You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast. GAIL and Clavio joining you here. Scott Caulfield joining you here. It is the 22nd of October as we wind close to the end of this month. We're here to talk Indiana football. We're gonna talk some Indiana basketball as well as Hoosier Hysteria hit and it's it's gonna be an interesting time as we talk about some some things
going on here. It hasn't been the greatest weekend for IU fans of of the the football and basketball side. It's kind of a mixed weekend for basketball, which we'll talk about. And then on football, not really mixed at all, pretty much all not ideal. So we're going to talk about what happened with all of that. First of all, wanted to remind everybody that Crimson Cast is on sub Stack.
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front. We've got another women's show relaunching this year, The Crimson Cast Basketball Show with Amanda Foster and Kevin Vera. This year all of us brought to you by Home Field apparel. Your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs. This is the busy season for home field apparel. Lots of cool stuff dropping on a regular basis. They had a pop up store this past week in the Graduate Hotel and it was a good time.
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Like how how the how was was the cabana everything you hoped it would be. So thank you so much for holding down the four. It was a great week. Sun kissed my my blips are a little sunburned by three straight. It's funny you mentioned Maldives. We we went to Turks and Caicos one of the nights we were discussing like, where where our next favorite trips would be and my wife was like, wants to go to the Maldives. I'm like great.
And then I looked at the map and I'm like, well, that's that's gonna be really hard to get to. No, it was a great. It was a great week off. I appreciate you holding down the Fort, doing a lot of podcasts. It's three things. It's funny, I was trying to catch up. We we flew in late Friday night. So I've been listening to a couple of your Q&A S at like 1.4 speed and I'm sitting here thinking now like, why is Galen
talking so slow? It's like, Oh no, because I'm used to listening to like, Hyper Speed Galen. But no the the Michigan game. So we're flying southwest down there and you know we we fly out of Fort Lauderdale. I'm watching the game it's you know I use scores at 7 nothing
and then miss. You know I use playing great defense and then it gets 7-7 and then like you get over the the ocean and it's like it just cut the Wi-Fi cuts out and it's like oh man, like what what what kind of my friend travel with another family and my my buddy's like, hey man, I think, I think I use up 21, seven to screw with me the whole time but it's like. I kind of it cut out at the perfect time for me and it's just we should have left it a time Capsule 2, two travel
trips. So like, if you haven't been down to the Caribbean, it's it's fantastic. I love it. Like just one life thing. Like last year by my boys at that time were nine and six. They're now 10 and seven. We're sitting there in the ocean. My wife's like, this is awesome. And she's like, we should do this every couple years. And I'm like, we should do it every year. Like they're only going to be young for so long. So we we're kind of we're going to do the Caribbean every fall.
So I apologize for Crimson Case Craft breaks. But like this year we did an excursion. We did jet skis out to a pirate ship, me and my oldest son. And if you haven't been to the Caribbean, like island time and kind of island it, it's such a real thing because we get there and the guy in the, they're super nice with the guys like you ever ridden the jet ski? I'm like, no, he's a guy, man. I'm like, let's go, let's stop. He's like, all right, let's go.
It starts going, I'm like, and I thought, like, you know, normally you kind of thought we'd kind of pull out you off the dock like, all right, guys, well, here's a safety deal. You'll kind of get a little spiel. It's like, no, we're just, we're going. And then he's like, give me like a speed up sign. It's like, like, you all right? I'm like, yeah, we're OK. I've never ridden one before. We're out in the open ocean.
Like, there's that. And then the last thing I'll say is just my other joke of the week was. You know, we're staying in an all inclusive, which is nice with kids as we found. But my son, a 10 year old like halfway of the week is like man, I really like, you know, all inclusive vacations. We should do more of them And I'm like for for you, man. Everything's all inclusive, going to say what is he paying for? What's about Rushmore this summer? I don't remember you pulling out your wallet.
Like I think. I think, I think he's likely more feeling like, wow, I don't have to ask dad for this extra plate of food. I can just get it and that there is a freedom as a 10 year old, I'm sure with that. No, he loved going there's like a pizza shack. And he was like, I'm going to take care of lunch, like I got lunch and it's like, what's kind of nice? Like alright man, he'll get like a 40 minute wait And he's like he was super excited to do that and so it.
Was a It was a really nice trip. Turks and Caicos is some of the best beaches I've ever seen in my life. So it was it was nice. It was kind of fun to get away from all of it and come back. And see that, you know things are still pointing the wrong direction of football. So let's go. Well, Scott was on vacation and apparently so was IU football this weekend as they did not compete particularly well. Yes, go ahead. I'm. Sorry, can I can I make one Michigan comment? Yeah.
Please go ahead. The the the part that I saw cuz I ended up not going back and watching the rest of the 42 point slaughter that Michigan put on, but you know they they did IU did something that I'm kind of annoyed they haven't done more of. And but they did. It's kind of eye opening. Like they had that one play where was a flea flicker back to Mccully who then passed it. And it's like, Oh yeah, we like this is an actual like, this is something our offense has that a lot of teams don't.
It's like we have a high level quarterback as wide receiver. And I thought like, you know, IU related when Antoine Randall L went to the NFL, like he had to play like that in the Super Bowl. And whenever that happens in the NFL or even someone who's in college. But Oh yeah, we didn't know you. Antoine I know was a quarterback in college. There's always that story. It's like, oh. It's like we have that. Like, why are we not using that more?
Like we literally have 5 quarterbacks on our roster. It seems like with Soresby and Jackson, you could put all three of them and Mccully out there and you could really mess some defenses up. It's just. It kind of annoyed me that we've done that once and it worked. I'm not saying it's going to work every you can't run a whole
offensive flea flickers. But there is this like kind of like outside the box thinking that you don't see out of this team where it's like that's kind of an unusual skill, that you have 3D1 quarterbacks on your roster and you can play three of them at the same, at least two of them at the same time. One's a wide receive anyway. Just that was my one thought from the Michigan game. Well, clearly they did not get integrated into the primary portion of the offense, right?
