You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cask Ale
and Clavio Scott Caulfield back again, the dynamic duo here.
It's the last day of June, summer just flying by, Scott,
just just on a heater so far and we're back together.
When was the last time we podcasted?
Was it May? It's it's been a while.
It's the end of the Indy 500. Yeah, just bad.
We've been trying for a couple weeks.
Just bad schedules. Well, you know, Scott's been off
in in wine country trying different vintages to have
shape, you know, crates shipped back to his neighborhood.
Am I wrong about any of this so far?
And unfortunately, no, this is all, they're all true
statements. Yeah, we did a did, I mean,
yeah, we did a trip to Sonoma. We did a trip to Napa two days.
It was. It was awesome.
The Willamette Valley is asking like, what do we need to do to
get Scott, representing Westfield, to come out and
sample our wines? I mean, yeah, we could in.
That's all. That's all we have to do.
Just need to make the call. That was great.
We did a day in San Francisco and flew back.
We had a great time. No kids.
It's one of the we don't have, unfortunately, we don't have a
great grandparent reservoir or, or a bench of grandparents who
can watch the kids. So getting time away from the
kids is really tough. So this was actually a June 2020
trip that had been postponed 'cause there's this thing called
COVID that went around and we came back, You know, we had a
great time. It was fun.
It's a it's a positive thing. I'm glad you got a chance to get
away, and it's lots. Of wine, lots of wine coming and
we we have we have wine storage in our basement.
It's just one fun story with this.
And I thought everything was all right, but like my basement
isn't cold enough and like even learn that red wine should be
like if you're storing it for a long time, it's even a little
bit cooler. So we bought it.
You need a cave really, which I'm shocked you don't own a cave
in in getting there home field. You need to buy more home field
shirts and get that that sponsorship up a little bit.
So we bought a wine fridge, you know, that replicates The Cave
you speak of from Amazon. Never had this from Amazon
before where it was 112 LB little mini fridge.
They delivered a industrial power washer to my house.
Same poundage. Like it's still 114 lbs.
It's like I'm on the phone and it's like, whoa, like they drive
away. Then it's like there really
isn't a button for like, hey, you delivered the absolutely
wrong thing. There's like return it.
Like I opened it. It wasn't what I wanted.
Like, well, it wasn't what I wanted and that it's a power
washer and like I need to store wine.
And so I returned it and it's it's, it's being the process
it's being anyway. And then I bought another one
and then they didn't ship it and they so it's like me getting a
wine fridge has been a real problem anyway.
Nobody's listening for everybody's like damn.
No, no, no, GAIL. Double pods please.
I am, I am constantly amazed at the amount of people who are
expressed interest in you, this particular aspect of your life.
So I actually think we're doing folks a favor by talking about
this. This is this is quite good.
The wine fridge thing is funny. I, I remember a few years ago I
was, I was house shopping in Bloomington and there was a
house near, so basically kind of close to campus, but off aways a
nice mid century modern type of place.
It had in its basement a wine cellar that like I've never seen
before, like this was a, it was almost like it was a glass
enclosed room that must have had storage for 800 bottles of wine.
It was like, it was insane. I was like, what on earth?
Like how much wine am I going to have to buy over time to put in
here? And then I actually, I know the
people who bought that house and I was talking about it to them a
couple of years later and they were like, yeah, we took that
out first thing. It's like what we're going to do
with it. And I'm like, oh man, I, I get
it. I get why you would take that
out, but that's, that feels like a bit of a waste.
That's a lot of of infrastructure.
What do you? Pin there like a sauna like you
could, you could. This was like the perfect spot.
It really was. It's just, you know, the owners,
what do they put in? Actually, I don't, I didn't ask
them. I was so taken aback by the fact
they've taken it out. I didn't.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, so good to talk to you folks again.
And just a reminder, we are part of the Back Home network here on
Crimson Cast and you can catch the other Back Home Network
shows regularly, XS and Joes with a really fun set of recent
episodes and sneak preview. I'll be going on XS and Joes, we
think before the end of the month to talk about something
that'll be of interest to most of you.
Also, of course, assembly call. They're on a bit of a summer
hiatus, as have we been, but they're they're they're bringing
it back here soon. You've also, I mean, there's a
ton of shows new show launched by Austin render the dribble Dr.
podcast as he explores big 10 women's basketball with some of
the luminaries from across the conference.
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All right, Scott, we haven't talked in a while.
So there's lots of different directions that we could go with
things. But let's maybe start off by
talking about a couple of things related to IU sports
specifically. We'll kind of meander into a few
other categories. We let's talk about football 1st
and you know, we've, we've haven't talked a huge amount
about the roster yet. I think we're going to save that
until we get a little bit closer to camp.
IU continues to recruit very well, which is exciting.
We've seen the Hoosiers get, you know, they just got another wide
receiver out of Florida this in the last couple of days.
And so clearly something's clicking there.
But there were also some changes that happened with the seating
in the stadium. We really haven't had a chance
to talk about this yet. The student section getting both
expanded and shifted a little bit.
So now it's taking up most of the northeast and north, not
quadrant, I guess, but like that, that particular wedge of
the stadium. You've got the Tobias Center,
there's some changes going on there.
You've got rooftop at the Rock. They're they're making that like
a pure event space, it sounds like, at least from what we can
tell. So lots of changes going on in
the stadium. We've got new vendors coming in
for food, which should be, I think a good thing.
And overall interesting your overall thoughts.
As you know, you and I have both been season ticket overs with
football for a while. I guess where like what?
What strikes you from all of this and where are you seeing it
going? I'm.
Going to start with the so the first thing real quick with the
players that you mentioned you, you I listened to your pod
yesterday, you know, and it it yeah, of course.
And it had you had a very a good point that I just want to kind
of add on there for a second. You know, somebody asked the
question of, you know, the the recruiting seems to be, you
know, getting a little bit better, but the rankings aren't
that good and trying to kind of, you know, square that circle of
the rankings and all that. And, and I think that the point
is it, it feels like, you know, we are not so much recruiting
for rankings or, you know, player stars, but more for for
need. I think if you looked at teams
like Iowa and Wisconsin, their recruiting rankings really
doesn't matter. Like I don't think their fan
bases get too up in arms in it because they know they're
recruiting for a certain type of player and whether that player
is a one star or a five star. It's like we got to get the guys
that we need in Iowa's case, like we just need huge offensive
lineman and we need to play defense and not really worry
about offense. And so it does feel like
Cignetti's doing that. And so I I think it's all good
there. And when you talk about the
stadium, you know, I think that the student section move.
I'm I'm actually more curious your thoughts.
That's kind of an area that I think I think you're moving your
seats to. I've got a couple friends who
sat in that area. You know, I, it's unfortunate
because you know, for those who are not season ticket holders,
basketball does a reseating every single year.
So every year you get a time and you have to go online and you
pick your seats and doesn't matter what, you can't say I
want to save my seats from last year.
