You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast
Galen Clavier joining you Here it is Saturday, July 13th.
Apologies, we've been out of touch for a little bit this
week, but hey back happy to be talking to my you sports with
you folks as we continue to draw ever closer to the start of the
college football season. That's coming up here in about
six weeks now, which is wild and practice going to be reconvening
sooner than that. So a lot of things to get
excited about on that front. And then of course, there's
always basketball, which is looming on the horizon and
coming up sooner than you might think.
So there's just a lot not going on, but a lot to anticipate
right now. So we're going to tackle a
couple of things. Small podcast today and we'll
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All right, let's tackle a couple of items.
Earlier on this past week, all of the news was about IU
dropping their schedule for this upcoming year in the non
conference in basketball and some mixed opinions, although I
would say most of the opinions ended up being kind of more
negative than anything else. And I think that that's really
fascinating, not surprising, but fascinating.
And I'm going to talk a little bit about.
The perceptions of this schedule versus the realities of this
schedule and and kind of why Indiana finds themselves in the
position that they're in. And so first of all, if you
haven't checked it out, Indiana's non conference
schedule tipping off on the 6th of November, which is a
Wednesday, they'll be hosting SIU Edwardsville.
And then that following Sunday, they've got Eastern Illinois,
then basically a week off and then South Carolina visiting
Bloomington. That's an interesting game.
We talked about that a little bit a couple of months ago when
that was first announced. UNC Greensboro on the schedule
the following Thursday. And then of course, Indiana in
the Bahamas taking on a bunch of interesting teams in the Battle
for Atlantis. If you're not up on the Battle
for Atlantis field, just a reminder it's it's of course IU,
but we've also got in that matchup.
We've got that. We don't know who Indiana's
going to play at. The draw has not been announced,
but Arizona, Davidson, Gonzaga, Louisville, Oklahoma, Providence
and West Virginia. So a couple of really marquee
programs in there in Arizona and Gonzaga and Indiana kind of in
the third slot maybe maybe Oklahoma.
But I'd say from a brand name perspective, obviously Indiana,
arguably the the the best known brand, even though of course
Arizona and Gonzaga have certainly had a lot more recent
success. But that's a three-game stretch
right over Thanksgiving break. Then Indiana playing Sam Houston
on the Tuesday following that December 3rd, Miami of Ohio on a
Friday that's also in Bloomington.
Then a gap where you will certainly see the Big 10 games
that Indiana plays in December popping up.
Then Chattanooga on the 21st of December and then Winthrop on
the 29th. So that's the that's the line up
now. A lot of people came out and
were really disappointed in the schedule.
And part of that, frankly, was the way that the graphic for the
schedule, you know, couldn't really include the Battle for
Atlantis teams because you don't know who Indiana's going to play
yet. And there's no guarantee, you
know, there, there will be four teams that Indiana won't play in
that group. And and nobody knows not just
from the draw, but also wins and losses.
The way that the Atlantis tournament is set up is the same
way that like Maui is set up where you'll have a winner's
bracket and a loser's bracket and that'll determine a lot of
the following matchups. So when you just look at the
schedule as it was announced, you know, I could understand to
some degree why there was some initial dislike or distaste for
what the schedule look like because it it doesn't look
particularly impressive. But you throw in potentially
playing Gonzaga, Arizona, Oklahoma, Providence, I mean,
that certainly brightens the schedule up, especially if you
get three games against teams of that caliber and that brand
name, suddenly it looks a lot better.
But that's not how the graphic looked.
And so a lot of people just reacting to the graphic and not
really looking into the other aspects of the schedule.
Now, even if you just take those teams, though, and you know, and
set the Atlantis stuff aside, I think it's important to keep in
mind that one of the things that we've seen within the confines
of scheduling and how the net is being used the the NET, the the,
the way the metric that the NCAA selection committee uses to
figure out seating and selection for the NCAA.