And that, yeah, not a good weekend for IU football. We talked about this beforehand. All the the predictions from the computer systems said that Rutgers was a better team by like 9 points that ended up being conservative. Rutgers ends up winning this game 31 to 14, and it was a game that unfortunately I kind of predicted in the preview podcast that happened on Friday where we talked about how we've seen this movie before. We kind of saw it last year.
Indiana comes out, they they look fine in the first quarter, they had that nice drive to start the game. And and much like what happened in the Michigan game, Scott, it was like oh wow hey, maybe this is Indiana's day And and even you know you get into the the second quarter, they were able to take advantage of a couple of things and they you know they look like they were going to be in position. And then of course you know they're they're down.
They they tied up 1414 and then they force a stop for Rutgers. It looks like they might get the ball back and be able to drive down the field. And then, of course, you get a muffed punt on a, you know, from Jalen Lucas, which allows Rutgers to pick it up. They get down to the goal line very quickly. They end up kicking a field goal. Then they all go into halftime and uninitiated IU fan would say, oh hey, Indiana's within three at home. They're playing a.
Might be a word you use. They're playing one of the most one-dimensional teams in college football. A Rutgers team that doesn't want to pass and really can't pass. Surely they'll make some adjustments and they'll figure out a way to win this and instead the exact opposite happened. Not only did Indiana not make, maybe they did make adjustments. And the adjustments were our offense will no longer work. Because in the second-half Indiana, you know they they they went in 1714, they allow a 12
play, 75 yard touchdown drive. Then Indiana's offensive series go three and out and punt. 10 plays, 37 yards punt. 9 plays. Turnover on downs. 14 plays, turnover on downs. Only. Four drives in. Four drives in the entire quarter. Entire second-half. And meanwhile Rutgers, all they needed was the one touchdown. They really all they needed was the field goal that they had at the end of the first half.
But they score a touchdown. They score another touchdown on as an 80 yard touchdown run from Gavin Wimsat the quarterback. And that was that. And you know, this is another example of an IU team that didn't just fail in one phase of the game. And Scott, they didn't even fail in just two phases of the game. They actually failed in all three phases of the game because ten of the points in this game that Rutgers scored were directly attributable to
mistakes made in special teams. Either the blocked punt that was returned for the touchdown, or the muffed punt that ended up in the field goal at the end of the first half. And so I don't know where you want to start with this game because you could start anywhere and it would be equally valid, but I'll let you have the the pick here. It it reminds me of as a very, very deep cut. When I lived in Houston, my buddy Chris had a car that would
always fall apart. But Jim Rome back in that time in like the early 2000s, used to joke about. He had like a Mercur like XR4TI wire. I don't remember half things in my life. I remember that And he used to joke about how like all the indicator lights would come on that car just like a total.
Bad car. It's like that's that's what it feels like here is like all the indicator lights are on because even listening to your preview you're talking about how at the time and like, oh this is so, so funny at the time you're like you know at least special teams has been relatively solid for this IU team. It's like Oh no, that that causes like you said ten of the points really. Game switches, you know switches the game.
But you look at offense like you mentioned, the four drives in the second-half, in the first half. They had two touchdown drives, which was nice. But then the other three drives were five plays punt, 3 plays punt, 3 plays, -4 yards punt. So the offense wasn't great but then the defense also like couldn't get Rutgers off the
field. And really the the saddest part you mentioned that that that run by the Rutgers quarterback, it's it's not like you know they they had these breakout plays where we just you know blue coverage of stuff and it's not like you know Rutgers was just so much better. It's just they they ground us down. And that play was kind of just like and it wasn't like IU gave up or quit. It's like it's almost the worst
of all cases. They just, you know, Rutgers just put their will on the game and just ground us to a point where everyone's kind of just beat down to a point they got an 80 yard run out of it. And so, yeah, I mean it's, I don't know where to start. It's something you mentioned a little bit in the Michigan recap that you know, you know or one of your Q&A, sorry that you know.
The the problems with the offense and as much deflection as the coaches have put on the offense, the quarterback has kind of masked the sense of the the defense has been really bad. I brought this up before. When you look at like the Pro Football Focus rankings, you know the the defense has gotten worse every single year over the last four or five years, even even in that run of 1920. The defense from a ranking
perspective. Has gotten worse every year for the last five or six years and and it it feels like we don't talk about that enough because we're focused on how bad the offense is and rightfully so. But the defense was bad today couldn't get or yesterday couldn't get Rutgers off the field. The offense was anemic and you know this is and then when the special teams makes those mistakes doesn't help and this becomes that death spiral.
One of these games where it's like every like I mentioned every drive for each side becomes a huge drive. Like we got to get a stop we got to get a score and like neither neither side is able to do what it needs to do and then things just breakdown. Yeah man it's not it's not good and it you know I I have it you get to a point where it's like I don't you know getting to a bowl was was going to be really tough this year. Getting to three or four wins
kind of feels like I you know. Who cares? But it's like this was a very winnable game at home against a team like Rutgers, and there's not a lot of other teams at Rutgers level on the rest of our schedule and we got doubled up by them. Like, it's it's very frustrating. Yeah, I think, you know, look, this is something that, as we've talked about this season, a lot of people have tried to make the claim that Indiana's problems for, you know, let me back up for a second.
I think the Louisville game and the way that that went really made a lot of people feel if you put it in combination with the positives that people took out of the Ohio State game, People really were convinced that this was a good team. That it just run into a lot of unfortunate opponents. And that once they got past those opponents that we would see the good team that these people think that there is. And realistically, I think both you and I didn't feel like that
was accurate. I think the numbers have demonstrated that that's not accurate. It's a bad football team. I mean, it's a, it's a team that does not have the ability to play 60 minutes in the Big 10, barely had the ability to play 60 minutes at home against Akron, and in fact had to play more than 60 minutes because they couldn't do what they needed to do in 60 minutes.
