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
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We'd love to have you join the over 900 people that have joined the Crimson Cast sub stack again, crimsoncast.substack.com. 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.