You're listening to the Back Home network presented by Home
Field Apparel. How do folks Galen Clavio here
joining you once again? It is Friday, September 22nd.
I guess I got to say happy Fall for those of you who celebrate.
I do not, but I know there's many of you that do.
So Happy Fall, I hope that you're all enjoying yourselves
and I hope that you enjoy yourselves for the next three
months or so, as we are clearly with fall officially arriving
meteorologically. And I guess it's not tech.
I think meteorological fall actually is October 1st.
But we're in full, very nice weather right now though, down
here in Bloomington, a great weather weekend coming up for I
U Akron, so I guess we can't complain too much.
Not yet, at least. Anyway, This is Crimson Cast,
Happy to be back with you once again.
I'm flying solo on this podcast. We're going to talk a little bit
about the game coming up this weekend and we're going to talk
about some other things because I'm not sure exactly how
impactful or interesting this game is from a matchup
perspective. It's going to be interesting at
least from the standpoint of Indiana and and what they are
able to do in terms of making themselves better because
they're playing a real bad Akron team.
But as we've seen, that's not necessarily an obstacle to a
team putting up a fight and even threatening to win a game.
You know Akron we'll talk about here in a second, but we just
saw a pretty prominent bad team almost win on national
television, so we'll talk about that in just a second.
First of all just a reminder, we're part of the Back Home
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Home network and Crimson Cast. All right, let's dive in and
talk a little bit about the things going on around this team
and what we take out of the first few weeks.
Obviously, you got a chance I think to hear our Louisville
recap podcast. If you haven't had a chance to
check out Bite Size Bison, go do that.
Taylor Lehman not joining me on this show, but he's been on
several and will be on several podcasts in the future is we
really like his analysis of I, U football, but I I did borrow
some bite sized bison stuff for this game.
Taylor trying to bring back the old preview sheet that utilizes
a lot of the advanced statistics and it's interesting looking at
this matchup. Indiana a clear favorite against
the Akron, Zips the probability for winning for I U at about 88%
in this game and Akron just not coming across particularly well
in terms of of their overall statistics.
You know, if you look at this Akron team so far on the season,
it has not been a great year for them.
They lost at Temple maybe, you know, relatively close game.
Temple's not a very good team either.
They lost that game 2421. They barely beat Morgan State
before a huge crowd of 8213 in Akron, Not not really packing in
the crowds right now in Northeast Ohio.
And then they got pretty much decimated by Kentucky last week.
They lose 35 to 3:00 on the road.
So this is an Akron team that's only averaging 16 points a game.
And if you look at last year, you could see the seeds of all
this being planted. They only won one game in the
whole season and it was kind of an out of the blue game.
It was a 44 to 12 win at Northern Illinois who was also
terrible last year, but the rest of the season was was really bad
for Akron. They were two and 10 last year.
Their only other win was a home win against Saint Francis of
Pennsylvania by 7. So you know, last year's Akron
team scored about 22 points a game.
This is not a team that you would look at and say, oh, you
know, that they're likely to cause much of A challenge and
and really on either side of the ball.
Yeah, you look at this team from an offensive perspective.
They are 130th in the country in ESPN S&P, plus they're 120th in
offense. They're 124th in defense.
They're 120th in special teams, and you just go down the list.
Like pretty much every major ranking system does not like
Akron at all. FEI has them 128th, PFF has them
114th, and they just don't do anything particularly well.
They've been mildly successful defensively, but they haven't
been able to capitalize on that because their offense has been
so bad, only 262 yards per game. We've complained about Indiana's
offense, and and rightfully so. I mean, in Indiana, at least
from the advanced statistical numbers, is not somebody you
would write home about at this point as they are 81st in SP
plus they're 92nd. At PFF, they're 67th and FEI.
But Indiana has only scored 3.3 more points per game thus far
than Akron has. At Akron's average 16 a game,
Indiana's averaging 19.3. The difference really is that
Indiana's defense has been pretty good in terms of scoring.
They've only allowed seventeen points a game, whereas Akron's
allowed 26 1/2 basically. So this is one of those games
and and we have it seems like two or three of these a year
with I U. Football.