When I look at this team now in the aftermath of losing to Rutgers, not just losing to Rutgers, but being uncompetitive against Rutgers, I mean really, when when you're not in the game for the entire second-half of a game against Rutgers at home, you're just not good. I I don't know what, you couldn't make the argument. I mean, everybody that comments on this team said this game against Rutgers is a must, must win. You have to win this game if you
have any aspirations. Yeah, of doing anything. And not only did Indiana not win Indiana after those first, you know the first couple of with the really the first drive where they had that score kind of reverted back to the why are we even here Look on the field defense and this is I think what gets me. It's like yes, the offense was
bad again. This was however, another game where Indiana allowed thirty or more points on defense in the Big 10. And it's it's wild that this you know for for for all the talk in the press conferences from Tom Allen about how the offense is the problem and the the switching back and forth to the quarterbacks, which I guess we're going to have to talk about again this week, the reality is this defense, even if Indiana's offense scores two more touchdowns double s his offensive output.
Indiana loses this game because this defense, which is Tom Allen's calling card is no, is not good. And and it's not just against Rutgers and it's wild to say, well, it's not just against Rutgers. It's also against Purdue. It's also against Maryland. Obviously it's also against the big teams. This defense since the beginning of the 2021 season has been awful and there's a case to be made that this year might be the
worst of the three. It's just it's crazy to me that in a game like this, like I think you learn. You learn so much about where the program is, and this is not breaking news for the few of you who are still sticking around and listening to us talk about IU football. It's not news to say that this team isn't good. But I'll go back to what I said in the Preview podcast, and we've said it a few times throughout the course of this
season. I didn't think last year's team was good either, but last year's team showed some fight down the stretch. This team right now doesn't appear to have any of that. They don't appear to have any confidence in the coaches. The game plans don't appear to actually do anything to try to address the problems that
Indiana's got. And you know, outside of another opponent, like another team as an opponent playing just awful in a game, it's hard to find in my mind a scenario where Indiana would win a game the rest of the way. If they're going to look like they looked against Rutgers in a game where they had to look their best because it was probably their best chance of victory the rest of the way, I. Mean how? What a bad side.
At the end of the game, Schiano's getting a Gatorade bath on our sideline on our homecoming. You know the thing with the Rutgers, think it's so golly, you mentioned like Rutgers. It's like, do we have to start saying like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers, Like those, Those games don't really count. Like, you know? Not that you have to beat Rutgers every single year, but Rutgers is a bellwether. But since Tom Allen, I was playing around with some
numbers. Since Tom Allen has been the coach at Indiana, we've gone four and three against Rutgers. But it really is this like hard sea change where the wind just automatically goes from, you know, left to right, you know, So 17/18/1920, we beat Rutgers four times that. The score of those games is 137 to 38, so we we beat Rutgers 137 to. 38 and four games the last three years, Rutgers has beaten US 93 to 34. You know so it's like as much.
And we were beating Rutgers 41 to nothing, 35 to nothing. That's been weird as pounding Rutgers again, I'm not saying you beat Rutgers every single year. You're going to have some ups and downs. But it it's this stark change were for a four year stretch is like Oh yeah, we've we've gotten out of that muck. We are now better and now it's not like. Were at the same you know Rutgers brought themselves to
our level. It is just completely flip-flopped I mean 93 to 34 in a three-year span against Rutgers. That's not good especially because you know you you did a great statistical breakdown of games after that Michigan in the Michigan recap. If you haven't listened to it please go there's nobody who's listening to this who hasn't listened to that. There's only five people listening probably at this point
but it was great. But you you kind of set aside the Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State games, which? I understand why you did. It always drives me nuts that we do that because like we have to play those teams. But anyway, you know, but it's like if if we're going to now just get throttled by Rutgers and and have a 60 point point disparity, it's like I. I don't know what we're doing because you've got to be able to compete with Rutgers and Maryland. So that that's it's really
tough. I mean, Mike Schumann, the Daily Hoosier had the tweet yesterday. 3 losses in a row now to Rutgers, 93 to 34. The margin against for Indiana. If you take Rutgers, Maryland and Purdue over the last three years, I use O and eight average that the total margin against is 287 to 142, which is an average margin of 36 to 18 against the guys that should be at your like, that's your level.
Well, and I've mentioned this a few times, what to me is especially galling, Purdue is kind of a separate case because they're not in the division. And to some degree, you know, they've had a similar set of problems to Indiana in a slightly different order. But Rutgers was in the dumpster in 2019. Maryland was in the dumpster in 2019. The watch Those two programs exceed Indiana to the point where they are getting bowl
eligible early. You know Rutgers able to get bowl eligible playing at Indiana. Yeah, that. There's no greater illustration. As I said in that preview pod of how far Indiana has fallen. And the only reason they're not the worst program in the Big 10 right now is because the other worst program in the Big 10 had to fire their coach because of a sexual harassment investigation. And just they're they're out from under a BIOS.
They might be in a. Better and they're no and they're and they're and and that'll be there's at least like. OK, we're hitting the reset button. There's a path forward. Indiana's this bad and looks totally lost in terms of what it's supposed to do and what the answers are. And I don't know if there's a whole lot of point in belaboring the statistics. The statistics of this game are awful. I mean, Indiana was 2 for 11 on 3rd down. They only gained 279 yards.
They only gained 126 yards in the air. Their yards per pass were 4.1 yards per pass, which is just not. That's not good. They they were out possessioned. Rutgers had the bowl 37 minutes and 38 seconds. Indiana had it for 22 minutes and 22 seconds. So it and it just was there was very little to look at there offensively or defensively and
say well that's nice. To see that's something that we can build on. You, you know, people again will point back to the fact that they had a nice drive at the start of the game. I'll keep pointing back to, you know, unless I use defense can hold another team scoreless Ala Iowa. What happens in the first quarter with this team doesn't matter. Two years in a row now, Indiana takes an early lead against Rutgers, and then Rutgers outscores them the rest of the
way on their way to a victory. And you know, we're kind of at the point now, Scott, where we've said all of this 10 times. I think what's what's what's amazing to me is that I, you and and Tom Allen in particular there, it's clear that what they're doing isn't working. But there doesn't seem to be an acknowledgement that what they're doing isn't working.