It's like not an option. Everyone 100% the deck is
reshuffled every single year. Football doesn't do that.
And it's actually been a little bit frustrating at times.
Like, you know, my wife and I had two tickets and then we had
a son. We're going to bring our son to
the game. It's like, well, we can't just
add a third ticket because there's somebody sitting there.
So it's like, if you want a third ticket, you now have to
move. And that's kind of a bummer.
And then we had another child. You know, kids always mess
things up. They do.
In every walk of life in. Every walk of life, yes, but you
know, so the fact that they haven't receded in football and
don't do it every year, I think causes some of these problems.
I understand why you don't because people have areas they
like to sit in and all that. But you know, I, I would say
that all of this feels like a program kind of growing up like
into adolescence as a program that, you know, we're going to
try and have a cohesive student section where they can be there
and effective and loud and more connected.
I think that's important. You're going to have to move
things around and make that happen.
You know, the, the Tobias Center you, you mentioned is an area
that used to be, you know, certain levels of varsity club
donors could win there during the game.
They're changing that where the, the ACT.
You still need to be at a certain level with the varsity
club, but then you also need to pay, you know, 500 bucks a head
to get in there for the season. They they're going to add some,
you know, alcohol and food pieces to that, to that price.
It's, it's not awesome, but it's like, all right, this feels like
a pro again, It's like coming out of adolescence, like this is
a program that that's, that's growing and kind of there will
be some growing pains, but sorry, I'm kind of all across
the board. I, I think the student section,
I think it's good to just have that like we're going to have a
cohesive student section. We're going to have a student
section identity. I hope the summer out of this
comes some you know, it's funny. It's like IU football's almost
in like the the the burst stages, like it'd be cool if
they came up with some chance or just, you know, things that kind
of happened during the game organically versus like the
shark attack sounds we make and like the first down, like
there's a lot of weird mismatch of, you know, it's almost like a
thrift store putting stuff together.
It's like none of it really goes together.
So I think hopefully with a one student section, you get a
little more cohesiveness in in the stadium.
Yeah, it's a really interesting area.
And I think you hit the nail on the head.
It is a program that is like, I don't know if it's, I don't know
if growing into adolescence is quite the right phrase yet
because all of this is still preliminary in a lot of ways.
Like we've tried over the course of the last 15 years to put
different things in the stadium. There's been some changes.
None of them have really stuck. And a lot of it is just because
there's no culture around IU football.
I mean, there just isn't the closest thing.
What? What's puberty like us getting
our coach hired from some other program?
Like what? What does puberty become for us?
I, I, I shudder to think about what it might be, but you know,
the, the lack of culture around IU football.
I mean, what is IU football culture?
When you get right down to it, I don't think it really exists.
And that's a combination of a bunch of different factors.
And it's why sustaining things here is so difficult in as much,
I mean, even going back to, you know, the famous period in the
late 80s, early 90s where, you know, we went to the the went to
bowls relatively regular, went to the All American Bowl, went
to the Peach Bowl, went to the Liberty Bowl, went to the Peach
Bowl again. And, you know, IU people went to
those bowl games in earnest to start with and then stopped
going because it was almost like, well, we've done that.
You know, the we need to get like bigger bowls.
And, you know, and then the team was never quite good enough.
There was never like a culture that was built in to celebrate
all of those things. And then immediately afterwards,
you had arguably the worst period in IU football history
from about 1995 to 2000 and seven, 2006.
So you'd. Like to call it our time on
campus. Yes, that that was our time, you
know, that was when we were there.
But that so this is where I think the fact that a lot of at
least externally, a lot of the way IU has handled football has
been as a placeholder to get to basketball.
And I don't necessarily even mean in terms of how the fans
think about it. I mean, the athletic department,
you know, so many football season ticket holders didn't go
to games because all they were doing was getting extra priority
points for basketball. And you know, it's funny, I
mentioned on a a previous podcast, someone asked like,
what what else do we need to do to try to, from lack of a better
term, professionalize the football fan experience?
I was like get rid of pass outs, No.
I, I and I completely agree with you.
Someone wrote me afterwards, I forget who it was, I apologize,
I don't have the name off the top of my head.
And they were like, I was talking to somebody about that
and they said they were going to stop buying football tickets if
we couldn't have pass outs anymore.
And that's part of the problem is that that's the attitude.
It's like, well, I want these tickets and I want to be able to
go in and do whatever and then just meander out whenever it
suits me. That is an attitudinal thing on
the part of the fans. And I don't blame them because
a, the product hasn't been, you know, great.
It's been, the product's been a lot better over the last decade
than most people give it credit for.
Yes, the product was bad the last couple of years, but take
those two years out and you know, you're talking about a
stretch. If you go back to 2013, you
know, you, you had five wins, six wins, six wins, five wins,
five wins, eight wins, you know, a six and two season.
I mean, it was, it's been a really good vintage of IU
football, relatively speaking, at least enough that you could
get excited about it. And yet we constantly find
ourselves kind of, you know, resetting back to 0 on a lot of
this stuff. And so I do think moving the
student section around, shifting some of the seats, it makes some
sense. There has to be some success on
the field that can get people excited though, in order to make
that feel like it actually was in service of something as
opposed to simply shifting deck chairs around.
You know, I, I at the end of it all, but I think that's the
biggest issue is like I there have been attempts in the past
to improve the overall stadium atmosphere, but as you said,
it's this weird tapestry of different special interests.
You know, it's like, well, the band should be important here,
you know, and, and in the XY and Z or well, gosh, the kids, what
about not whole part? It's always been like everything
except that, you know what's going to help make it the
toughest atmosphere that you can play football in.
It's always been we want our special interest accounted for.
And it's not to say that those things aren't important, but
they're less important than the core atmosphere of the stadium.
And the fact that people get mad about those little special
interest things getting affected, rather than getting
mad that the atmosphere in the stadium is bad, is kind of an
indication of the larger cultural issue that IU football
has to fix. Well, and it feels like, you
know, athletics, they, they treat this with kind of the like
kid gloves, like we can't do anything to make people mad
because we don't want to lose ticket holders.
Like like you said, like, you know, like don't do pass outs.
We're like, well, I wouldn't buy tickets.
We didn't have pass outs and it feels like it's like, all right,
well, we can't do that because we're going to lose people.
Because the trouble is, you know, what should be drawing in
the people, as you said, is like winning games.
And the idea should be, you know, from from the like, hey,
man, this is the way we're going.
They should probably reseat the stadium every single year
because you look at basketball, there is no like, well, people
like where they sit and there's, you know, nobody cares in
basketball. It's like, hey, this is the way
we're doing it. If you don't like it, by all
means, there's a waiting list. We'll let somebody else in.
The trouble is the football, there's not a waiting list.
And I think if you start pissing people off trying to make
they're, they got to walk a fine line is by doing these changes,
you're going to piss some people off.
What you need is the product to be good enough to bring in more
people. Because people will leave.