There is an argument to be made for trying to schedule kind of
mid tier teams in college basketball.
So teams ranked between say 100 and 250.
And also, you know, there's some argument to be made for
scheduling even worse teams than that, teams in the sub two 50s
that you just blow out. And we saw this last year with
teams like Iowa State and and the Big 12 in general was kind
of viewed as a either an offender or a really smart
conference, depending on one on how you want to approach this.
But essentially, you know what what we saw in this process was
IU essentially taking a scheduling tack that does appear
to be intelligent in terms of the way that the metrics play
with the relative strength of teams and the way the computers
think about those teams. So for IUI think a lot of this
is really, well, we want to make sure that our net doesn't have
what happened to it last year happen where Indiana
underperformed against bad teams and then really didn't perform
well against good teams. And you know, that essentially
locked Indiana into a situation where their metrics looked
terrible. And even though they went on
that five game-winning streak towards the end of the season,
it really didn't do a whole lot. It got them maybe into the very
outer conversation for an NIT bid, but enough damage had been
done over the course of the non conference in the beginning of
the conference season that it didn't matter that much.
So this schedule takes a bit of a different tack.
There are fewer bad teams on the schedule.
The only two that are really horrific I would argue would be
SIU Edwardsville and Eastern Illinois.
And you do need a couple of those teams on the schedule.
I think especially for a team like Indiana this upcoming year
where you've got a bunch of brand new pieces, talented
pieces, but brand new pieces who haven't played together, it
would be not the most intelligent thing to schedule
tougher opponents, even mid tier opponents, you know, early on,
because you got to give that team some time, at least a
couple of games to get their feet under them, especially
since those two games lead into playing a power conference
opponent in South Carolina and one that made the NCAA
tournament last year. So that's, you know, I, I do
think a lot of the, the reaction to the schedule has been based
upon reactions to prior schedules that Indiana's had.
And while certainly that's a separate conversation, I'll get
into that a little bit later. You have to take every year to
some degree as its own individual entity.
And when I look at this schedule, I think it makes a lot
of sense for this particular Indiana team.
You start off with some lesser competition, you let the team
gel a bit, you ramp it up a little bit by playing that South
Carolina game. And, and, you know, even UNC
Greensboro, which is, you know, you, you look at that, that
brand name and you'd say, well, who the heck is UNC Greensboro?
Why is Indiana even bothering? And yet UNC Greensboro's a, a
pretty good team. You know, last year they were
147th and Ken Palm, they won 21 games.
They've had three years in a row where they've been in the top
200 at Ken Palm. They made the NCAA Tournament in
2021 when Wes Miller was the head coach there.
You know, that's a good program. That's a program that if you go
back like since 2016, they've only had one season where
they've lost, excuse me, where they've won less than 20 games.
So, you know, that's a that's a game that's going to be against
an opponent that I think is going to be projected to be, you
know, relatively decent. If you look at the Torvic
numbers that that came out here recently, they are still
projected about in that one 4141 range.
And that's the type of team that you do want to play as a warm up
for going to Atlantis. Again, you don't want to play a
team necessarily that is, I think you know, a, a, a top 50
squad there because you're already going to go likely play
at least a couple of those and you again, you want to give your
team some time to gel. So, you know, I do think that
the way the schedules laid out makes sense and as someone who's
done bracketology for years, I understand the concept by which
this was designed. So I think that that's important
to keep in mind. However, I also think it's
important to set aside a little bit because if you're going to
go added from that perspective, you have to go back and think
about something that I said before.
Who you schedule and how the metrics look at how you are done
against that schedule is really a product of what are the
projected margins between your team and the team that you're
playing and how do you fare in, in the circumstance where you're
you're matching up against that team.
So what I mean by that is if you are taking on, let's say the
150th ranked team in the country and you're projected to win that
game by 9 points and you win by 9 points, the metrics are going
to be like, all right, well, they did what we projected them
to do. That doesn't mean that that
they're better than we the, the computers thought they were.
