You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cascade and Clavio Scott Caulfield back once again joining you here close to the end of July and we have big 10 football media days going on in Indianapolis and it's starting to feel like football season once again. IU out there trying to make some waves. We're we're very fascinated by what's going to be going on this season.
We're going to talk a bit today about some of the perceptions expectations, Indiana where where they're currently perceived, why that's the case. We're talk a little bit about what has happened so far at at Big 10 Football Media days, Kurt Signetti making some waves there as well. And we'll talk about some other stuff as well. The the college football game is out. There's some thoughts to be shared there and maybe a few other things as well. But Scott, first of all, good to
see you again. How are things? I'm doing well man. How you doing? Yeah, fine. You know, we're we're just kind of chilling here in the fine city of Bloomington. The weather's been pretty good down here over the course of the last week or so. It's been not overwhelmingly hot, which is always a concern this time of year, but I know things are good making podcast guest appearances.
Got if you have those of you who have not listened, was on the X's and Joe's podcast for an extended almost two hour long podcast about the the 90s and the end of the night era, which some of you might find interesting. So be sure to head over to the X's and Joe's podcast, which is hosted by our friends Bob Moats and Mike Wiemeth on the back Home network and go check that out. So no, things are good. Everything, any what's new in your world? Anything noteworthy?
Last night went to it's, it's funny, it wasn't this concert. I've been to two concerts now at Deer Creek this summer. I try and go a couple times. I went to Dave Matthews like a month ago and my wife and I were Ubering there and it's like, I'm plugging in the address and I'm like Deer Creek.
And it's like, that's right. It's not I, I, I know it's not Deer Queen and it's like I, I had to like actually Google what it was because I forgot if it was like Horizon or Ruhoff Cliff. Sure, whatever. Yes. Yeah, went to last night. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Speaking of the 90s. Yeah, but did make me feel old because they, they look a little old. Anthony Kiedis, the Anthony Kiedis, he had a like a, a walking boot, like a walking
boot. And, and I, I want to think like, oh, it's probably 'cause he's, you know, crazy rocker, but it's probably like he was playing pickleball and like hurt his ankle or something. But overall it was a, it was a good show keeping the 90s theme going. So we we should have had that playing in the back of your
podcast. Maybe, maybe some of our listeners have had had the same experience, but when when we were in school that there was a show at the Assembly Hall, it was the Foo Fighters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Did you go to that show? I don't. I don't think I did. No, I remember it, but I don't think I did. Yeah, that was. With with, yeah, swing and a miss for me. I think that was, I want to say that was spring of 2000.
It might have been spring of 99, but I think it was spring of 2000 because I think spring of 99 was supposed to be the Tom Petty show that got cancelled, but I might have my chronology wrong. But yeah, that was a good show. I remember having ridiculously good seats for it. This I would have been it had to have been. It had to have it couldn't have been any later in the spring of 2000, because I remember Flea made like a, a, a a Bob Knight joke or something like that and people booed.
But but I just, I think I was like 20 rows from the the floor. It was just a great evening all the way around. So if you were out in the audience and you watched that show live, let us know. We would love to hear from you. Underrated basketball fan Flee also made a Larry Bird joke last night 'cause he's obviously from LA and he's a big. He made some like work like French Lick. Like where the Hell's Larry Bird? Like mad better. It's just like, like kind of
threw it in there. Now I'm wondering if Flee has like a writing team and that just like tries to give him like two or three topical jokes for every place that he goes. And he all he knows to do in Indiana is basketball, which I guess is is on brand for for Indiana. What he does for other states, Like what? What's he doing when he goes to? He's criticizing ethanol when he plays in Des Moines or you know, things like that.
Yeah, he's. Just like Phil Fulmer talk, right, Phil Fulmer. Anyway, we we bring this up because we're excited to announce the newest podcast in the network, The Flea Show. Now. Well, yeah, I know that we could probably get Flea at this point. Like what else is he doing? I mean. That is like there there's an X, like at some point, you know, we'll, we'll be able to get him. He'll become less and less famous at some point. It's true.
Well, that's good. I'm glad you got a chance to go to that show at so Dave. Yeah. Dave Matthews Band and and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I feel like you're really. You're trafficking in 90s nostalgia here. I I tip my hat to you. Yeah, I mean, that was before like the spring of country where I did Morgan Wallin and Kane Brown. Now we're doing I get we were my wife was gonna go to Atlantis Morissette on Saturday too, but but we're not we're we're we're
taking a night out or not. Didn't do Atlantis third eye. Blind is playing later this summer. I I like how you're just genre hopping year to year. Like next year it's just Scott with like, you know, yeah, yeah, you're yeah, you do the 2003 doors down and yeah. And then the following year you're doing jazz. It's like you're going and seeing Whitten, Marsalis and.
So I've seen him actually, the last thing I'll say to this is my wife and I like three years ago went to Bare Naked Ladies and Better Than Ezra. So again, very 90s. We have a genre. They know my type at Ticketmaster, but we're watching Better Than Ezra. And it was just like 4 dudes and cargo shorts and shirts and I'm like, this looks like my HOA, right? I'm really getting old because this was a rock band.