Like, man, you know, they'll be pissed.
Like I don't want the student section over there.
Like I'm never buying tickets again.
If you do pass outs like I'll never come back again, you have
to be OK, kind of be like, all right, that's good because we'll
lose 20 people, but we're going to gain 50 because of the play.
The trouble with IU football is the play hasn't always been
there enough to draw people back in or to keep people there.
And so it does feel like you're you're servicing a lot of these
kind of special interests. And you know, go to any other
major sporting event, there aren't pass outs like this is.
It's not something that's very common in other areas.
Yeah, I mean, the pass out is not the same as like the Indy
500 letting you bring in, you know, a 24 pack of beer as long
as you know, they're in cans. Like it's it's not it's it's not
a perdition that we really need to save the and then look,
ultimately you're you you're right.
The product hasn't been great. We've been saying for years you
don't build fan culture and then have a good team.
You have a good team and then you build fan culture and that
to me is what's at stake right now.
Over the course of the next five or six years, however long
Signetti and this group are here, can you actually start to
build that culture 'cause I think it is clear that this
vintage of IU athletics is taking football seriously.
They're putting money forward, They're they're putting an IL
money forward. Like all of that is happening,
but it has to be something where you set some rules and I think
all the rules are reasonable. Like the idea that we don't want
to piss people off. I, I even think that's a little
overblown. I think it's more, well, since
most of these people are buying tickets for basketball instead
of football, There's like, there's a perceptional issue in
terms of like, let's make this situation as easy as possible
because we don't want to, like we don't want to lose potential
revenue on the other side of things.
That's, that's, I guess ultimately where I'm going with
this. It's ultimately all of these
changes. They're a little abrupt, they
happened a bit late. None of them are unreasonable
and I actually don't think they went far enough with some of
them. There has to be something on the
field that's going to make people want to come in the
stadium because, yeah, you could be upset.
I don't get pass outs, but at the end of the day, if the
team's winning, you're not going to want to leave anyway.
If they're competitive, you're not going to want to leave
anyway. That's really where you want to
get. So it's it's really the egg
coming before the chicken, I think in this case.
The other thing you mentioned was the, the variety of new food
or some new food options, which I think that's an area where,
you know, the people who are running Memorial Stadium seem to
take a breath, take a deep, hard look in the mirror and really
get better at this. They've added some, some new
beer carts. They do have some vendors like
they have the, you know, the bends, I think the pretzels and
they, they have some different things going on there, which is
good. They really have to figure out a
way to get better at efficiency, having all the stands open and
then having everything that's needed and kind of seeing, you
know, we, we, we harping back to it.
So I don't want to keep hitting it, but like that Cincinnati
game in 2021, I believe. Yeah, Yeah.
It was like super hot and there was just not enough water.
And. And that's where you got to just
kind of see an audible and be like, all right, we're going to
have a couple stands just selling water.
Just nothing but water. You know, I I I was there this
spring for Kane Brown had a concert at Memorial Stadium.
And by the way, side note, it was a kind of a really quirky
and interesting concert venue. I can't remember the last time
they held, you know, a major concert with like, you know,
25,000 people there. It was a cool concert venue.
The only trouble was the the concessions were an absolute
nightmare, you know that not everything was open.
Everyone guess what, country concert, everybody wanted a
beer. They had like 3 beer stands
going. The lines were absurd.
You know, it's, it's and it's those kinds of things that I
hope they can figure out a way to have efficiency hat maybe try
and get some, you know, grab and go scan in and out kind of
spots, you know, be a little bit more progressive with that,
because that is an area that that desperately needs work and
is, you know, somebody who wants to watch football games and has
two kids. You know, part of the reason
that we've been doing the Tobias Center for the last couple years
is because I'm like, I I don't care if I have to give an extra,
you know, big dollar amount to the varsity club.
It's better than waiting in line for a hot dog and missing an
entire quarter, which has happened at times.
So, you know, they need to figure those things out.
So I hope as they add more of those vendors, they're able to
do that because the the two concourses on the two main
sections, there's a ton of room there.
So, you know, I know they can't build more physical session
stands under the stadium, but you have tons of room where you
could have little pop ups and and, you know, try and it that's
something that hasn't changed in years.
And I really hope does start to be changed because it it becomes
a very tough process. And as a fan who, you know, when
you want the full crowd stadium, you want the place full and then
to see it like, you know, basically all of the processes
not working and everything breaking apart.
It's like this. We need to be ready to handle
55,000 people a a weekend for eight weekends a year.
Yeah. We'll see.
It should be an interesting atmosphere with eight home games
this year. So it'll be it'll be something.
So we'll look forward to talking more about that as we move
forward as well as what's going on with the roster as that
continues to build, not just for this upcoming year, but for next
year as well. Let's switch gears to IU
basketball. Of course, the big news from
this past week, Khalil Ware getting drafted a bit earlier
than a lot of people that are projected him going to the Miami
Heat. And this is yet another IU
player that gets drafted. It it feels like to some degree,
you know, in this day and age, you, you know, needing that
additional boost to being able to say we're placing players in
the NBA. It really does help not just in
terms of regular recruiting, but in terms of portal recruiting.
And you know, you likes, you know, ideally we want to see
more of that occurring moving forward in terms of like not
just landing those types of players, but also the case with
Khalil Ware where his draft stock was in some significant
jeopardy coming here. And not only does he stabilize
it, but he improves significantly on the position.
And you know, you got to give Mike Woodson credit for that in
terms of his development. And this is now, you know, you
you add Jalen Uchefino to that mix.
Trace Jackson Davis was drafted pretty late, but clearly had a
great first season as a member of the Golden State Warriors.
I mean, like I, I, he's a, he's a success story because he was
basically off draft boards for most of his time at IU and he
got drafted. That's a big deal.
Yeah. And so, you know, without,
without, it's one small piece of things.
But I, I do think that with the way that things are situated now
and with NIL Bunny being what it is, this is still a piece that
matters to to athletes. It's like this idea that I need
to go somewhere where I'm going to be put into position where I
have a good chance of not just getting drafted, but getting
drafted in the first round. And that's, you know, whatever
criticisms or concerns we might have about other aspects of the
program, this does not appear to be one that we need to worry
about. I mean, this is when you look at
what IU's been able to do and I think you're going to get this
again because it's a really good chance Omar Balo's going to be
drafted at a pretty high number, especially when you see where
Zach Edie went in the draft higher than a lot of people
thought. Maybe there's some changing
thought processes about that type of player at the NBA level.
Even though Ballo did most of his college career in Arizona, I
use going to get the credit when and if he's drafted in the first
round next year. This is a nice spot to be and
it's a spot I think that's been a little touch and go over time.
You know, especially in the Archie era, Romeo Langford
excluded, it kind of was like, well, like even when even when
you didn't have guys drafted, it didn't feel like that was going
to happen. It kind of feels like it's going
to happen regularly with Woodson at this point.