That means that they are what the computer said they were.
If you go in and win that game by three points, the computer
say, well, Indiana must not be as good as we had projected
because they won by less than what our numbers say.
They should have won by taking all the different items of the
both teams into account. If you win by more than nine,
then it's like, well, hey, Indiana is better than the
projection and that causes your rating to increase.
That's basically the simplest version of explaining how that
system works, and I think that. You know, this is something that
a lot of people get confused by. When we talk through scheduling
and why you do certain things that you do, and it's why, you
know, if you look at what happened with this last year
with Indiana, that the problem that they had was largely that
they're, you know, that they were projected to win by much
larger margin than they actually did.
So, for instance, that Florida Gulf Coast game that Indiana
struggled in early on the first game of the season last year,
you know, going into that game, Indiana was projected to win by
more than the six points that they won by the army game.
The next game was a game that Indiana was should have won by a
significantly broader margin than they did, but they only win
by 8. That's what the computers are
looking at. So that's where when you look at
this year's schedule on paper, it makes sense.
Actually playing the games, I think there's some concern both
because Indiana is going to have to get off to a good start
against those lesser teams this season in terms of over
performance versus what the metrics are saying.
But also because I think that, you know, there's some
significant questions about whether Indiana's really capable
of playing that way and whether they're, you know, they're
they're different than what we saw last year.
And this may end up being a situation where Indiana quickly
gets into a groove and is able to win games by by wide margins.
That is absolutely a possibility.
That's what Indiana has to have happen.
They have to over perform what the metrics say.
But I understand the IU fans and the the external media observers
who might look at this and say, you know, we haven't really seen
Indiana blow out a lot of lesser competition.
They have more often than not played down to the level of the
teams that they are playing against.
And they also have a struggle to play up to the top competition
that they've played against. You know, they they, they
clearly played well against Kansas last year at home and
that was nice. But they really underperformed
against UConn down the stretch. And they underperformed
basically the entire game against Auburn.
And that essentially set the table because it wasn't just
that Indiana lost those games in the cases of the Connecticut and
Auburn game, it was that they lost by more than the computers
said that they should have. And I think that's a real
concern with this team is that you don't know still based upon
not knowing what the offense is going to look like, not knowing
how efficient the defense is going to be.
And having seen the problems that the defense has had in
playing at a high level from an efficiency perspective in the
last couple of years, you do worry about Indiana's ability to
showcase to the computers and to the metrics that they are
actually a better team than whatever their projections are
going to be. You know, there was an
interesting article that or set of articles that came out this
week. And inside the hall had I
thought some some interesting things on this looking at what
the expectations would be for this upcoming year.
And you know, one of the things that you note in all of this is
that Indiana is I think actually Tony Adrania had this as well.
You know, Indiana's projection I think is right now probably
going to be somewhere in the realm of like 30th to 40th in
Kenpalm and in Torvik and in some of these other metrics.
Well, what does that mean? That's that's a huge jump
actually from where Indiana spent most of the year last year
and where they finished the season.
Indiana finished 91st in Kenpalm last year and Indiana finished
83rd in Torvik, so you're talking about a 50 to 60 spot
jump Now. Is Indiana going to be 50 to 60
spots better? I would say with the talent that
they've got, probably, but they have to play that way and being
at that level or pushing up into the top 30, the top 20 is going
to require Indiana to play at a much higher and more consistent
level than they did last year against all competition.
You know, and I think it's different.
Like clearly there are a far more talented team than these
smaller scale programs that they're going up against, but
can they play at that level? You know, if you look at what
made Iowa State, for instance, such a metrics darling last
year, it wasn't that they just won a bunch of games.
It was that they blew out most of their opponents.
And the games that they lost against good opponents, they
lost by relatively small margins.
There were very few games last year.