But there's there's just we can we can try to break it down a
little bit more but this is the kind this is essentially I U
playing an FCS level opponent who just happens to be in FBS.
It's a game that Indiana should win comfortably.
You know it's a game where if you're looking at at the threat
from the opposition it's it's hard to know exactly what to
tell you. You know they're leading rusher
thus far through three games has 78 yards.
That's a senior running back, Lorenzo Lingard.
They have another running back who's averaging a little shy of
five yards a carry. That's Drake Anderson, another
senior, but and that's it. I mean they've they've only
rushed on the season for 1.63 yards per carry as a team and
and some of that is obviously sacks and and losses.
But you know in the passing game that they're not very good
either. They they do complete a high
percentage of their passes thus far on the season.
They've kind of used two quarterbacks, DJ Irons and Jeff,
under Cuffler. Irons and under Cuffler.
Sounds like a a failed 80s buddy movie or something like that.
But both of them have played. Irons has been the guy that's
played more. He's thrown for just shy of 400
yards on the season, only 5.4 yards per attempt, which is
which is really not good under Cuffler has thrown for a higher
percentage, 75% of passes completed for about 269 yards, 1
touchdown, 3 interceptions. He's been kind of their deep
threat. He's averaging, you know, a huge
like 8.4 yards per attempt. So offensively, I just don't see
a whole lot out of this Akron team.
I think Indiana's defense, if they play the way that they
played for most of the Ohio State game, for the second-half
of the Louisville game and for all the Indiana State game, you
know, I think they're going to feast on this Akron team and and
it's honestly something I'd like to see them do.
One of the things I think that that's been troublesome for I U
in the past has been an inability to take opponents like
this and really salt them away and and really punish them and
and make them feel miserable. That's helpful.
I mean if you can do that as a football team, it's going to
help your own confidence. It's going to help to
demonstrate that you can, you know, clearly win against lesser
opponents like this. And I think it gives your
defense confidence and confidence is really important.
As we've talked about on the show over the course of time.
I think for a defense that's still kind of sorting its
identity out, they need to go out and play a full 60 minutes.
You know I think if you're if you're I use defense and you're
trying to look back at the film you you just got to be kind of
slapping your head and saying you know how were we still out
of sorts to the start of that Louisville game.
You know you can certainly pat the defense on the back for the
changes that they made and the adjustments that were made and
just the attitudinal approach that altered in that second-half
that allowed them to to shut out Louisville in the second-half.
But okay. So here's where you take that
and you you do something more with it.
You add to it and you know, I think I U, when they finish this
game, they will be 1/3 of the way done with the season, as
wild as that is. And you know, if you go ahead
and take on faith that I U is going to win the game and and
frankly, if this game's even close, given where Akron
statistics have been so far, I think that's a real bad
harbinger for the rest of the year.
But I don't think that's going to happen.
I think I U is is very likely to win by a very sizable margin.
I would not be surprised at all if they covered the spread,
which I think was at 17 or 17 1/2 last time I checked.
This is a game where I think it starts with the defense and the
defense. The best thing they could do is
not just stymie Akron in the and it looks like that's going to be
in the passing game and that's actually good because Akron
doesn't do either running or passing well.
But if there was an area of the defense that I U really needs to
work on in terms of drills and practice, it's the defensive
secondary. You know it's defending that
passing play. You're getting Akron off the
field in inopportune locations and allowing the offense to have
drives that start in Akron territory or start around
midfield and. And allowing the offense to
continue to get repetitions and try new things.
And put Tavin Jackson in a position where he's making
different types of throws. And also frankly, to continue to
work on run blocking and the way that the running backs are
approaching their game. I think all of these things are
important and Indiana kind of finds themselves at this point
needing to work on a little bit of everything since they kind
of, you know, look like they treated the first two games of
the season as as an extended summer practice.
So you know, there were certainly a lot of positives
that we talked about in that Louisville game for Indiana, but
they were offset by a lot of the negatives that we observed in
that game as well. You know, just the team not
really showing up in that set in that first half, but then
turning around and playing very well in the second-half.
That you know that when I think about this team as they get
ready for, you know what is not a particularly fun start to the
Big 10 season, taking advantage of the opportunities to practice
in real time against real competition is important.