Yeah, you texted me this this morning.
I started thinking about it. You know, to me, for a lot of
ways the comp of Khalil Ware has to me always been Noah Vonle in
that, you know, Vonle came in pretty highly recruited.
He was drafted 9th, so got even drafted higher.
But in a season where kind of not a lot, not a lot happened
from a, you know, basket the team didn't make the, you know,
didn't have anything happen that year though Vonle was there.
You know, with with those two years, you know, the year before
you had Oladipo going 2nd and Zeller going fourth.
In the draft he had second, fourth.
The next year he had a 9th. You would have thought at that
point too. It's like, all right, well, now
we are swimming in these waters. And then we really didn't swim
in those waters again for a while.
You know, where where I think things could be different is it
did feel like, you know, quick thought not going to re litigate
the green area. It didn't feel like at that
point Crean kind of shifted his recruiting from, you know, up to
that point. It was kind of like team
building and getting local players and trying to get one or
two and getting lucky with a kid like Zeller being in Indiana and
then trying to get a couple of you know, we'll get old depot to
see if we can get it better, you know, get somebody who can get
better. And it felt like Crean just went
off the now I want nothing but top 25 picks and it didn't work
out with what we've seen with Woodson.
It does feel like this is this is kind of been his mode of
operation from the get go is I'm going after some high level, you
know, recruits and kids like Jalen Hutchefino.
I'll get some, I won't get others.
But then every year in the portal, we're going to be
playing for the the top dollar guys.
And and it feels like this is more replicatable where other
times when coaches have had success at IU, it feels like
they're recruiting strategy that immediately changes to something
that they pivot to something else.
It doesn't feel like it feels like this is what Woodson's
going to do. And I agree, if this is all
good, like in the end, NIL is awesome.
But if you can make you can show players a path to the NBA,
there's way more money there than NIL.
You know, the asterisk and the caveat I think a lot of fans
feel is like this is all great, but like you, you then have to
now turn turn this into success on the court.
Yeah, here's a little trivia for you, Scott.
OK, Since 1994, Since that, Since the end of the 94 draft,
How many first round draft picks does Purdue have?
That's a great question. Including Zach Edie.
Yeah, yeah. Well, 94 was Glenn Robinson.
So you're you're you're excluding.
Host Glenn Robinson. So, so starting with the 95
draft, which seems like a very, very poignant start date, I'm
going to say one. Is it one?
It's more than that. So they had.
So Purdue has four in that time period.
They have, they have Zach Edie, obviously.
Two years ago they had Jayden Ivey.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caleb Swan again, yeah. And then Juwan Johnson and Swan
again. Juwan Johnson were kind of back
of the first round. Do you want to guess how many
first round draft picks Indiana has during that same time
period? 1995 The Press, You.
Just came five, so I mean there's probably 8.
It's more than that, believe it or not.
So here's the first round draft picks Indiana has since the 95
draft. Allen Henderson, Brian Evans,
Jason Collier, Kirk Haston, Jared Jeffries.
We're already up to five. DJ White, Eric Gordon, Jordan
Crawford kind of cheating there, but we're going to we're going
to throw him into the mix as he didn't play at Indiana.
Cody Zeller, Victor Oladipo, Noah Vonle, OG Anna Nobi, Romeo
Langford, Jalen Uchefino, Khalil Ware.
Even if you take out the Jordan Crawford pick, that's fourteen
first round draft picks for Indiana in that time period,
which is fascinating because it kind of feels like when I think
about the reputation of Indiana, it doesn't feel like a place
that's pumped out that many first round draft picks in the
in that span of time. And granted, if you compare it
to Kentucky or Duke, it's significantly less, but it's
wild that there's that much of a disparity in that time period.
It's also a little sad that Indiana's had that many first
round draft picks and there hasn't been more on court
success across multiple coaches during that time period.
But I, I was well on draft night, I was kind of poking
around looking at that. I was like, damn, that's that's
a lot of people over the course of you.
Know, I guess which 30 years now, but still, yeah, no, it's
it's it's it's a fairpoint and I think I think it goes to show
that this is a a word you use a lot like this is an alchemy like
it's it's not just getting good players.
You have to get good players with, you know, the right team
around them and, you know, getting the the supporting
players as well. And it, it does feel like
Indiana in that time, you know, has either gone way too hard one
way or the other. It's like we're just, we're
either not swimming in those waters.
We're going to get a bunch of two stars, see what we can do,
or we're going to get a couple of, you know, five star stud
recruits and then put, you know, a bunch of one stars around it.
Or just we're not going to put together the plan of who else
we're going to get that. Yeah, that's that's I mean, and
the Purdue thing is real. Like that's just, you know, they
have a system and their system really doesn't need and or
feature high level players like that.
Yeah, it's and the whole thing's interesting to me and, and even
if you take, you know, second round draft picks, I mean,
Indiana's pretty much, you know, pretty consistent in that on
that front as well. So I don't know, just some
interesting things. It's the middle of summer, you
know, we're we're just looking for stuff to talk about at this
point, but but anyway, the. Thing is that the draft still
matters, and I think as everything was changing in
college basketball, you know, money's still a big piece.
You know, NIO probably in some places means more to the players
on, you know, programs that are not, you know, don't have a real
perfect like, you know, lacrosse or swimming or areas where
there's not a real, you know, professional piece for if you're
a top level, you know, Khalil Ware type who thinks you can get
to the NBANIL is kind of nice to have along the way.
But now what Khalil Ware is going to earn in the NBA, and if
he can stay in the NBA for a second contract is going to far,
far exceed anything he'd ever get in NIL.
Yeah. Well, the other reason that I
think it's important is I mean, if you look at the start of the
draft, the, the, the early rounds of the, or the early
picks in this draft, a lot of people from France, a lot of
people from overseas. And it really does feel like
there, there should be some warning bells going off in terms
of the way American basketball and especially college
basketball is thinking about this.
Because it felt like, you know, the big winners of the first
half of the draft were France and the G League and college
basketball, so much gets caught up in this idea of college
basketball. You know, is, is you know, about
school as much as about basketball.
Meanwhile, we find more and more that being a professional
basketball player, you're probably going to go to the G
League, you're probably going to go to, to your, or, you know, if
you're, if you're European, you may stay in Europe, stay in your
Academy system 'cause you have a better shot at going to the pros
that way. You know, the, it's almost like,
I think college basketball, if you think about it as a media
entity needs stars. And if you think about the
stardom that college basketball players are able to acquire and,
and maintain and also the money now that they're able to make,
that almost becomes like a, you know, that becomes your
professional career to some degree.
It keeps the sport alive. And it also can put you in a
position where people think you should be drafted perhaps higher
than you actually should be drafted.
A lot of people got upset that like Dalton Connect didn't get
drafted earlier. And you know, GM said, well,
it's the age thing. Like he's just, he's too old.
Why would you draft a 24 year old or 23 year old when you
could draft an 18 or 19 year old?