In fact, I think there was only one game last year where Iowa
State lost by double digits and that was a game at BYU, which
didn't hurt them too much because BYU was projected as a
really good team by the metrics. So that's that's what I'm saying
with all of this. So if you're, if you're looking
at this schedule and you're saying IU under scheduled,
that's not necessarily true. But for this schedule to be a
good one for Indiana, they're going to have to perform above
expectations. Because that's what's going to
pump their metrics up. And so the table is set to do
that. And now it's just a matter of
Indiana and and Mike Woodson and the coaching staff going out and
making this happen. And, you know, I'm very
optimistic about the personnel they've got that could make it
happen. But that's ultimately the
equation that you have to think about with all of this.
I also think there's a separate problem with IU.
Like nobody really cares if Iowa State under schedules or to give
you another example, if I told you that, you know, Indiana's
schedule this year, I, I just gave you Indiana schedule.
And let's say you throw those teams that I named off in with,
let's say the three teams that they play in Atlantis are you
know that let's say they play West Virginia in game one.
Let's say they play Gonzaga in game two and then they play
Oklahoma in game 3. That's not as good as if they
got to play both Gonzaga and Arizona, but that's still,
that's a pretty good collection of teams.
Now let me throw you another schedule out there.
If I told you that your your overall games being played were
against Howard, Oakland, UNC, Wilmington, Furman, NC State,
Brown, North Carolina, Michigan State, Duke, Creighton in
Missouri, you'd be a lot more excited.
That's Kansas's schedule in the non conference.
That is a significantly better schedule.
Kansas can do that because Kansas is obviously, you know,
a, they're stocked, talented wise, They've been successful
for a long time. I think they're very confident
in what they're putting out on the floor.
I don't think that confidence is quite there yet with Indiana.
But that schedule I just read off where you've got four or
five power conference teams in the mix that you're guaranteed
to play. That's what people expect out of
Indiana. And this is where you go back
and you look at the last 15 years of Indiana basketball, it
annoys people. And I think reasonably so, given
how Indiana likes to present itself as, you know, a, a blue
blood and as a top level program, it's annoying that
you've got teams like Kansas playing that type of a schedule.
And it feels like Indiana is far away from playing that type of
schedule. And there's obviously you've got
to focus on where you're at at the moment.
But I think for a lot of IU fans and a lot of neutral observers,
the fact that Indiana isn't playing a tougher schedule
regularly and that it's become kind of routine for Indiana to
only have a couple of of clear tests and that's it in the non
conference it, it rubs people the wrong way.
And I think that's a perfectly reasonable take.
I mean, Indiana likes to hold itself up and its basketball
program up as a, an elite level of basketball, elite level of
program. And you just don't necessarily
get that. I, I mean, there's people
complaining about that Kansas schedule.
Among the Kansas. Fan base that that is in the
particularly good schedule that, you know, NC State is, is yes,
they were just in the final four, but that was a fluke.
And that, you know, having Brown and Furman and and Oakland on
the schedule isn't necessarily that impressive or Howard.
So this is where perception kind of is something that you battle
if you're the IU program, but it's also what you're asking
people to buy. You're asking people to buy for
a higher level of schedule, a higher level of perception.
And when that doesn't happen, I think that that is something
that's certainly annoying to people.
And so at, at some point, I, I think Indiana's got to reset
its, its approach. This is where the stability and
the consistency that we talked about a bunch on this program
regarding IU basketball, this is where it's missed.
And I think for a lot of people, the mindset of we need to be
playing better teams more regularly.
That really goes hand in hand with we need to be a better
basketball program that doesn't have these huge dips in form
where you have a season like last year where you missed the
NCAA tournament entirely or you have the Archie Miller era where
you don't make the NCAA tournament at all.
It's like, well, you know, to to be what Indiana claims to be,
the scheduling kind of has to come after Indiana gets better.