And you know, you get past this game for Indiana and you win.
You're two and two and you've suddenly got a world of
possibilities because in the next third of the season you've
got four games. Two of them are really probably
not winnable. If I U approaches them the same
way they approach the Ohio State game, which I'm assuming that
will be the approach because that's that was the choice that
was made with the Ohio State game.
But you go to Maryland, that's a winnable game.
Maryland has. They've looked explosive.
They've also looked very vulnerable.
That's the very next game after this, you get a buy, you go to
Michigan, then you play Rutgers at home.
That's a must win. And then you got to go to Penn
State and also for Indiana. The the Maryland game that
immediately comes after this Akron game is rapidly looking
like a fulcrum point of the season.
Because if you if you win this game and you give your team some
confidence, you you, you know you win by 25 or 30 points, you
get your offense in phase. You get your defense feeling
confident. I like Indiana's chances at that
point to go into Maryland and to not be afraid and to go play in
a style that's going to be competitive with Maryland that
that series, that Indiana, Maryland series has always been
really close. We talked about that in the
preseason. It seems like wherever that game
is played, it's like somewhere between three and eight points
either direction. And we've seen Indiana win at
Maryland, we've seen Maryland win at Indiana.
Certainly going on the road and playing Maryland is is not a
bridge too far. It's just going to take
Indiana's offense showing up and doing something of note and and
that's where I think this Akron game really comes in handy.
But it's also going to be Indiana's defense trying to
stymie a Maryland offense that scored almost 40 points a game.
I'm getting confident, understanding what the team's
supposed to do, continuing to get repetitions and and really
going for it. I think in this game, trying to
win against Akron in a convincing style all ends up
adding up to a level of mental confidence that sometimes this
team has and it looks beautiful and sometimes they don't have
and it ends up not looking beautiful.
So winning this Akron game, I, you know, perhaps I should never
take anything for granted, but you know, even comparing to last
year, Western Kentucky, while they were not a great team, that
was a significantly better team by every metric than what you're
seeing with this Akron team. I think this Akron team is a lot
closer to Indiana State than what they faced last year
against Western Kentucky. So.
So anyway, you know the big keys, I think.
Can Indiana obviously defensively get themselves going
early? Not let Akron put points on the
board for a while, Let Indiana's offense try different
situations? And within the passing game, can
Taven Jackson continue to become comfortable?
Can he continue to find receivers?
And can we continue to get repetitions for receivers out
there? So far on the season, it's been
interesting. Through three games, there's
only one player on Indiana's roster that has caught
doubledigit balls, and that's Jalen Lucas, who's not a wide
receiver. So to some degree you look at
that and you're like, oh, that's nice.
Indiana has really made a concerted effort to get Jalen
Lucas the bowl more, and that was one of the things that fans
and media were both asking for coming out of last season.
I think the coaching staff deserves credit for finding
different ways to put him in the mix, but it is kind of it's it's
an illustration of how uncommitted Indiana's been to
establishing the pass. I think that through three games
there's, you know, there's two wide receivers with 9 catches,
Cam Camper 9 catches, 146 yards and Donovan Mcculley 9 catches,
103 yards. I like the way that both of them
look. Camper looks like he's mostly,
if not fully, back from the injury he suffered last year.
Omar Cooper has caught some balls, 8 catches, 109 yards, but
his usage has been very up and down.
He was used pretty heavily in the Indiana State game.
He wasn't really used very heavily at all in either the
Ohio State or the Louisville games and it's kind of a
question mark as to as far as what's going on there.
So you know, it does appear at least early that that trio will
ride wide receivers is the group that's going to get the most
targets. And and it's interesting because
we were kind of curious about that coming into the season.
You know, we talked a lot about EJ Williams Junior, the transfer
that was coming in from Clemson. He has not really done much.
He's only played in two games or at least he's only.
I think he's only, yeah he's only played in two games.
He had an injury recently, but at least we think we're we're
not totally sure. But he wasn't targeted that much
in the first couple of games that he played.
Duques Carter has been available for all three games but has only
caught 3 balls thus far on the season.
Bradley Archer, the tight end we talked about a little bit at the
tail end of the podcast. After the Louisville loss, he's
been a little bit of a revelation.