Because you're drafting on potential.
You're drafting on the fact that you want to get that player in
their prime. If he turns into a a star, you
want to be able to sign that player or have the rights to
sign that player at a higher level than the other teams in
the league. This is how the the collective
bargaining agreement works. So I look at it from college
basketball. If college basketball had
anybody in charge, if there was anybody running it that was
thinking holistically, anybody at all, they would be like,
look, there are a lot of basketball players that people
like watching that are connected to brands that people like
watching in college basketball. Why don't we steer into that
more because, you know, are we going to have the same ratings
as the NBA? Not necessarily.
But look, Caitlin Clark's a great example of this.
If you look at the ratings that Caitlin Clark games had, not
just regular season, but tournament games.
You know, the, the, the national title game two years in a row,
like outstripped the men's national title game, like
outstripped a lot of other of other games.
Well, that's not just, I mean, Caitlin Clark was kind of a
phenomenon, but the idea that star power at the college level
matters and in relation to the draft, it it's it's something
where you can, if you've got better rules, I think you can be
a place where you can cultivate top level talent.
They can get paid at a higher level than they do at the G
League level or overseas. But this is where the NCAA keeps
handcuffing itself to a terrible model because the, you know, all
the restrictions on practice and development, all the
restrictions on when you can meet with coaches and get
coached. It it's like it makes it a less
serious option for player development, which is why a lot
of these college players don't get drafted as high.
It's why scouts go out of their way to say, here's what this guy
can't do, whereas they focus on what the people overseas can do.
So this go ahead. I was.
Just saying just, you know, 2 two things.
You know, one, you talk about, you know, the the interest of
the American players, you know, listening to any of the draft,
you know, previews, which I did, you know, it's all talk about,
you know, Donovan Kling And I think where Edie was going to go
was a big part of this draft. Obviously Ronnie James is kind
of a, you know, unique story that got a lot of interest.
But, you know, people were talking about Klingon and, you
know, Reed Shepherd and then you mentioned, you know, Dalton
connect like, and then he'd be like, Oh yeah, and the French
guys anyway, you know, but do you think Steven Castle could
run? I mean, like even all of the
draft infrastructure we have here is focused on the people
that they know and they've seen just because they've seen them
play and they've seen, you know, Klingon do it in games.
And there's, you know, breakdowns of his game against
Illinois as you've seen it. The other thing I'm stealing
this from Bill Simmons podcast. If you've heard it, I apologize.
And I I did not Fact Check this, but I was listening to it.
I got it right in my head. But here's a trivia question for
you. With all the French players
going first. Reed Shepherd was the 3rd pick
out of Kentucky. And Simmons is like, this is the
first American born white guy in a long time to go this high in
the draft. Do you know that the last
highest drafted white American player to go to go higher that
to be the first pick, the 1st pick that's not, you know, first
American player is. White.
I understand what you mean. The Christian Laettner.
I don't know. No IU ties.
IU ties. I'm no who was it?
Kent Benson. Oh, wow.
Yeah, Jeez, that's that is 76, Yeah.
Or 77, number one. Yeah.
Well, that is pretty, pretty. Well, the whole Reed Shepherd
thing is fascinating. It's a kind of a good example of
what I'm talking about here. And as much as, you know, for
the longest, I remember reading, I think, I think that was the
recruitment they were talking about where like Calipari was
uncertain if this was a guy they wanted to draft or wanted to
drive. Well, I mean, it's Kentucky.
So he might definitely say that if they wanted to recruit, it
was it was out of character to the types of players that
Calipari was bringing in. But it look, I, I think a, a lot
of the attitudes towards basketball talent in the United
States have been kind of calcified over the course of the
last 30 years in or 40 years really in terms of like who's
good, who's not good, where you're going to get serious
talent. Meanwhile, the rest of the
world, at least the parts that care about basketball, really
feel like they've decided they're going to throw all that
out and they're completely changing their approach to how
they develop players. This is something that I talk
about quite a bit. This, you know, the, as much as
gets complained about the pay for play system in the United
States and it is bad at the, at the youth level.
There's also such little organization and such little
structure in the way that players get developed.
And you get a lot of basketball people who get kind of crotchety
when you talk about this stuff. But it's hard to, you know, when
you look at soccer development in Europe and the, the coaching
badges that you have to earn in order to be rated to coach youth
and be employed by youth academies.
And you look at the United States system and it is, it is a
free for all. You know, sometimes you get
really good people in there who know what they're talking about.
Sometimes you get people with some questionable intent.
Sometimes you get people who just want to be around the game
but aren't very good at coaching.
And, and there's such a focus on a, taking money out of the
pockets of the, of whoever's paying for, whether it's the
parents or whoever. And B games, travel, you know,
playing against other teams. And it's not just there's no
practice in. This travel stuff, it's just.
For games and it's and it's not just basketball, it it's
baseball. It's like it's just this, it's
this endemic thing throughout most of American sport.
And, and again, there are exceptions and there are, you
know, there are smaller academies that develop players
very well. But if you look at it as a
whole, it's very uneven. And you know, American
basketball has lasted like it's it's survived up to this point
internationally because of how much athleticism exists within
the American game. And the fact that when you've
got 300 and some million people and you've got a certain
quotient of people that have that level of athleticism,
you're just by natural, you know, by by the force of of
numbers, you're going to get some people that come through
the fire on the other side and you get a LeBron James or you
get an Anthony Edwards. You know that that.
That will always be an advantage that America has because it's
the largest country by far population wise of the countries
that care about basketball. But when you look at how, how
far above their, their weight that like a Slovenia or a
Croatia or a Serbia punches or even France, which I mean, who
thinks of France when they think of like great centers of
basketball? And yet you look at the players
that France has developed and generated over the course of
time. And it's like, wow, that what
what you hope to see and what I'd love college to do is rather
than take the approach they've taken over the course of time,
which is basically, we are going to set the bar from a player
development perspective at the lowest common denominator, like
the Division Three school. Because we're going to have
these basically be the same rules that we use at upper
levels. Not completely, but you know
what I mean? Even the lowest Division One
team, it's like, well, you don't have the resources to do that.
Fine. You're the standard.
Everybody else has to adhere to that, which is how you end up
with limited days that you can be in contact with coaches,
limited official time to practice during the week.
Again, you look at it from an academic perspective, and I say
this as an academic. This has always been to me, the
real problem with trying to balance academics and athletics.
These are top level athletes. These are elite athletes.
These are people who in any other country should be training
and practicing essentially as their job from the time they're
eighteen, maybe even slightly before that.
Not being forced to take a 15 hour credit load while also
practicing, you know, 4 hours a day and also being in the weight
room for three hours a day. Like it's it's not a serious way
to go about sport training. And since there is no other
sizable way to train basketball, you can do this in football to
some degree because there's nobody competing with this in in
the rest of the world on football.