But the question then becomes, does the schedule end up helping
to make you better? And I would say the one thing
that is to me the most concerning about the non
conference schedule for IU is that they have no true Rd.
games. They're not testing themselves
on the road at all. They're all their Rd. games.
All ten of them are going to be played in conference play.
And you're, you know, yes, you've got the neutral site
games in the Bahamas. You do worry a little bit about
that, not just in terms of metrics, but in terms of how the
team is getting prepped for tournament play down the road.
And while, yes, I know tournaments are played on
neutral sites, playing in Rd. environments really does help to
uncover what the character of your team is and how well
they're able to play with each other.
So I do think that there's certainly room for criticism
there. And I think that those who have
noted, as Zach Osterman did in the Indy Star, that there's not
much room for air with this schedule.
That's the other big piece. And when I saw this schedule, I
immediately thought, you know, there's a lot of potential and
this season is is already starting to remind me of this a
little bit. But there's a lot of potential
for like a 2015, 2016 type of scenario with this Indiana
program. And if you remember back to that
season, you know, Indiana, I think you can actually make an
argument that their schedule on paper that year looked like it.
Might be slightly better than what Indiana's got coming into
this year. They had a couple of of really
terrible teams on that schedule, but they were going to Maui.
They had Duke on the road, they had Creighton at home.
You know, they were, they had Notre Dame on a neutral site
like there, there was at least a couple of tests away from home
there and then everything went sideways.
You know, they go to Maui, they're playing Wake Forest, who
was not particularly good that year in the first game, they
lose that. They beat a pretty bad Saint
John's team in the second game. And then they lose to UNLV and
then they lose to Duke. And you know, I think people
forget that, You know, that that IU team, they won the Big 10.
They were 15 and three. I know you didn't forget that.
And they were a five seed in the NCAA tournament.
Why were they a five seed? They were a five seed in large
part because they didn't really beat that many teams that were
notable during that season. I mean, they're they're only a
level victories on Ken Palm that whole year.
Notre Dame was their only non conference A level victory.
And that was a neutral site game against the 36th rated team in
the country. You know, they they, they beat
Purdue at home, they beat Iowa on the road, they beat Maryland
at home, they beat Michigan on the road, they beat Iowa at
home. I mean, that was essentially the
sum total of their good victories that season.
And that's where I think this season could be quite
fascinating because if you remember, like, there was a lot
of heat on Tom Crean coming off of what had been a very
disappointing two years in a row in 2013 and, excuse me, 2014.
And then 2015 coming into that year when Indiana fell apart in
Maui, a lot of people just assumed that the end was nigh
for Tom Crean. And it took a very unexpected
run through the Big 10 that year and winning the Big 10 title for
everybody. I, I like the, I, I can recall
like being halfway through January and being like, wow, how
is this team six and O 7 and O eight and one in the Big 10?
You know, it, it took a while for people to realize that the
season wasn't going to be a disaster.
This season is really fascinating from that
perspective because as much as this offseason has been a repair
job, a little bit on the the the perception of where this
particular coaching staff and program are taking the program
because of the success that Indiana had in the transfer
portal. And, you know, getting Bryson
Tucker is a late recruit. The reality is there's still a
lot of people who are not particularly optimistic about
the direction of IU basketball. And people are going to be
watching the metrics closely. They're going to be watching the
performances. You've really put a lot of eggs
in the basket of we're going to perform really well in those
early games and get off to, you know, a hot start and then go to
Atlantis and win at least two out of three games.
And really you got to win your first game in Atlantis because
you got to get on the winner side of the bracket.
There's a lot of those kinds of things that you look at and it's
kind of like, well, if that doesn't go right, like if what
if Indiana goes and, and they're let's say they're drawn against
Providence in the first game and they they lose that game
unexpectedly. Well, now you don't get to play
Gonzaga, you don't get to play Arizona.
You, you're playing Davidson, you know, you're, you're
playing, you know, West Virginia, who doesn't look like
they're going to be particularly good.