You know, we go through this whole rigmarole with this quarterback situation, which everybody has been saying over and over again, this is not a good idea. Stop doing this. Stop. You know, putting us, your quarterbacks, in a situation where they're losing confidence. Stop putting them in a situation where they're not clear about who the leader of the team is. They settle on Brock Lowry or, excuse me, Brandon Soresby in this game. I'm going to say they might
settle on Brock Lowry next week. It's hard to say at this point. They settle on Brandon Soresby. Brandon Sore and I have nothing against Brandon Soresby, but at some point the numbers have to be looked at and you have to ask yourself a question like what on earth is Indiana trying to do Brandon Soresby so far? Well, I get in, in this season is averaging 4.7 yards per attempt. And just to kind of put that in context, Tavin Jackson, as bad as he was at times, is at 7.1
yards per attempt. Connor Basilak was at 5.4 yards per attempt. Dexter Williams Who? We've talked about struggled to complete passes was at 4.8 yards in attempt. You know what you've got And Brendan Soresby and this offense, if that's what direction they're planning on going, is a quarterback who does not appear to be capable of consistently completing passes that aren't very short. What you saw out of the passing game today was, I mean they they went through all of this with a
fire and offensive coordinator. They hire a new permanent offensive coordinator and I'm sorry. You we were willing to give some cushion on the Michigan game because it's Michigan. You had a whole game. You had a whole extra week because of the buy. This is the offense you come out with against the Rutgers defense that. I mean while they're fine it's Rutgers. It's it's not like you're going up against one of the top ten teams in the conference.
I'm just, you know, I guess to sum it all up, Scott. There's no answers here. There's no direction. The, you know, the the answers in the press conference are the same things over and over again. There's no, there's clearly no clue about how to address any of this. And it's sad because at this point that means that the answers are just done. I mean there, there's what we've seen out of this team is what we're going to see out of this
team. You're more than halfway through the season, you've just played one of the two or three easiest opponents remaining on your schedule and really probably one of the top, like the easiest four schools that you're going to play against all year. And your response was to go out and lose 31 to 14 at home in a must win game.
You know, if if we were watching any other program and we were looking at this, we would say that like the battery's dead, the gas tank is empty, there's nothing there. I mean, I think it, I mean not that this is news to anybody listening and we've essentially alluded to this the last couple of weeks, but for anybody who was hanging on and thinking things would get better as the competition level dropped, I think you got your answer. The the thing with the court,
two things. One, the thing with the quarterback controversy that is so galling is like you know it's it's it's always coach speak. But it's true like when you have a young quarterback that they need to build confidence. They need time doing this quarterback switching with two young quarterbacks who both need that is a horrific idea. The other thing that you know you were mentioning in your preview was that, you know it's kind of like you know why would
people come. It's kind of the the fan discussion. But it's like it's true people come out to see fun football and winning football. The the thing that I don't understand is it'd be one thing and this is no knock on either Soresby or Jackson. It'd be one thing if the over this course of switching it was clear that Corsby was the better quarterback. It's not they. They both have good. They both have bad. Like nobody's you know, so much better than the other. The thing I don't get is, you
know, all right. So if if they're kind of a tie, go with the guy who is the brother of Trace Jackson Davis and just have something that's at least you can grab onto. And again like, you know, your job as a football coach in the end is to win. It's not to be fun. But there is something to it's like, hey, at least this is something we can sell our program around.
And just the fact that they don't even have that thought that it's so much like just all it's like fine, you can be all robotic, all football, you know, but you got to win. Then, like that was Archie Miller's problem. I was like, fine, you can just suck at everything else in the the marketing media department. But then you better win. Look, I I think the key here is not Trace or or Tavin Jackson versus Brendan Soresby. I know, I know, I know. I think everything you said is right.
But the where I think people keep getting misled by the commentary around this program, it's not the quarterbacks. It's it's the offense. The offense doesn't make sense. The offense, I mean. You. You. You. Supposedly you decided Brendan Soresby was your best option at quarterback this week. He threw for 15 for 31, for 126 yards. Looked good on one drive and that was it. Maybe two. If you want to be really be charitable, you ran the ball a bit more. That's good.
And you used Soresby to run the ball. OK, great. Even if you put his total offense together, running and passing at less than 200 yards, he rushed 11 carries for 49 yards on the game. That's the offense is not adequate. This is against Rutgers that you're doing this and you're at home and this is how this is going. It's not the and this is the I just the messaging is always it seems like, well, these guys aren't executing. These guys aren't doing this. It's the plan.
Like the the plan is the consistent thing and the plan is not working and it hasn't worked since the start. Of the 2021 season that. So I guess that's where I've gotten tired of all of this like all of all of the what little you hear out of this program you would.
And if all you're doing is paying attention to the quotes you're thinking, well, they just got to go get better players, which they do. But they don't have a system to plug them into and they're not attracting players that are good enough to overcome the system, which might be the key to kind of understanding when success in this. Program has existed versus when it hasn't. It's just you know at this stage what do you do?
Are you going to, I mean in the post game press conference Allen seemed to backtrack on the idea that he had named a permanent starter. So are they going to run out another starter? We've talked about Dexter Williams potentially being a starter at some point. I mean this idea that somehow just in.
The part of the universe where IU football exists that constantly changing quarterbacks and constantly benching quarterbacks is the problem or the solution to the problem, as opposed to the system that the quarterbacks are in being the problem. I don't believe that IU occupies its own special part of the football universe. Like when you see this happening, it's almost always a clear sign that there's just a fundamental lack of understanding of what the problem actually is.
I completely agree with all of that and not to change the the, but this is the problem is then I mean you're 100% right. I completely agree with all of that. But then you look and it's like this always does feel like a bit of a smokescreen for the defense, 'cause then you look at Rutgers and you know Winsat through for 39 yards. It's like when you look at the Rutgers stats you you used to look at their numbers, you're like, man, they must have gotten
crushed last night. It's like, no, they won by just doing nothing. But their quarterback threw, made five completions. That was like a Dexter Williams type game. Like the the defense, not saying they get a pass, but it's like there's a world where like the the the coaching, everyone's just focusing on the offense and it's like the defense is also horrible. Like at some point you got to be able to stop the run out of Rutgers. Again, Rutgers was.