But in basketball where there is, in soccer where there is,
this is a really stupid way to go about handling players that
are between the ages of 18 and 22.
Agreed. I also think, again, this is
where someone was in charge, they would see this.
You know, obviously college basketball has a very close
relationship with the NBA, but you know, the NBA is trying to
do this with the G League and G League Ignite.
They've had some success. You know, Scoot Henderson got
highly drafted. I'm not sure he looked ready,
but that maybe is him. Not the the but you know, you're
seeing both the Thompson brothers went through kind of a
a training program like that. Like if if there was someone in
charge of college basketball, I agree with you.
You get rid of some of these limits.
And honestly, this is a much better path.
It's like, hey, you could go to G League unite and you could do
nothing but basketball with train people.
But like you're immediately playing with adults who are
professionals who really don't care.
You know, the other teams you're playing don't care about your
development. These are dudes just trying to
get a paycheck out of your mouth, which I understand in
college basketball you're still going for, but at least you
you're going against people who are in the same phylum of, you
know, 18 to 23 and you know, they're all trying to get the
same thing. But there is something different
about like the professional 32 year old basketball player in
the G league who is trying to get back up, like he does not
care about an 18 year old kids projection or, you know, injury,
things like that. They they play with different
kinds of tricks. And so I but again, there's no
one in college basketball monitoring or doing this.
But like this is what I think is interesting is if, you know, if
the NBA was able to figure this out, it does feel like they'd be
totally cool getting their own development system and just
cutting the top level talent out of college basketball and just
putting it into the G League. But that, you know, they've been
trying that for 20 years and that's not happening either.
So it's like it's it kind of continues to fall on college
basketball. But there I'm with you, having
all of these arcane rules, especially now with everything
changing, doesn't make any sense.
And it is interesting that G League Ignite is gone and, you
know, specifically NIL and the changing college basketball
landscape because they're like before it was like, well, you
had the choice of either I'm going to go to G League Ignite
and not very make very much money, relatively speaking, but
it'll raise my draft stock. Except it wasn't raising the
draft stock of those people. And now they're missing out on
NIL opportunities. So now essentially you've got
like you've got overtime elite, right?
And that's about it. But that doesn't mean that the
college system is better in terms of development.
It just means that you can get paid money at the college level.
And this is where ultimately, as much as we hear people talking
about why don't we just split football off and make it its own
thing. And at the college level, to me,
it's like we need to start taking the development of our
basketball players more seriously because, you know,
we've already seen the US lose, you know, gold medal rounds in
in the international tournaments.
And it's hit or miss now. But like the rest of the field
is caught up. Same thing happening in women's
soccer, by the way, like the advantage that the US women's
national team had from title 9:00 and from the 25 year jump
start that they got on the rest of the world in terms of taking
female athletics seriously, at least in soccer, that's gone.
Like you look across the, you know, it's, it's the, you know,
Germany and France and England and Spain and China and Brazil,
like the, the European countries in particular, they have
professional women's leagues and soccer, they've really caught
up. They're taking it a lot more
seriously now, I would argue than the US is where if you're a
female soccer player, you don't have a lot of options other than
college, which is incredibly restrictive or going overseas,
which kind of defeats the purpose, you know?
So these are the kinds of things to think about and they get lost
in the the headlines regarding like NIL and the changing
college sports landscape. But they're things that we need
to think about 'cause there's great coaches, like great
basketball minds at the college level.
When people ask why would you leave that to go to the NBA?
You know, people were asking that about Dan Hurley.
Why would he leave UConn? I mean, he'll get paid plenty of
money, but you are limited in the amount of coaching you can
actually do at this level you are in.
And college coaches have to be logistics experts and they have
to manage personalities among parents and donors, and they
have to go out and fundraise like they're doing that.
It feels like more than they're doing actual coaching and
instruction. You don't get a whole lot of
time to do that, relatively speaking, at the college level,
regardless of the sport that you're in.
These are the kinds of things that I think for the US as a
country to take sport as seriously as it does and yet
allow this kind of Mickey Mouse. Set of rules to be in place as
far as the most important years arguably of a player's
development doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Well, it's also funny that we are one of the few countries
that just immediately specializes kids when they're
7-8 years old and that doesn't seem to be working either like
it does, you know, all these areas.
Doesn't seem like we are owning any of these sports that we're
having kids specialize in. And the kids who just kind of,
you know, play a lot of sports until they're 12 and then
suddenly figure out what they want to do and get into it.
Yeah, that seems to be the way to go.
But yet we're not, we're not doing that real quick.
You just mentioned the Dan Hurley thing.
I, I thought it was funny. I mean, obviously the Lakers
didn't offer enough money to make that really a real
decision, which is a whole different discussion of podcast.
But I did think some of the discussion, you know, people
were like, man, why would he leave UConn?
He's got it made there in the shade.
And my thing was like, dude, he could leave UConn, go to the
Lakers. He could do awful.
He could lose 70 games in a row. The minute he is fired from the
Lakers. He would have his pick of any
job he wanted in college, probably the UConn job again.
So there is definitely an inertia of once you get going,
it's easy to get going. And you once Schefsky built
Duke, it's like you kind of it's just a battleship that's moving
the right direction. So he would have to restart that
somewhere else. But this idea of like, man, I
don't know, man, you have a great job in college basketball.
It's like, dude, he would have the pick of any job like he
wanted, no matter irregardless of what happened at the Lakers.
Anyway, I just thought that was that.
That was funny. No, it is.
And ultimately I, I mean Hurley could have done whatever he
wanted. I mean, Hurley could have
probably run for governor of Connecticut if he wanted to and
and gotten that job easily. So but no, you're right.
I mean, the, the idea of you could leave and I think
ultimately it's like if you, you never know if this, the thing
that you've developed is going to be the same if you go
somewhere else. I actually think This is why Bob
Knight didn't leave IU. The couple of times that he
thought about leaving IU, it's like, well, I've already got
this built. And as we saw, even though he
was, it was later in his life, like it's hard to go somewhere
else and build something. There's no guarantee it's going
to happen again. But I don't know, it's from from
the perspective of, yeah, he'll, that dude will always have the
opportunity to coach at the college level if he wants it.
He could have gone somewhere else.
And maybe that says something about the Lakers as.
An NBA guy also, I think it has way more to do with the Lakers
that, you know, and I thought it was funny that they, you know,
everyone's like, Oh my God, you know, it's such an
embarrassment. It's like, well, you know,
Schefsky turned down the Lakers like people can turn down the
Lakers like they'll do OK. I think that's more like I think
that's a mess of a team with a bad salary cap.
It's like you have a 41 year old LeBron who at some point is
going to start declining, you would think, but like he's seems
petulant and he, you're kind. It's Lebron's team.
Even if you're Dan Hurley, it's still Lebron's team.
I'm not sure that's the best job.