He caught some good balls against Louisville and you know,
if you if you think about the way that I use passing attack
could work if everything was working properly.
The idea that you could have sets where you have Camper, Omar
Cooper Junior and Donovan Mccully is your wide receiver
set. You have Bradley Archer who thus
far has proven he can catch the ball on the run and then Jalen
Lucas coming out of the backfield.
You know that is that is an interesting set of of personnel
and you know it that that particular formation you know
that's a it's interesting like you know three wide receivers 1
running back one tight end that's that's a really
fascinating formation at the college level because it it
really does get used a lot more at the the pro level and it can
be a very devastating way to approach the passing game if
you're running it properly. And I know I think Indiana's to
some degree kind of blessed because they have big wide
receivers in Camper and McCauley and you know Omar Cooper is not
exactly small. You've got a potential speedster
in in in decrees Carter, but you've you've got your real one
in Jalen Lucas and then if you've got a safety valve, the
tight end, suddenly that's a much better scenario for paving
Jackson to throw the ball in. So you know, again, it's clear
that the passing game is still a work in progress, but I really
like what I saw in the second-half of that Louisville
game. You know, that was the promise
that we kind of peaked at a little bit in the Indiana State
game and it feels like it got a lot more fleshed out.
So you know the pass blocking has to be better and it's
interesting because on the one hand you tip your cap to the
offensive line because they they haven't yielded any sacks so far
on the season. And and yet the flip side of it
is they've also graded out really poorly in terms of past
blocking and then the run blocking has been particularly
good either. And so there's room for
improvement I guess would be the charitable way of thinking about
line play. And again, I think playing
against Akron, that gives you a chance to get a lot of
repetitions to make sure that guys are are more comfortable
and what they're supposed to do. And if you can get a half second
more or a second more of protection or if you can open up
some more holes, you know Indiana, that there was an
interesting statistic that I was chatting with Taylor about.
You know, Indiana has actually run the ball a lot better inside
the tackles than outside the tackles, and that's.
You know, that's probably not what people thought.
And certainly when you think about the way that Indiana tried
to start the season is, you know, looking like a team that
was going to be doing a lot of option running.
Gosh, just, you know, through the first few games, the option
run has not looked like something that Indiana can
necessarily lean on or rely on. So all that said, I mean the one
downside about this Akron game is, you know, will Indiana take
it seriously and will they approach it with a ruthless
mentality? Because I, you know, I will say
what I mentioned earlier about bad teams giving better teams a
game, I'm still a little skeptical about Colorado.
Everybody focused on the fact that Colorado beat Colorado
State and you know, it was in overtime.
And what was left out of all that is that Colorado State
grades out really badly. Like, that is not a good
Colorado State team and they still gave Colorado everything
that they could handle. So, you know, there's a
complacency aspect that you worry about when you're playing
a bad team. And I think that Indiana
sometimes is very susceptible to that, which is why the hope is
when the ball was kicked 7:30 on Saturday, Indiana just has their
foot on the gas from the beginning on both sides of the
ball. Because I think both sides of
the ball really need to develop an aura of confidence and a
little bit of superiority if they're going to be successful
playing against Maryland the next week and and you know the
the the kind of the crisis moment I think is if Indiana
struggles in this game I don't think that that's a positive.
I think that's something that is an indicator that they're going
to really struggle when they play a team that has the ability
to put up points and bunches which Maryland certainly does so
So anyway there's there's not a lot more detail to go into.
I think specifically with this matchup we'll see how Indiana
plays. This is clearly a game that
Indiana can win handily if they take care of business and that's
that's going to be a really interesting question because
that isn't always what we see out of this football team.
So we'll keep our fingers crossed on that.
Couple other items that we wanted to get to.