They were 39 passing guards and they put up 31 points. Yeah, 5 for 12. Gavin Wim sat through the air. They were never a threat. To pass the ball and this is the the thing we keep coming back to, or at least I keep coming back to. It's this idea that the the defense rarely gets talked about because that I I'm guessing that's Tom Allen's baby. He was the defensive coordinator last year and the defense was real bad.
We talked about that. Here it is this year and as much as there was some early optimism about the defense, they couldn't tackle, I mean that that that 89 or whatever the 70 yard run that Wimsat had. For the touchdown, that was not a great blocked play. That was great about the tackles either, right? I mean it was just like the the positioning was bad, the pursuit was bad. This again a lot. We've talked a lot about detail oriented issues with IU football and we talked a lot about them
with penalties. We've talked about them with special teams, which we saw with the block punt, but it also is on the defense and. That that has been the big thing that just frankly hasn't gotten enough attention. And again, I think a lot of it is scheme. You know, I I refuse to believe that this particular group of players can't play good defense, but I think that in many cases they're being asked to do things that don't necessarily work.
The substitution patterns don't make a whole lot of sense. We've seen, we saw that in the Maryland game. We've seen that, you know, basically throughout there, there does not appear to be the kind of consistency that you need. In terms of the scheme, and that puts the players in bad position. And the players themselves are also not executing, which isn't
helping matters much. But again, you've got three years here where IU is surrendering an average of over 30 points a game to not Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State. Everybody else, the teams you have to be competitive against. The teams that there's no excuse not to be competitive against, you're just not being competitive against them. And yesterday was just the most recent chapter. Do you mind if I take a step back and do kind of a statistical pull out if you don't?
Mind, Knock yourself out. I've been playing around with this and you mentioned three years. I think it's a, you know, there's obviously a delineation in the Allen era up to 2020 and then now you have 2021 and beyond. But you know three years is a pretty large sample size. And so I've been kind of tracking this this year and it's not good.
But when you look at the the three years of Allen, 2021-2022 and then this year, which is still, you know, being completed, I wanted to look at this versus the other worst three-year stretches of IU coaches. So Kevin Wilson from 2011 to 2013, Bill Lynch from 2008 to 2010. Dinardo only had us three years, Cameron from 97 to 98 and then Mallory I went with 94 to 96. Though Mallory also had a stretch his first three years which were not awesome. In that stretch.
Tom Allen is 8 and 23 overall and two and 20 in the Big 10. Wilson was 10 and 26, five and 19 in the Big 10. Lynch 12 and 24, three and 21 in the Big 10. Dinardo 8 and 27, three and 21 in the Big 10, Cameron 10 and 23, six and 18 in the Big 10, and Mallory 11 and 22, four and 20 in the Big 10. A lot of numbers I threw at you, but here's here's the real key that I'm looking at. What does Tom Allen have to do this year to be better than any of those guys in that three-year stretch?
And so right now he's trailing everybody. So if we lose out he has a worse three-year stretch, then Wilson, then Lynch, then Dinardo, then Cameron, then Mallory. I will throw out that Wilson. You know Lynch, Dinardo, Cameron and Mallory all got let go at the end of that three-year stretch. Wilson was taking over, so he was taking over a bad program that three-year stretch. What Allen has to do to get better than Kevin Wilson, Let's
just focus on Big Ten wins. If if he wants to do better than Wilson, he needs four more Big Ten wins this year. That seems like a a bridge a bit too far to be better than Bill Lynch. He has to get two more Big Ten wins to be better than Dinardo, who's like like the nadir as you say of the IU football era. He still needs two more Big Ten wins. He gets one more Big 10 win. He's tying Dinardo's three-year rolling average. This one boggles my mind to be better than Cameron.
You and I lived through the Cameron era. I wouldn't say it's like, oh, that was that was awesome. I remember tons of great games. He needs 5 more Big 10. He basically has to win out, have a better Big 10 stretch than Cameron did over three years and he used to have three more wins than Mallory to do better to, you know, Lynch had a lot of, you know, bad early season games, but he would need Allen weed five more overall wins to have more overall wins than Lynch in that three-year period.
It's just it it it kind of struck me as I started playing with the numbers just how much Allen is going to have to do to be better than any of those guys. And you know, I know this is one of the Q&A S you had, you know just reading between the lines here, but it's like everybody else on that list was let go at the end of that three-year period that like there was a time when that was not good enough for IU football. And again it's still incomplete.
We still have Illinois, we still have Purdue, we still have Michigan State on the schedule, you know. But as I think we keep continue to keep harping on, it's like there's nothing that I've seen outside of just I hope things get better and maybe Dexter Williams is really, really good coming back from an ACL injury really early that that tells me we're going to change it. But it was I I started playing
these numbers. I'll keep them updated throughout the year, but it's it's really it's it's really pretty amazing stats when you look at it that way. It's just really depressing. And look, I think it's, it's worth mentioning at this point, but it's you know in the macro, it's bad in the micro. I'd love to just get on the podcast and be able to talk about some kind of a positive with IU football. And it's just, I mean, I mean, it's hard like, where are you supposed to draw the positives
out of a 3114 loss, right? I mean, there's a 3114 loss to Rutgers at home that drops you to O and four in conference and two and five overall. And frankly, you're lucky to be two and five. You know, you should have lost the Akron game. So look, there's not a lot else to say. I mean, hat tip to Trent Howland for coming in and and rushing for six yards of carry. That was nice, you know, Soresby did seem to run the ball fairly well. IU clearly does not know how to
use Jalen Lucas anymore. Unfortunately, 5 catches for 16 yards in this game, probably because people are keying on him, because they realize that IU is going to try to get over the ball and and so you know if they're sitting on him, they don't seem to be able to make the throws to open things up and
you know all the little. Like the straws the people have clutched at to think, well, maybe things will get better, whether it was the competition will get easier or hey, you hired Rod Carey and you replaced Walt Bell, who people felt clearly was the problem and that'll fix the offense. That hasn't worked. It's just at this point you just kind of throw your hands up and you're like. Maybe you know. You know we've already had like the team only meeting has already happened and we've
already had. We're going to change the way we practice and we've already had like all of the we're going to re evaluate everything. All of the all of the movie tropes that you know normally you would use in order to get your team back on the the right line. Maybe Varsity Blues? They all need to go to the strip club or something. I was going to make that joke, and I didn't because I I figured you would. So you're welcome. But yeah, I it's just.