And as, as you've seen in the NBA, the the job matters so much
more than the coach. And there's very few coaches who
I would say it really doesn't matter that, you know, the, the,
the Warriors were there. It's like Steve Kerr steps into,
I think Steve Kerr is a great coach, but it's also he had a
great opportunity that he stepped right into.
Anyway, we're off top. No, it's good.
Anyway, last thing we wanted to hit obviously in the NIL space
and kind of the changing financial landscape of things in
college sports. We keep coming back to this
because there's always something new to talk about with all of
this. But you know, I mean, Scott, the
it's, it's an interesting different type of landscape now.
And I touched on this a little bit in the last podcast about
where is the money coming from really?
You know, how does all this get paid for?
And the idea that now that, you know, college athletic
departments are allowed to directly pay NIL rather than
having to rely solely on donors. This does not mean that donor
money is going away. And I think that to some degree,
a lot of it is like donor money is always going to play a huge
role in college sports because it's it's kind of like it's the
same reason why the NFL doesn't develop its own minor league to
develop players. Why do something with my money
when you're going to do it with your money on my behalf?
And so that's kind of how I look at things.
You know, in terms of the way that we think about donations,
people are, I think they underestimate the amount of
money that athletic departments getting donations on a yearly
basis or on an endowed basis when everything from
scholarships to, you know, facilities.
But now we're in this interesting thing where you're
going to have to write checks every year to a large number of
athletes. And if the money coming in off
the television revenue has to go to the people that are earning
it, which is generally football players primarily, and then
basketball a little bit less so. And then not a whole lot beyond
that. What do you do with that ratio
in that paradigm where it's like you've got your huge donors who
are going to probably be the ones that come in and write the
check to get like a top recruit because that's going to take
something with six or seven figures.
But that's you can't just sustain off of those big
donations. You have to figure a way to
cultivate other things as well. So I will not get political, but
I, I, I do see a real parallel, parallel between politics and,
you know, the issues with politics and the issues with
what college athletics is going to face here soon, which I'm
sure everybody loves because politics super fun right now.
Everyone's happy with everything but not taking sides.
This is both Democrat and Republican side.
You know, both of those deal with an issue with the exact
same issue where in politics you have, you know, a few number of
very high net worth donors who give a lot of money and they
want their candidates to push the agendas that they have set
forth. And so you have to court those
high dollar people. But there's also a grassroots,
you also need a, a lot of small people giving 5 or $10 a month
to kind of keep that base going. Because, you know, the people
who have the 2-3 in politics, sometimes a billion dollars of
checks, they're petulant and they sometimes want to do
different things. Sometimes they'll leave.
And you need, you can't just be courting three people.
You have to court a lot. But it's, it's a tough balance.
And you look at, you know, where IU is.
I think that, you know, any college, it's not just IUI use
the one that I know. You know, I thought for a couple
years now, it's like the Varsity Club is in an interesting spot
because, you know, they need me to continue to be a Varsity Club
member because the IU Varsity Club needs money to keep things
going, but they also need people to donate to NIL.
And so you said this in the last pod that, you know, I think it
was like Wisconsin or somebody like looking to like merge those
two where basically you give it to IU and they dish it out.
That probably makes the most sense because it's tough for IU.
You know, it's tough for Dolson to tell not he wouldn't tell me
personally. Like have varsity club.
Hey, Scott, we need you to continue at the varsity club
level at this level. Oh, by the way, Tobias Center is
going to cost 500A head. And oh, by the way, we'd love
for you. It's not an and or it's A and
give to the NIL collective, you know, because the Varsity Club
has the ability to provide things to me, you know, they can
give me points that they can add up.
They can give me tickets. You know, this is where I find
NIL interesting is they they really don't have anything to
give. Like these collectives are
interesting. I've looked at some of them, you
know, on kind of the quid pro quo because I can just give
money. I mean, you can just, I can
write a check for $10,000. Like, all right, I feel like I'm
helping IU. But you know, at some point
people are going to want something back, whether it's a
commemorative coin or just you want something back.
Like I want a meet and greet with the players or I just want
something like, because I'm just tired of pumping money and
getting nothing in return because then then it's just like
all I want at that point is just straight wins and losses.
I'm not sure how NI LS are going to do that.
But I, I do think this push and pull between big dollar and
small dollar is going to be interesting because I think you
see some of this now with what might be happening with the fan
base in Woodson is it does feel like at the end of last year,
things were a little dicey with the fan base.
And I would say that was probably most of the five or $10
donation type. People seemed a little bit
nervous about what was going on and it did seem like Woodson got
and this is all just rumor. The way that I interpret it did
seem like a couple of the high dollar people came in and was
like, no, this is not the way it's going to go where you know
Woodson is going to be good. And they they spent a lot of
money this offseason on a lot of players, which is great.
And I hope you know, gets to a lot of wins.
But it does feel like right now we're at a point where you have
a couple high dollar people who are like, Nope, this is the way
that the staff is going to be and we're going to pump money
into it. Some of the low dollar people
are a little bit concerned. And if you have a season or two
where results don't continue to go well, like how is that that
push and pull going to play out anyway?
I just, I find it, I don't know that's a a long way to not even
answer a question or provide another question for you.
It's it's interesting. I mean, this is where I, the
traditional model that IU has used, and I'm sure it's the same
in most other schools, but your donations are tied to your
priority points, which are tied to where you get seats in
Assembly Hall. And you know, that's always been
the great equalizer in terms of, well, yeah, that's fine.
You can complain about XY or Z, but you, you know, what are you
going to do, pull your money out?
Well, then you lose. Not only do you lose the
priority points you'd be earning, but if you're like
going to try to protest for a year, you lose everything years
worth of points. You know, So it, it is, it is
very much like one of those situations.
It's like a student loan where you know, you might be paying,
you might think you're paying it off, but all you're paying is a
percentage of the interest. And you know, after a while
you're like, wait, I've been paying this $50,000 student loan
for 10 years and now it's $150,000.
What's going on? It's really hard to dig out of
it. And look, ultimately, even the
high level donors aren't going to suddenly walk away because
they know that people are going to step in and and be willing to
replace them is necessary. And this is so I'm less
interested with basketball because to some degree people
can complain loudly about what they don't like about
basketball, regardless of what coach it is.
And sometimes things will change and sometimes things won't.
Very rarely will it be, well, we're not going to donate unless
you do XY or Z because it's just not a reasonable threat.
But with other sports, it is an interesting thing to think about
in as much as here you have a lot of these the the more niche
sports or the non revenue generating sports.
So let's take football and basketball, or at least men's
basketball, take them out of the equation.
And this is kind of what I was trying to get out on the
previous podcast. You have to be able to cultivate
small motivated groups of people who tend to want to donate
specifically for sports. Because a lot of the, you know,
when people think I'm going to donate, they're going to donate
to like the general scholarship fund for the athletic department
or whatever. They may not have thought up to
this point, I'm going to donate to volleyball or I'm going to
donate to men's soccer. But that's almost what you're
going to have to do. And it, and to go back to what
you said, not only do you need that kind of an approach, but
you also need to have something that you're getting.