We're not going to go like terribly long today with with
this podcast but you know we have had some interesting things
going on in and around the game. One of them of course being that
Indiana is wearing black uniforms for the first time
since 1997. And this is really fascinating I
think for a variety of reasons. So I was a freshman actually in
1997. I was at that Kentucky game that
I was joke about that season that you know they were Indiana
was trying a bunch of different things to get their their
excitement back around the football program because I think
sometimes and I've I've been guilty of this just like
everybody else has. I think people forget that as
great as as Bill Mallory was as a coach and as as rewarding as
the Mallory era was there really had been a complete lack of like
loss of buzz for I U. Football in the previous couple
of years. You know they they win two games
overall in 1995 and and that was coming off what some people
consider to be a bit of a disappointing season in 1994
where they didn't make a bowl. They they had a winning record
but didn't get invited to a bowl.
And and you know the there was a worry that fans weren't
traveling for bowl games as much as they had been.
They followed that up with another bad season where they
win three games. And so for those who don't
remember or those who weren't around, the 97 season was really
intended to be kind of a cultural reset of I U Football.
And the idea was it's a brand new era.
We have a new coach, a young, exciting offensive mind who has
been coaching with the Washington Redskins and he's an
alum, you know, a former member of the football team.
They had hired Cam Cameron and and that was the idea.
I mean, the whole idea behind the Cameron hire was, hey, you
know, let's get on the, you know, get a guy out of the NFL
train and, you know, let's let's try to be modern in the way that
we do things. And I I think a lot of times
people forget that that was perceived to be a real need
around I U. Football at that point.
And they were trying all kinds of different things.
One of the things they tried in 1997 was for all freshmen living
in the dorms, you got football tickets for free.
And I I, you know, it was funny because I never like going to my
my mailbox at teeter one day and like the football tickets were
in the mailbox. It was right right at the
beginning of the year, which was kind of neat.
I didn't need to be talked into going to football games.
You know, I've been going to I U football games with my dad, you
know, since the mid 80s. And so I was just happy that,
you know, I had tickets and was ready to get out there and and
watch the team. They they play a Kentucky team
in the third game of the season and they decide that they're
going to debut these black uniforms.
And they've also debuted this new logo, the Oval logo, which
is considered to be very divisive within I U Circle still
to this day. And of course they go out and
they lose that game immensely. They lose 49 to 7.
Tim Couch, who was, you know, Kentucky's last great hope as a,
you know, a nationally prominent quarterback.
It had a Heisman caliber type of day and just passed all over.
I U and a lot of people didn't like the black uniforms,
including infamously Bob Knight, who you know, one of the
uniforms basically like kind of kept away from everybody's eyes
for the rest of time. And I I think to some degree the
black uniforms, the, the attitude towards them has grown
and changed, you know, in ways that that game didn't really
warrant. You know it almost feels like
there are a lot of people who look at that example of are you
wearing black uniforms and then losing 49 to 7 in the only game
that they played in them and saying you know see that's what
happens when you when you drift away from tradition or you wear
something that you shouldn't wear and hey, Indiana should
never wear black. And I, you know, increasingly as
I've heard that over the years because people have been asking
hey, can we do we do a black uniform?
Can we do something different. The response has always been,
look we did that last time and we lost by 42 and it and you
know I think it's important to keep in mind for everybody that
I U literally could have worn candy stripe uniforms.
They could have worn 1967 Rose Bowl vintage uniforms and they
probably would have lost by 49 to 7.
It would The uniforms made zero difference.
It was a bad matchup. That was a bad Indiana football
team in 1997. They went two and nine that they
won one game in the big 10. They they think they they
averaged like 10 points a game. Offensively that was that was
the pre Antoine Randall L Cam Cameron era team that just could
not get anything going. The black uniforms I it it was
time to bring them back out again and I tip my cap to the
athletic department and to Adidas for designing them.
I think the uniforms look awesome.
I think the idea that I use going to have a a blackout where
they're encouraging everybody to wear black, especially in the
student section, that's going to be fascinating given that it's a
night game. You know, I think it's fun
though. I I like the fact that Indiana
is continuing to try to, you know, get people excited about
different aspects of football. It's very difficult, obviously,
without more results on the field, but I think they really
did do a good job with the black uniforms.
I think it's a nice change of pace.
I would certainly buy one if they were available for
purchase. And I I'll be honest, I was
actually a little bit surprised at how positive the overall
social media reception on the black uniforms was it.
I remember the the last time these things got seriously
talked about, a lot of people flipped out.
A lot of people were unhappy and there were still a few people.