I don't I I'm out of words at this point Scott. There's only there's only that you can't really talk about this and this is where I really get I think just really depressed on it. You can't really talk about the team without you coming across as not you. But like us, you can't really talk about the team without it either coming across as overly negative or.
You know, whatever. But we had like die hard IU fans tweeting about how they left the game in the middle of the game because it was just so unentertaining. It's and it's it's. A couple people mentioned this on our Twitter feed. It's not just that Indiana's losing, it's that they are losing and they are doing it in the most uninteresting way possible and in the way that like sucks the most emotion out of the room. And I think you know, for as as much as I don't know how many
people are still defending. Alan as a coach at this point, but a lot of people's defensive. Alan has continued to come back to. Here's the guy that you know he he's he's this is, you know, he's emotion based. There's emotion in the way that this team plays and they may not be the most talented, but you know that feeling of togetherness and that emotion that that the coach helps to exude, that's what's carrying them through.
I mean, Alan. When he does get emotional on the sidelines, it's like ridiculous, like you know when he get went nuts over the targeting penalty yesterday, it's like, man, that was a targeting penalty and it just kind of looks. I'm not going to say it's not perfunctory, but it's just in the void. It's completely disconnected from the team. And the team at this point just looks beaten down.
And it's a shame to watch. And it's hard to see it getting better as the rest of the season goes along. Because if you're beaten down this much in a loss to Rutgers at home, I don't know where you're going to get up and be able to effectively leverage emotion moving forward. And it feels like like that was the last thing you could point to with IU and say, well, at least they've got that in the bag and they don't seem to have that now.
The the the really depressing thought and you you answer this in your Q&A, but I I just want to kind of recircle about it. You know because Greg Doyle had the article in the Indy Star. It's like you can't afford to you know do this for other you know it's like what cost more of the buyout or or you know keeping another year and and you know when you think about it it is that that's the really depressing part is you know if. If we roll this in the next year, I don't know how much real
damage is actually done. Like the TV money is the TV money. The big 10's still going to pay us. You know, the gate will be down. But I don't, you know, as you've said many times, like nothing's unrecoverable with IU football. And like, there's always new bottoms, but it's like you're still going to get 2025 thousand, 30,000 people there. You know, it's So it's like that's the really depressing part is like, you know, it's it's very easy to be like, oh man, you know the it's it's
worse. You can't go through another year like this like you probably can. Like you probably can do that and it's. You know, I look at myself, you know, speaking for myself, Like we got back on, you know, Friday night. We got home at like 1:00 AM You know, I I really kind of wanted to go to the game just because it's, you know, it's a beautiful day. It's homecoming.
I like the homecoming band like I I do, you know, I know we were joking that, you know, it's like that's not why you get fans. But for me, it's like I kind of like that whole experience. We have nice seats. We have a good parking spot, you know, But it's like. And I could not rally anybody in my family to want to go. It's like, all right, well, I'm not just going to go to drive down to to watch IU lose to Rutgers by myself. So I didn't go.
And then it's like halfway through the game, my wife's like, aren't you happy you didn't go. It's like and you know, and and this is, I mean so anyway back to that question. It's like I I'm actually not sure there is, you know, from a high level like I I don't know there is much harm in just doing another year of this and trying to lower that that buyout number. Well, I mean yeah, the the, the, the atmosphere around the program, I'm not sure it could tank much more than it's already
tanked. Although I think it could always get worse. I'm angry. It's just apathetic at this point. That's the thing it that's the worst kind of of atmosphere. But you know, look, I, I think ultimately the problem that Indiana faces right now, I mean normally when you've got an embattled coach and you're on the fence and there's a big buyout, it that's there's an argument that can be made.
Whether it's a financial argument that is dressed up as a competitive argument or whether it's a well, we're going to give this guy one more year because we want we we think that there might be something going, I just like this is not an embattled coach. I mean this is a coach that the program is adrift and it is at a level of uncompetitiveness as you just illustrated with your stats that exceeds at this point any three-year stretch of any coach that Indiana's had since
the first Reagan administration. And that's not I mean you you in this era I think to some degree IU football could be terrible for long stretches before and has and has and it just kind of
blended into the background. I don't know that it blends into the background in this era And what it's interesting because I think you know there's it's the big growth area with IU Athletics and I think that some to some degree you almost have to think about it from the standpoint of yeah, you could just say well that's a lot of money and we're not going to make a change because we can't afford it financially.
It's, you know that $12 million essentially the difference between a firing that would happen at the end of this year versus one next year. I mean that is a significant chunk of change paid out over you know whatever five years or so. But the flip side is you know in an era where as we've talked about television revenue and ticket revenue become more important, especially as you head towards the future where you know your your entire financial structure is entirely different, right.
You have to start building fan base participation and excitement about your football program if you're IU because it is your growth potential. And you know that it's an interesting thing because it's like you can look at the Ohio State's and the Michigan's and and other schools and you can say well you know they they are clearly doing amazing things in
in football. They don't have to worry about it, but they also don't have a tremendous amount of growth potential beyond what they've already got. I mean, those brands are about as big as they can get in this era. And I think if if you're Indiana, you have to look at it and say, yeah, you could wait another year, you know, because ultimately it's only irritating a few people. But you have to start getting people either on board with IU football or back on board.
A lot of people jumped on the bandwagon 4 years ago, and rightfully so because there have been that eight-year stretch of success, you know? So I almost feel like between the fact that there was a taste of success, someone asked. It wasn't an art tweet thread. It was in another one. Someone asked like, why wasn't there this level of irritation or anger expressed with Cameron or with Dinardo or with Lynch. But there has been this level of irritation expressed with Alan.
I guess the implication being that things are being unfair to Alan. And I actually think the problem right now is that IU football, even with the very moderate level of success that they enjoyed from 2015 to 2020, and really you could even go back to 2013 like that, that eight-year span set a different set of expectations in the people that
were following along. And so because you grabbed some fans through that process, people forget, like when Cameron was getting ready to get fired, you know, at that point, Indiana hadn't been to a bowl since 1993. You know, they so 949596, like they were bad for quite a while. Dinardo was right after that. Again, no bowl Lynch.
