and that has the lion's share of
the market. You've got avers, which is kind
of on the fringes a little bit now.
I think you've got Nick's, which just Nick's pizza.
I Nick's a pizza and I like we split up a long time ago, but
then you've got a lot of smaller scale pizzas like for my money,
like pound for pound, I actually think the best pizza might be at
Davinci in Bloomington right now at 3rd and Washington.
I think Austria, you know, behind mix has a good argument,
but they're cooking a different style of pizza.
They're cooking, you know, the, they're not doing the big
industrial size stuff they're doing.
They're not personal pizzas. They're big.
They're kind of in the mix. There are in the middle, you
know, and then you've got, you know, the, the, the ones that
haven't changed much and you either love them or you hate
them or, or like them or hate them.
You know, like the, you've got Bouchetto's, you've got I, I
actually kind of, I, I know, I think D'angelo's pizza is a
little bit underrated. It's just really expensive.
You know, if you can get it on a on a on A2 for one deal, which I
think they have on a Monday or Tuesday, You know, we got a
couple of other notes. Quaff on Big Woods is still an
anchor. I really, I really like Big
Woods pizza. The one thing about it is the
crust is is almost like a pretzel crust.
It's it doesn't taste like a pretzel.
But it's got. That kind of consistency to it,
it's a little, it's hard to describe, but it's like, it's
like a soft pretzel almost as a pizza dough.
I like it. I just don't like it every
single time. Baldies baldies is is like.
Kind of the stealth one. But baldies, as Superazi
mentioned, is is pretty far away from everything.
Some people live in Bloomington, have lived here for years, have
never even heard of baldies. You know, you've got not a lot
else at this point. I would say the tap, I would say
their pizzas kind of regressed slightly from what it was.
I really like their pizza when it first came out.
It's still good, but it's not as good, I think as it was.
But it's kind of it goes up and down in quality.
You know, Yogi's has got the Tavern style pizza, which if you
get the right mix of toppings, can be relatively good.
But look, ultimately, as someone pointed out, I think Jennifer
pointed out, like all pizzas are personal.
It depends on how hard you try, But it's also, I'll say this,
the flavor that you like is going to be something that is
predicated on what you dig as an individual.
And so, you know, when people come into town and they're
asking me where to get pizza right now, I normally direct
them to Davinci. I'll I'll direct them to Big
Woods. I'll direct them to a couple of
other spots. I still like mother bears, but
again, I feel the same way about mother bears, the same way that
like their pizza that I feel about Big Woods and like, it's a
style. It's a particular style.
Yeah, I know they have the thin crust.
I'm I'm I'm excluding that from the conversation for the moment
because the pan pizza style of mother bears, it's like that was
such a popular style for pizza in the 80s and 90s.
And it's kind of because it's so doughy.
I think for a lot of people in this generation, it's not as
attractive because it's so doughy.
And and I think, you know, the more artisan style pizzas
generally go over a little better.
I would be remiss if I didn't also throw Lenny's into the mix.
I think Lenny's does a pretty good job with their pizza and I
think that low key they might have the best Strom in
Bloomington. It's I kind of go back and forth
with them and a couple of others, but I like what they do
there. Chad asked.
We're just doing food talk now. What's what's the chat's
favorite sub in town? Mine used to be Dagwood's when
it was in the basement. So to me, by far the best Subs,
the best sandwiches are at Austria Rago.
And it's a shame. They used to have this amazing
lunch deal, which doesn't exist anymore.
But if you go to Austria and get one of their sandwiches, it's
it's life changing in a lot of ways.
It's it's awesome. And they've got like 9 different
styles. They've got really heavy Italian
ones. They've got ones that trend more
towards they've got like a praise sandwich.
It's really, really good. Little Italy Market is a great
call by Huperazi. Little Italy Market, for those
who don't know where it is, there's like 2 really good
places to eat in the shopping center.
And it's the shopping center where 3rd St. and Dunn come
together. It's a complicated place to get
to because both of those streets are one way right in front of
it. You know, Dunn is one way coming
off of Kirkwood going South. And then third, that's where
Third splits off and kind of heads up and it's still one way
at that point, but it's right before it merges with its, it's,
it's eastbound South. But yeah, Little Italy market
has great Subs. You order them at the counter.
So I recommend those two places primarily as places to go for
sandwiches like that, like sub sandwiches in Bloomington.