And there's probably some of you in the audience who are uneasy
or you know find black uniforms for Indiana distasteful.
But I think, I think it's cool. I'm, I'm excited to see it.
It's a different look and it's a good time to do it.
It's a game that there's you know it's something different.
I mean I I if the if the Akron game is close if it's
competitive, that's a problem. And so assuming that it's not
going to be close, I'm excited about Indiana being able to have
something that the fans can get excited about at least a kickoff
we can see. Are you wearing something
slightly different? That's going to be really
fascinating. One other thing I wanted to
touch on and I and I think that, you know, this is not
necessarily a straight up Indiana thing, but Indiana
always invariably gets dragged into these conversations.
But we heard some stuff out from the West Coast over the course
of the last week talking about the idea of the two remaining
schools in the PAC 12, which of course are are Washington State
and Oregon State. They were the ones that
essentially got stuck without chairs when the music stopped on
realignment. But they have floated this idea
that they want to try to launch some kind of a promotion and
relegation model in college sports in relation to the, I
guess, the Mountain West and maybe a couple of other squads.
And you know, the idea is essentially if you're not
familiar with promotion and relegation, if you're not
following along with like English soccer or soccer in
other countries, promotion and relegation is a an approach to
doing league play where a certain number of of teams at
the bottom of the standings in any given year get relegated
down to the next level down. And then whoever the top two or
three teams are from the next level down get bumped up.
So in England, you know, in the Premier League, you'll, you
know, like this year you're, you know, you had three teams that
got promoted. There's a very good chance that
two of the three, if not all three are going to get relegated
this upcoming year. You know, so it's basically
like, you know the the way that they do it, it's it's based upon
points. You get 3 points for a win, you
get one point for a draw, you get 0 points for a loss.
And then if there's a tie in the number of points that you've
accrued, you go to gold differential in.
In American football, you know, the idea of promotion and
relegation has been tossed around.
We've seen it tossed around in other areas and other other
sports as well. You know, we've asked, people
have asked for it and in the NFL people have asked for it.
In baseball people have asked for it in in in Major League
Soccer and the idea that it's kind of picking up steam in the
college ranks. I think it's really interesting
because it's it's such a nonstarter for so many reasons
and yet people keep coming back to it.
It's it's it's almost funny to me.
You know, and this, I say this is someone who studies sports
for a living and and certainly I I find the conceptual cultural
idea of promotion and relegation to be kind of of curious and
interesting. And it certainly feels right to
the fan and and the media member.
Hey, you had a bad season. You didn't do what you were
supposed to do. You weren't as good as these
other teams. Your punishment is that you have
to go down to the lower level and have to fight your way back
into the top level. That sounds, you know it sounds
like justice, right. You know we we relegate the week
and we we allow that the teams that have taken care of business
to keep going. It just doesn't work.
You know in in American business and increasingly in the Premier
League it doesn't work. What we've seen in the Premier
League is when a team gets relegated, generally one of two
things happens. They either all of these teams
are given what are called parachute payments when they're
relegated because there's such a huge financial difference in
television money and gate receipts between playing at the
top level and playing at the level below.
And for a lot of these teams that they have, you know you
have to sign players at a certain level of salary and that
is the salary of the highest level.
Well, when you're relegated, it's not like those contracts go
away. You know, for most of those
teams, they either are continuing to pay Premier League
salaries but they're no longer making the money that they were
making in the Premier League, or they have to sell all their
players at a discount because their players have clauses in
their contract saying if we're relegated we get to leave and
and a team that's in the Premier League will go by us.
You know, this is where every time the promotion, relegation
comes up, even in pro sports, in the USI just kind of shake my
head because with the way that money works in sports, the idea
that an owner is going to voluntarily sign up for a system
where their investment in the level of investment is not
guaranteed is is. It's crazy like it's not going
to happen. I remember sitting in a
conference listening to the chairman of Bournemouth Football
Club which is one of the Premier League teams and his team had
just gotten promoted and he was asked about bringing promotion
and relegation to the United States and and he he made the
statement like, you know, honestly we just got promoted.