You know there wasn't. There weren't the calls for it, I think, because even though IU had gone to the bowl game with Hepner, there was still that feeling that was a carryover from the end of the Mallory, Cameron and Dinardo eras that this was still not a good football. Program and and and Lynch played exciting football and also like I mean that like one of the biggest pods we ever had was when we had like a throw your gum at.
It's like he had a game at Michigan where like we almost won at Michigan. Like he I'm not not here to defend Lynch. He had really low lows, but he had some incredible highs where like that that team would just come out and stun people and it's like, wow, we're almost beating Michigan, I mean. Anyway, sorry, go ahead. No, but my point was really connected to Hepner, who Hepner had a lot of goodwill built up, right? So that was also he was really connected to that, Yeah.
So all of this I'm saying is the reason why the atmosphere is different now is that Alan had success. Alan preached this idea of the T the program breaking through and they kind of did kind of. And it's it's not just that Indiana's losing, it's that Indiana's losing with a level of uncompetitiveness that we haven't seen in a long time with a team that shouldn't be this uncompetitive.
Like we've seen seasons where IU has had rosters that were just filled with nothing but two stars and former walk ONS not be competitive. This is like a different level of uncompetitive. It feels like a a team that just doesn't have a set up that provides them a chance at
victory week after week. And that I think is why you're you're getting this level of of pushback because there are AI think a small but now vocal core and I think it's largely younger fans who really do want to root for Indiana football. They weren't Indiana football to be successful And so I think that's the art. The counter argument to the well, it doesn't hurt if you wait an extra year. I think you know look I I don't think the money is ultimately
the issue. I think the it's it, there's a lot of things wrapped into it. Certainly the money is not zero issue but I think that ultimately IU there there's a there's a philosophical battle here. It's like, well, even though you wouldn't want to spend the money if you did make a change, I don't know if that can that be. Certainly, I don't think that that can be how you decide what you're going to do with this kind of a circumstance.
Because every other time you see a coach like this in this kind of a situation where there's just clearly no answers and the team is clearly stuck in the mud. And you see this across sport, this isn't just a college football thing. It is always more harmful to wait an extra year when you have to take action immediately.
Because even in an era like with the transfer portal where you can get it a quick infusion of talent, the you know, the the level of problems that it can have in terms of just people's perception of your your football program, your athletic department. The you know that you don't want to be on the wrong side of all of those things from a fan base perspective. And I think that that's what makes it more complicated than just, well, what is the buyout
number in this case? Again, my thought was perhaps you were going to come out, you know, going to come out of this Rutgers game. Indiana was going to win the game, and a lot of this was going to be put to bed for a while. And instead, it's not just the loss, the manner that they lose this game is like, wow, that program is dead in the water. That is really hard to ignore, even if it's more financially expedient to ignore.
And I guess that's the real conflict right now that I think philosophically you've got to face if you're Indiana because look, nobody wants to fire Tom Allen. Nobody, you know, I mean, there's, there's, but you can't. There's certain things that just become unignorable.
And like what the statistics you rattled off, the statistics we've talked about in terms of just the lack of competitiveness against the whole Big 10, not just the top of the Big 10 E at some point those just become unignorable. And I don't. What do you do at that point?
Well, and you bring up a fairpoint and this is and then we can probably move on. This is where this is where the football pods get really tough and might start getting really short for us because like if. If the team is going to come out and just be lifeless and you're not going to have, you know, close moral victories or not saying we can't do pods about losses. But like, at some point there's
only so much we can talk about. Like, you know, just getting just kind of DOA against Rutgers and it's like it's just going to continue to turn into these discussions about bio because there's nothing else to talk about. It's like we lost to Rutgers. We were not competitive anyway. As we wrap up IU football to, I think that's about all that there is to say about that. Let's talk a little bit about
couple of things this weekend. Hoosier Hysteria happens on the men's basketball side, which was nice to see everybody not really like the Hoosier hysterias of old. There was no scrimmage, so we really didn't get a chance to see players do a whole lot. I mean the the big, you know, spot of the night was Anthony Leal hitting a 60 foot shot to win one of the little games that they had.
The players playing yard and Garzone look really good from three you you you had some good experiences overall, and certainly I think the fans enjoyed it, but we didn't get a lot tangible out of it from a basketball perspective.
The other big news that happened on Friday, and this was a bummer for a lot of IU fans, was the news that Boogie Fland the the point guard who was down to Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama, who a lot of Indiana insiders for a long time felt like was a real good chance of coming to IU. That noise had increased. Sounds like something happened at the last second where he decided to change over to Kentucky, so he commits to Kentucky. That was a bummer for a lot of IU fans.
You know, a couple things I'll say on that. I mean first of all there's there's a reason why you and I don't like hop into recruiting that much because there are people who do that space so much better than we do. But it was funny. Like Michael Ray Ohm who's one of our subscribers on sub stack chimed in with with kind of what I thought was a a funny comment because it's true, but he said
unrelated here. But the fland recruitment is my first experience really following extremely high level recruitment closely in the nil era. And honestly it's just not that fun. It's anticlimactic when a guy commits and when you don't get him everybody throws the tantrum. Yes. And and honestly, I've found recruiting coverage even before the nil era to be like that. But now it's like you, you know, IU fans and I've never liked this if you've listened to the show.
And Scott certainly knows because he's been doing the show with me for so long. I've never liked the every time IU would lose a player, it would be like, oh, well, you know, Kansas dropped a bag or Kentucky dropped a bag. It's like everybody drops bags in the nil era and everybody was dropping bags before the nil era. It wasn't like people were just going to schools because you know they they like the architecture. So I've always hated that excuse.