I mean, that's, that changes the entire trajectory, not just of
the metrics for IU, but the way that the program is perceived.
And a lot of the heat that got turned down or turned off
because of the successes Indiana had in the portal.
That comes right back, I think. And I think people who already
are concerned about, you know, not knowing where things are
going and are concerned about how the team is going to play
those jump back at exactly the wrong time.
And that's really, I think that's going to be what makes
this season so fascinating from a fan's perspective, from an
observer's perspective, is it is it is really it could go any one
of a number of directions. It could be amazing.
And Indiana could be back and, and at a high level, it could be
kind of like just doing enough to be in the conversation and
then picking up momentum in the Big 10 season.
It could be a situation where things kind of go off the rails
and questions start coming down and, you know, it's almost
impossible to really say for sure what direction this could
go. And it just feels like this
schedule, while smart from a metrics perspective, makes
Indiana walk a tightrope in terms of their performance.
Because if they don't come out of the gate swinging, if this
group takes longer to mesh or if the offensive systems that were
being used last year that we're creating, you know, frankly, not
very exciting or very effective basketball.
If the defense is still not particularly good.
If all of those things are are the way Indiana starts the year,
That's both a problem in terms of their positioning for the
NCAA tournament, but it's a larger problem in terms of their
positioning in front of the fans.
And I do worry about that trajectory, but I'm also
fascinated by how all of this plays out.
It really is a a novel where we don't know what the plots.
Going to be. So that's, that's kind of my
take homes from the schedule. We'd love to hear your thoughts
obviously in the comments section.
And you know, if you I, I certainly, I would understand
anybody's perspective on the schedule.
If you think that this makes sense and that this is how
Indiana needs to go, totally get that.
If you think that this is a bad way of going about things, I
would totally get that too. So if you're on Spotify and you
haven't used the Q&A section yet, use that.
Go to the go to the page of the podcast and you can respond to
this particular episode. Let us know your thoughts, I'm
always happy to share those on the show or you can use the sub
stack. You can always respond to us on
that as well. We'd love to hear from you
there. Last thing I want to hit before
I wrap up today was the announcement that came down on
Friday that Indiana officially has re upped with Adidas and is
taking less money up front. Zach Osterman had this piece.
So just to kind of give you the facts of this deal, this is a 10
year extension for IU with Adidas.
It's $54 million, but almost all of that is in kind.
It's, it's essentially product. So it's a, it's a variety of
different apparel and there's also marketing activities that
are wrapped. Up in this this is essentially
not a surprise. It's the previous Adidas deal,
according to to Zack's reporting, was worth slightly
more annual compensation, but this was changed to focus more
on apparel because that's money Indiana would have to spend
anyway. So they might as well get it in
in trade. Now.
I know a lot of people were not happy that Indiana resigned with
Adidas. And if this is, I think an
interesting thing, because the reason why people are upset with
Indiana resigning with Adidas is always it's it's it's kind of
like people say one thing, but I often when I look at the actual
complaints, it tends to appear to be something different.
So a lot of the discontent with Adidas has centered on Indiana's
lack of centrality, I guess, in what Adidas does, or at least
the least the perception they're in.
You know, it feels like Adidas has focused on a particular set
of winners within their group. And, you know, it's been Kansas
or it was Louisville, a couple of other teams in that mix.
And there's also been a lot of negative perceptions.
And I think the perceptions are are borne out often about, you
know, how Adidas has not seemed to take Indiana's brand
particularly seriously in terms of the types of uniforms that
they've produced. Like a lot of that gets
mentioned. People have talked about that
being a disadvantage in recruiting and there's a desire
that Indiana go to Nike or or Jordan brand or things of that
nature. Now, a lot of the, the day by
day complaints about Adidas are more about the lack of available
consumer product, the the lack of jerseys, the lack of, of
you'll see things that are being modeled by athletes and it's
like, oh, that, that's amazing. Where can we get that?