I really want to do away with relegation because the financial
impact of that would be so negative at this point given
that we've spent so much money on not just on contracts but on
all these other things. To be a Premier League club, the
idea of being relegated is like financially ruinous.
And when I hear it talked about at the college level, it just
not, you know that the financial elements are important.
And if you think about what the Big 10 television contract is
going to be and then you think about, you know the idea that if
I'm in the Big 10, random school in the Big 10 and I'm going to
be guaranteed somewhere between 90 and $100 million in
television money. And you know, let's say we had
relegation, like PAC 12 is talking about, if you're in the
Big 10, it's like, Oh yeah, we're going to do a league with
relegation. Unless you're going to guarantee
that there's no difference in television money between the
promote the teams in the top level and the teams that have
been relegated to the second level, There's no way that
schools are going to sign on to that.
And you know, much like as you see in the Premier League, the
ability to compete with those teams at the top level, the
moment you get kicked out in a relegation process, it's it's
going to be almost impossible to make up for that from a
financial perspective. Unless you're like SMU and you
can just walk into your donors and say, hey, we need $100
million and they just all write checks, which is actually what
happened with SMU last week. But not everybody is SMU.
So I, you know, I know this always gets talked about.
We, you know, we've got people, industry people say yes,
promotional relegations being talked about seriously.
I've spent more time on it on this podcast, the 5 minutes or
so I've been talking about it than it deserves.
It's it's an idea. I wouldn't be shocked if it went
away in European football in like 15 years.
It's an idea that really worked at a time when the money was a
lot closer, when the the difference between the First
Division club and the third division club wasn't that huge
and you know, it didn't require literally billions of dollars to
to to run a top level program or top level team.
It's the same thing in college sports.
And I I'll go back to what we've talked about on some of our
sports business podcast, college teams, colleges and universities
who engage in college sports. They're in it for the prestige.
They're in it for the visibility and the idea that, you know,
even I mean think about, you know, if you're if you're a,
let's let's ignore even the Ohio's and Ohio States and the
Michigan's and the Penn States. Think about a team like Michigan
State. They had a year.
I think it was in 20. It was the IT was the last year
before the year, this past year that Indiana had won the old
Brass Platoon. So I think it was 2016.
You know, they they went like 2 and 10 or three and nine that
season. Imagine if Michigan State just
has an awful year and gets relegated.
They're not going to sign up for that because it's always very
possible, you know with the way Michigan State's been running
itself that they could have a year like that.
The Maryland's of the world are not going to sign up for the
idea that they're not going to be, you know, at the big table
because they have one bad year. You know, it's it's a lot of
people focus on the the little teams or the teams that haven't
achieved well and Indiana always gets thrown into that mix.
Vanderbilt gets talked about, Rutgers gets talked about that.
You know, not only will those teams not support a promotion
relegation, but the middle class is going to be like, hell, no,
absolutely not. That is, that is not going to
work. So you know for the PAC 12 on
the Mountain West that it would be an interesting thing to look
at. But even there, there's enough
money difference between what a PAC 12 team is considered to be
from a television perspective and what a Mountain West team is
considered. I think they're just talking
about this to get some media attention and I guess I played
right into it because I've been talking about it for 7 minutes
now. Anyway, I'm going to stop, but I
just wanted to mention that anyway.
We're going to wrap things up. I hope you all have a wonderful
Friday. I hope you have a wonderful
Saturday. If you're going to come down to
the game, should be beautiful weather and maybe the last
really great home football weather game that I you has this
season. So if you aren't planning on
coming down, take advantage of the fact that it's an evening
game, Take advantage of the good weather.
You know, come down, do a tailgate, relax a little bit, go
out, enjoy. I U wear black to the game and I
think hopefully Indiana comes in plays with some fire and some
spirit and then blows the Akron out and and really gives
themselves some confidence heading into this next game.
Anyway, my thanks to our friends at Home Field Apparel is our
presenting sponsors. My thanks to the Back Home
Network for their friendship and camaraderie.
And my thanks to all of you folks for joining us here on the
show. We'll be back with our regular
recap podcast on Sunday morning, so be sure to tune in for that.
Make sure to follow us on substack
crimsoncast.substack.com. I'm Galen Clavio.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the
Bison, So everybody.