If you're a donor, you need to be able to have an event where
you can go meet the players and interact with them.
Or you need to have something where you can interact with the
coaching staff or you're, you know, there's an event out at a
restaurant and it's like a fun kind of thing.
And this is, you know, it's really where you have to use the
marketing ability and the marketing power of the players
and the coaches that you've got. It has to be dynamic.
It can't just be we need money. Give us money because that, as
we know in every aspect of business, doesn't get you very
far. You might have an affinity for a
brand or a team. That does not mean you're going
to take money out of your bank account and give it to that
team. You know, there's got to be
something else. And this is where for, you know,
I've heard so much now, originally the idea was, or the,
the thought was that colleges and universities are just going
to cut sports left and right to try to get, you know, their
numbers down so that they could afford all the NIL money.
A lot of them said, we really don't want to do that.
And I think there's, there's a lot of arguments why you
shouldn't do that. But that really is going to mean
that a lot of these programs are going to essentially be forced
to eat what they kill in order to keep their programs going.
And I there's so little infrastructure set up around
these these programs, not just at IU, but everywhere to be able
to do that. It's going to be really
fascinating to see, you know, like something like a Hoosiers
Connect or an official NIL collective somewhere else.
I mean, they got their hands full trying to raise enough
money to pay for the what they've already got in their
stable, let alone adding a bunch of other stuff.
So I'm really curious to see how athletic departments manage that
because most of the fundraising for athletic departments has
been in a very traditional manner and you're talking about
very non traditional manners of fundraising in this new reality.
I completely agree, you know, but it also means this is like
this is changing landscape. But you know, what's weird about
this isn't a business. You know, one of my favorite
business stories when people talk about this stuff, at least
in the, you know, capitalistic world is there used to be a huge
industry in in the North and the north Midwest of people cutting
ice and shipping ice around the country.
And, you know, thousands of people worked in the ice
industry. Refrigerators came out and that
changed. Now those people got different
jobs. They got and, you know, but the
company that made ice went out of business because that was no
longer a business that was sustainable.
What's weird here is. For those people who think
Scott's over over exaggerating this, there's an estimated
90,000 people that worked in the ICE trade.
Thank you. So there you go.
Just wanted to it was a sizable number of people, OK, major in
history, just in the United States.
And that was, there was a, it was an industry that capitalized
at a, a moderate amount of money, around $700 million a
year. So not an insignificant amount
of money. Sorry, go ahead.
U.S. history degree here from the great University of Indiana
University. They did the University of
Indiana University. It was a speech degree, wasn't a
speech degree. I wish I would have taken your
class now. No, but you know what's what's
weird about and you can do the same thing with like, you know,
horse and buggy. There was an entire industry
around caring for horses to to get you around the Model T
change all of that and automobiles change that
industry. Strange is not a lesson here on
capitalism. What is interesting here is
normally in that there in in that seismic shift moment,
businesses go out of business. New businesses come up that, you
know, you, you can change the workforce.
All these changes need to happen.
But it's like the businesses, if you think of the colleges as the
businesses, none of them are going out of business.
Like, you know, IU, Purdue, Penn State, Michigan, you know,
Alabama, name your school, They're all going to stay here
and their varsity clubs are going to stay here.
But they've got to work through the seismic shift.
Like in a normal system, what you probably have is some
schools would Slough off. The ones that figure it out
would come and get better. That's not what's going to
happen here because the top two conferences are going to prop up
all of their schools with TV money.
So it's going to be interesting to see how schools do this.
But I look at this, this is a complete shift in how they've
done things. You know, I was even talking to
somebody last week about IU football and they're like, you
know, we're talking about how they got to develop and they're
like, oh, but you know, the facilities, like they really got
to work on facilities. And like, I again, I'm, I'm just
a dude from the outside, but it's like, I think the, the days
of spending millions on facilities is done because that
was an era when you had to spend all the money you had coming in
and you had nothing to spend it on.
So we build these big teams, we build facilities and now it's
like, all right, well, the payers want money, but the
players want money and they care probably less about a hot tub
and more about like, well, give me 220 grand and I'll buy my own
hot tub. I, I, I think this is all going
to change and it's going to be interesting to see who, who can
figure it out and who can't. But no, I'm, I'm with you.
You know, it's almost like the varsity club needs to be more
hyper specific where, you know, I want to give to volleyball and
football and basketball and I want money to go to those
schools. But the like the push and pulls,
the varsity club still needs general fund money as well.
Like everybody has needs. They all need it and it all
comes down to they need a lot of money from outside sources.
And you know, as you've mentioned on many of these
different pods, all of these athletic departments, you're
going to have to get used to, you know, not spending all of
their money every single year. You know, you're going to have
to either save some or reallocate or unfortunately, the
huge Staffs that you've built up over the last 30 years because
you weren't paying your players, you might have to downsize those
Staffs. And like, it sucks.
And, you know, people will re re engineer other areas, but like
the reason they have these huge Staffs and facilities because
they weren't paying players. And yeah.
It's like, I mean, the last thing I'll say on this, this is
where I mean facilities. I agree and we've talked about
it on the show before. Probably not you just I mean,
you might you'll, you'll still get some new facilities built
out of a necessity, right? But you're not getting a new
field hockey facility built anytime soon with university
funds like those monies will just have to go elsewhere
probably just for towards travel for field hockey if you're going
to continue to do that. And I'm not trying to pick on
field like it's the first one that came to mind.
But the other area that I think is really going to take a step
back is compliance. All of these colleges and
universities that hired all of these compliance people.
And it's like, what are we complying with exactly at this
point? A rule book where 90% of it
really doesn't apply anymore. Like this is argument where
there's just a, you know, dust, dust flowing by like no one's
there. Yeah.
The compliance office becomes like the Maytag repair person of
of the college sports landscape, except there's ten of them in
every athletic department anyway.
All right, we're going to go ahead and wrap up.
We'll be back soon. I hope everybody has a safe 4th
of July. Just a reminder folks, leave the
fireworks to the professionals and just we don't want any
Crimson cast members like coming back from the 4th of July break
without the same. Number of fingers, you start
with 10 digits, you end with 10 digits.
I mean, this is this is old guy talk.
It's like you like I did my dumb stuff in my 20s and and teens
with fireworks, No. I mean, do what you want, but
just be careful. Yeah.
Yeah, be careful. Just that's all.
We're just these are, are real. Like just be.
I'm not your dad. I'm just saying be careful.
That's that's all I'm saying. Yeah.
Anyway, All right. Well, as always, a pleasure,
Scott. Great to talk to you again and
great to talk with you folks as well.
We'll be back soon with more Crimson CAST.
If you've got comments or questions, you can always hit us
up on the Back home Network Discord or on Twitter at Crimson
Cast for Scott, I'm Galen. This has been Crimson cast.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the
bison. That's all, everybody.