And then the answer is you can't.
It's not available for sale. It's only available to the
athletes. The lack of like soccer apparel,
we all these kinds of things that it feels like other schools
are getting in, Indiana's not getting.
And I think there's certainly some truth to that, but I get
it. I think it's important for
people to understand why, even though Adidas I don't think has
been a particularly good partner in terms of, of providing fans
what they want or doing a great job of promoting IU as a premier
brand. The latter part is I think an
important thing to keep in mind. It's like part of the reason
they haven't been promoting IU as a premier brand in athletics
is that IU has not been a premier brand in athletics, at
least not in basketball and football.
Football, especially Indiana has, while they've been better
over the course of the last decade, they they don't have the
history or the depth of fan interest and they don't have a
lot of juice on the national stage.
What little time they had there in 2019 and 2020 they failed to
capitalize on. And so, you know, if you look at
things from the standpoint of, well, why doesn't Indiana go
with another apparel company, It's because nobody else is
really interested right now. And you know, from from my
understanding of this process, this was this was not a
situation where there were multiple bidders in Indiana was
like, we're going back with Adidas because, you know, that's
it. You know, my understanding is
that that there wasn't a lot else out there for Indiana in
terms of who was interested in Indiana.
And this again, it is kind of like the, the program building
and scheduling thing that we talked about.
This is the chicken versus egg thing.
Again, where I think IU fans and the IU marketing, the, the, the
way that IU puts the program out there and the way that the
program is generally publicly perceived, at least by IU fans,
is that it is in the conversation with the top brands
in the country. And the performance just hasn't
borne that out. And, and again, you know, you
look at what Indiana's done in basketball over the course of
the, the, you know, almost a decade now and you know,
there's, there's one Big 10 title in basketball in there and
there are four NCAA tournament appearances.
And that's, I mean that again, we've talked about this on the
show a lot. Like what about that is
attractive to an apparel manufacturer or, you know, an
athletics marketing company, which is really what Adidas is
like. Why would that be held at at the
highest levels of their promotion and marketing?
And you know, you, I think you throw that on the apparel front
as well. There's plenty of basketball
stuff available for IU. Maybe, you know, you certainly
would like to see some more and maybe some more unique designs,
but you've also got a group of people who don't want anything
other than the very traditional approaches to IU basketball
apparel. So you're you're limited there.
I know this sounds like I'm taking Adidas's side.
I'm not. I'm just trying to explain the
mentality. You've got a football program
that most people in the IU fan base don't particularly care
about. And the hope is that that will
change. But the number of people that
care about IU basketball is way, way proportionately higher than
what you have caring about IU football.
And that is noticed, you know, that is that is not something
that is missed in the in the process of evaluating these
things and the rest of the sports.
You have die hard fans that are on social media who talk about
wanting XY and Z as you have everywhere, but the numbers just
are not there. You're not getting a lot of
sales generation. You're the the interest that's
being expressed on the Internet is generally not the interest
that's being expressed at the actual points of sale.
So, you know, I think. A lot of people were envisioning
a scenario where Indiana would have left Adidas and gone a
different direction. And, and it's not like they've
been Adidas forever. They, you know, they, there was
a period where they were Nike and Nike did a, a pretty good
job with that. But Indiana and Adidas have, I
think, found a comfortable partnership where Adidas is
willing to give a certain amount to IU.
And IU has yet to be able to capitalize and and raise the bar
on their premier programs to the level where it makes commercial
sense for other organizations to come in and bid on it.
So ultimately, this is, I think, in general, probably an issue
that is overblown in the big scheme of things.