But Austria is my, if you get it, Austria, bring a friend.
I, I'm a big guy. I have a big appetite.
I cannot eat an entire Austria. Sub in one sitting without
either like really feeling bad about myself or just not
finishing the damn thing and having to take it home with me.
And, and no, I have, I have not gone to Chalubi's yet.
You know, I keep dancing around the place.
I haven't quite been there. Thank you for that question.
Anyway. Those are me.
What I would say on that front. I'll also say just in general, I
get asked a lot of times what, you know, what do we feel are,
you know, places that people haven't been to that they should
go to? Da Vinci's a good one.
If you're going to go to Da Vinci, go in the summer.
It's almost impossible to get in during the school year because
it's a favorite amongst the sorority crowd and for good
reason. Good.
They have good taste in the sororities if you haven't.
Been to the Elm yet? I recommend going to the Elm.
Great ambiance, really nice bar area.
The food's really good. We actually had our back home
network get together meal there back in February when everybody
came into town. And they have do a lot of
seasonal menus, but they do them right.
I've yet to have something that I didn't.
Like at the Elm and it's interestingly located.
It's in Elm Heights. It's it's essentially it's the
second and Henderson. It's like a block in for those
who lived in Elm Heights or in that general vicinity just South
of campus in the 80s and 90s. There used to be a grocery store
there and that it's changed to something that's really, really
good. And there's obvious as you know,
there's a lot of good other restaurants in various shades.
You know, 4th St. stuff is all really good as.
Well, so there's. Ton of places in town to go and,
you know, the summer's a great time to explore them because
generally there's very few weights and you're going to get
a chance to sample a lot of good food.
I think there's a taste of Bloomington coming up at some
point in the summer, late July, maybe early August.
But if you're not in Bloomington and you want to come back at
some point, that would be a good place to go.
And, you know, it's interesting watching the the restaurant game
turn ever so slightly in Bloomington, as, you know, you
start to get the cycling in and out of certain places over time.
You know, there's still a bunch of open questions.
Thank you. The taste of Bloomington is
August. 2nd so put that on your calendar.
I'll I'll be around if anybody wants to grab a beer.
Or a sandwich. Or pizza as as as we would have
it there. Anyway, this went longer than I
thought it would. I thought I was going to aim for
45 minutes. We've been going for 70.
A lot to talk about though, but we had a lot of the topics that
I I know were of interest to people and had a great time with
the folks in the chat. Had a great time with the
questions off of X and would love to do this again.
We'll do this again sometime soon.
We'll get Taylor on the pod. We'll talk some football next
week. We'll keep an eye on the
waivers, we'll keep an eye on recruiting, and we'll obviously
keep an eye on what's going on in the college sports space as
we're going to be talking about this stuff all summer.
We're also going to be doing some other cool things on the
back home network. We got some interviews coming up
we're going to try to hit and there's going to be some other
things we'll do this summer. Content wise, I think you guys
will enjoy. So a little tease there for you.
Next week, Scott will be back with me.
We might actually have two separate podcasts.
We're certainly going to talk Indiana Pacers as wow, what a
run so far. And who knows, maybe they're
playing the Knicks, maybe they're playing the Celtics in
the Eastern Conference Finals. We've got the possibility of one
of the most unique things I think that you could do in
sports, at least in Indiana. Game three of the Eastern
Conference finals are going to be at 8:00 PM the day of the
Indy 500. And I am planning on doing the
double try to do both games or both both events in the same
day, which might be really questionable from a health
perspective, but will be a lot of fun.
So we're going to talk that we're going to have a separate
pod where we give our Indy 500 read and that's going to be a
fascinating race this year, or at least it better be.
The rest of the season in any car has not been particularly
exciting, which is disappointing because that's really the main
thing it's got going for it is the competition.
But it's been pretty much the Alex Pelo show throughout the
course of the year. So we'll talk about both of
those things next week and maybe have a couple of other things as
well. Anyway, I salute all of you
folks for joining us here on the Back Home Network.
And if you didn't watch that video that IU Athletics put out
today, watch the video that IU Athletics put out today.
Anyway, we'll catch you folks on the flip side, on behalf of Home
field apparel or presenting sponsor on behalf of the entire
Back Home Network, I'm Galen Clavio.
We will catch you folks on the flip side.
Stay never daunted. Bring back the bison salon,
everybody.