But yeah, it's it's not fun. It's more like free agency than it is recruiting in in this era, which it always has been. I mean the the people that argue that it wasn't somehow before are are to me kind of missing the point on things. But yeah it's it's not I I don't find a whole lot of fun of that. A lot of people clearly do. I I am clearly in the minority on this. People spend hundreds of dollars a year subscribing to recruiting sites and and places that follow
recruiting. So I I freely acknowledge this is not an area that I'm interested in. But I I have a hard time with people who look at the boogie flan situation with him going to Kentucky and looking at that and and having it as an indictment of Woodson for two reasons. One, you're going to be in recruitments where you don't get the guy, and this was a situation where you lost the recruit to a program that just pulls in five star recruits every year. I mean, this is what I read
somewhere. I think Jeff Barrozzello said it was the the Calipari. While he's been at Kentucky, he's had a 5 star point guard in every class except for two, which is just insane. And they've got something they've had like something like 55 stars over the course of that 14 years or whatever that he's been there. So look, you're you're going to lose guys in those situations and the fact you're in the final two essentially in that decision, that's a good thing. You're, you know, you're going
to lose a few of those. You're not going to win everyone. And the other thing I'll say on this, people have been criticizing Woodson and IU for zeroing in too much on a 5 star and not having a backup, which I think is weird because these are generally the same people who then complain about how the players Indiana has recruited aren't good enough. So it's like, OK, so they went for the five star and they they didn't get the five star.
They've demonstrated an ability to go get guys in the portal or in D commitments that happened in March and April. And you're worried about them not pulling in a lesser player in this cycle who you would almost certainly just complain about down the road as being inadequate. So I feel like there's, you know, you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. The idea, to me at least, that Indiana's in these mixes and is being seriously considered by
these players is a good thing. It's not as important as what actually happens on the floor, and that's why we don't talk about the recruiting stuff that much. But you know, it would have been great to have gotten another five star in this class. They may still do that as there's another commitment coming down the Pike that Indiana's in the midst of. But the fact they've gotten a 5 star in the class is a really good start, and we'll see what
happens with everything else. And the entire landscape's so different now that I have a hard time getting really torqued out about this one way or the other. Agree with all of that. As you know, I I don't really care about anybody until they put on an Indiana jersey and actually play with an Indiana
jersey. I mean, the last time I dipped my toe into this a little bit was, I think it was like Romeo Langford and Darius Garland were both looking at IU and I I kind of started digging into Darius Garland a little bit and then. He doesn't sign here. He goes to Vanderbilt. I remember thinking like, wow, I just basically did a whole bunch of research on Vanderbilt's point guard, like a team that we're not going to play. It's like that.
That's the thing that's wild to me about recruiting is you're doing or getting it. Getting deep into this recruiting. It's like, hey, you're you're kind of putting your hopes on the whims of a 17 year old. My wife teaches high school and it's like, they are interesting characters. If you don't remember high school kids when you're in high school, it's like you're putting a lot of your hopes on that. And it's like.
Some of the times you're not going to get them and then you just did a whole bunch of research on Kentucky's point guard like hope you have fun with that, like which I don't really care about. You know the other thing that I will say it's not Pollyanna, it's just like oh hey, just because we're in the in the running is good. It's like there is a process to these things.
You're not just going to not be recruiting 5 stars and all of a sudden hey we're going to get four or five stars a year. Like it just it just does not work that way. I look at similarly to our non conference scheduling, you know we're we're going to play in Atlantis. I don't expect us to win the Atlantis tournament. I don't expect us to win the tournament in New York this year. It's like now I expect us in a couple of years to start winning those tournaments.
I'd like that. But it's like you can't just go from playing the Crossroads Classic to then playing in the battle for Atlantis and be like, hey, why didn't we win that? It's like, well, because if there's a process like you're you're playing, you know, this year you're playing UConn, they're the defending national champions. Like it's going to take some time in the same thing to me as
recruiting like. You, you can't just go from zero to, hey, we're going to beat Kentucky out of every single five star recruits. It's like that just doesn't happen. There is a process to this, and to me, Woodson is showing that process and, you know, am I giving him some benefit of the doubt? Yes. You know, but it's. I don't think it's naivete. I don't think it's just saying, you know, oh, he's doing a great job.
It's like, you know, he did land Liam Mcneely who could be really good, Boogie Flanders could be a boss. Like we don't know boogie, Boogie fland not boogie. Who cares? Like he. He's, He's. You know, who cares? This is this is the distant basketball playing cousin of the family and The Simpsons. Like, what? Oh man. Could be nothing. Nothing far. Once. Once you think about it that way, losing that recruit doesn't make doesn't hurt nearly as much.
Yeah, I mean, those kids don't look athletic at all. I think Bart Simpson way more than than one of the Finder kids. Oh, God. OK. We have another five star on the pocket like that. That's how I look at this is look, I that's the thing, it's the equation is so different now. I mean a little bit of a great player to get. You're in the final two, you
don't get the player fine. And look I think to be clear it was a very small minority of people complaining about it and look I mean you know Woodson and staff have to find some solutions at guard moving forward. We knew that already. And hey, guess what? They've demonstrated that they can pull people out of the portal. They've demonstrated that they can pull people out of decommitments from elsewhere when coaches get fired, which happens every single year.
So I'm just not too concerned about it. There's. A whole other window, like there's a window after the season where you can get guys for next year that wasn't there four, 5-6 years ago. So anyway, IU basketball will be. Coming up here very soon there's a the men's exhibition game. The first one is actually a week from today as Indiana going to take on the University of Indianapolis at 1:00.
So that'll be fun. We'll we'll look forward to to that coming up and seeing what happens with Yeah right man. I have a lot of preview podcast coming up with some some some fun. Yes, I've done some I've done some work while I was away. I'm coming back in hot and ready to go. I'm excited to hear that. All right. We're going to go ahead and wrap up for today. Scott, anything else from you? No, I think. I think we are good. We hit it all. Yeah, I'm ready for.
I'm ready for basketball as. Yeah. Well, I am too at this point. All right, that'll wrap it up. Thanks to the back Home network. Thanks to our friends at home field apparel representing sponsor. Thanks to all you folks for listening in. We'll have more material coming at you later on this week as IU men's and women's basketball both get started with their seasons. For Scott, I'm Galen. This is Crimson Cast. Thanks for joining us, folks. We'll catch you on the flip side.
Bring back the Bison. So long, everybody.