And I think it's also an area that's likely going to change
anyway. And Zach brings this up a little
bit in terms of the, you know, the overall setup, not just in
terms of something like name, image and likeness and how
Adidas now fits into the mix there and how Adidas has been
signing. I use athletes like Trace
Jackson Davis to, to NIL deals, but also in terms of the idea
that the licensing processes have to change the whole
business of college athletics and apparel and, and the way
that the relationship between these companies, you know, it's
altered. And, and I think what you're
getting is a situation where whether it's an IL or some of
these other items, there is some value in having a consistent
relationship with a partner, even if you're not particularly
satisfied with all of the aspects of that relationship.
Rather than trying to jump into a spot where you're going to a
new company who might not, they might care even less about the
relationship because they've already got existing
relationships that they're having to maintain.
And again, the way Indiana would fix that would be to really
raise the bar in terms of performance, either in
basketball or in football. I've heard a lot of people say,
you know, I mean, well, the reason Indiana's not getting,
you know, another company like Nike to come in and bid is that
their football program isn't good.
And that's part of it. But again, if you're going to
hang your hat on basketball and men's basketball, you've got to
be really good at men's basketball.
And Indiana just hasn't been they, they just, they, they,
they have not been good enough to, to make that their primary
area of focus. And so you, you just got to hope
that Indiana has a really good season this year and is able to
capitalize on that and build on it so that the next time the
negotiations roll around, you know, eight years from now or
whenever that is when we get to the tail end of this deal, that
Indiana has been able to leverage their brand back up in
basketball to where they are legitimately a top 10 brand and
are playing as such and are having success as such.
Until that happens, I don't think you're going to see a lot
of change on this front. And you could even make an
argument that given the lack of success that Indiana's had in
both of the sports, that that really matter to these apparel
companies, that they got the deal that they did, that it
wasn't worse. So that would be probably I
think the best, the most accurate way of evaluating how
all of this is setting up. But it'll be interesting to see
if the overall relationship between athletic departments and
apparel companies changes as the relationship between athletes
and apparel companies and college athletic departments
change as athletes really start to generate more NIL dollars or
for themselves as as they command more NIL dollars and as
colleges and their athletic departments are looking around
and trying to find a way to pay for all of this.
You know, that's I think where you're going to see the
relationship with whoever your apparel provider is really
matter more and more. And that's I think a really
fascinating area because we don't really know how these
apparel companies are truly going to enter and, and maintain
themselves in the NIL era. You know so much of of the
sponsorship of. Of programs over the course of
time and the money that's been spent by Nike and Adidas and
Under Armour, it's been because you couldn't directly pay the
players. Not that it didn't happen.
I mean that was the whole basis of that, that scandal that
wasn't, or the, the quasi scandal that that engulfed
Louisville and Auburn and and Arizona.
You know, a lot of that was based around this idea that, you
know, we're, we're under the table paying the players, but we
have to pay the, the programs. You know, for the longest time,
that was how you got a, a player potentially into your orbit for,
you know, if you've got a pro prospect and, and they're
playing for a school that's tied to your apparel company, you're,
you've got a potentially better chance of, of signing them down
the line if they're a pro now you can just do it directly.
And so I do really wonder from an environmental perspective
within the the business model of college athletics, how that
changes all of these equations because there is still some
value in attaching your brand to a an athletic program that's
successful. There's probably less value in
attaching it to a brand that isn't successful or isn't at a
particular level of success. And so that becomes the
challenge for a lot of programs. And I think Indiana squarely in
the middle of that. Again, Indiana's aspirational to
be at that top level, but the actual results that we've seen
have come nowhere near that over the past decade.
So anyway, hopefully you all have a wonderful weekend.
We'll be ramping things up here again in a couple of weeks.
It's always a little slow around here during the summer, but we
appreciate you sticking with us. Thanks to all of you for joining
us here on the show. Thanks to our sponsors at Home
Field Apparel. Be sure to check out the rest of
the Back Home network this upcoming week and we'll catch
you folks. On the flip side, I'm Galen
Clavio for Crimson cast Bring back the Bison.
That's all, everybody.