But like, these guys look like they could just be telling me like, I got to mow my lawn and change the light, you know? Yeah. From my house, The Dirty little secret about the twenty 20s is that all of the neighborhoods are run by people that you lived next to at Brownstone Terrace. Yeah. You know, it's like you're just villas. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially all it is is like a slightly nicer Varsity Villas with like regulations about having to mow the lawn on at this stage.
So just think along those lines that you know that culture is never that far away anyway. So just a reminder folks, we are brought to you by the fine folks at Home Field Apparel here on the back home network. Home Field apparel, your place to go for the finest in college fashions, the softest fabrics, the coolest designs all over college athletics and and even some things outside of college athletics as well. Of course, they had the sweet summer seven.
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You can instead through the comfort of your own e-mail inbox. Find out when Crimson Cast has done things. We send you links to our podcast, sometimes video links as well, some articles, some things we think are interesting. I'm going to have a special treat that I'm going to drop in a future e-mail here soon for everybody, not just for our paid subscribers. We do have a paid subscriber option. We try to keep it reasonable. It's just to help financially
support the podcast. That is $5.00 a month, $50 a year. So if you like what we do here, we'd love to have you as part of the community. And it is a crimsoncast.substack.com. Thank you all for being part of it, including those who have been there since the very beginning when we launched the sub stack last year. All right, Scott, so we jump in to football and, you know, Big 10 media days. So first of all, I just want to say this.
I I generally find media days to be overblown and unnecessary. And it kind of just feels like what what annoys me, it's like we drop the levels of skepticism and just let coaches say whatever they want. And they say some really dumb stuff a lot of times. Like Dabo Sweeney was complaining the other day at ACC Media Day that, you know, the problem for the ACC is they don't have like a Paul Finebaum type of person on the ACC Network. And yeah, right. No, it's like, and I'm just
like, no one wants that. Like no one actually needs that. Like, we, we, we need fewer voices like that, not more. But anyway, that's, that's kind of neither here nor there. Big 10 Media Day. I've been to it. I've covered it as a reporter. Like it's it, it, it's largely there, I think to just remind everybody that football's about a month away. And that's exactly what is going on here. But what was cool about this media day was that I, you and specifically Kurt Signetti were
able to generate some buzz. And you know, Kurt Signetti came out and did Kurt Signetti things in his press conference where he addressed the media at large. And, and when he was answering questions afterwards, it was cool to see because ultimately we've kind of heard a lot of these things already.
But you know, the the thing about Signetti and this is this is where it it, it really does create an interesting thing when you think about IU football and what IU football is trying to do. You have to have somebody like Kurt Signetti who can generate attention and also generate like a level of swagger and confidence in your program. And a lot of IU fans are simply not used to that.
I mean, if you think about the coaches that IU has had, I mean, Tom Allen was was a guy that I think generated a lot of enthusiasm in terms of like how enthusiastic he was about stuff like life, whatever. But he also was not a guy when you listen to him talk where you were like this guy oozes confidence. Like he it was more of like an earnestness as opposed to a confidence with Tom Allen. Kevin Wilson did not ooze confidence.
Like he was a very smart football guy, but was, you know, about as charismatic as talking to your insurance broker when it came to, you know, him being up on the podium. Bill Lynch, you just were kind of like this. You know, he may know what he's doing, but it feels like this
guy's in over his head. You don't get that sense with Kurt Signetti. And and unlike Terry Hepner, who was very confidence driven and, and really whose confidence there was a quiet confidence with Terry Hepner, It is not a quiet confidence with Kurt Signetti. It is a very out confidence. It is a very like, you know, we are going to be successful. Not being successful is not an option. And we've been successful as
coaches where we've been. There's no reason why that can't happen here and we're not going to accept it not happening. That is a, from my perspective, great for IU football and great for IU football fans. But it's also so foreign that I think media love it because it's like, oh, an interesting Indiana coach. This is a nice change of pace.
But they're also like, you know, this is not what we're used to seeing out of Indiana. And I think for a lot of fans, the ones that have jumped in and I see this on social media are all the way in. They're like, I would I could listen to this guy all day. The ones that haven't, and I still talk to a few of them are like, well, we have to see results first before we're going to get excited.
So it's kind of an interesting thing with IU at this point in relation to how Signetti is out there and what he's doing as far as trying to gender engender some interest in this program, in this team. Well, as you were listing the coaches, I was, I was going through my head as you said, that sort of looking at the coaches as you're going through
them. And I think the thing that's different with Signeti as well is he's showing this kind of arrogance is not the right word, but like a very strong confidence before coaching his first game. And so you could say that once the things got going with Tom Allen, Allen kind of got there with the Elio thing and sort of preaching it. But we think about how Tom Allen started like it was kind of a a presser in the middle of the night and then he loses his ball game.
And then it's like, you don't really, you know, those of us very close to football knew the Elio stuff the first two years, but that that program was kind of quiet. You're right. Wilson came in and it wasn't he had almost an arrogance of like, this isn't Oklahoma, like you guys don't know what you're doing. And that was more of kind of his tone. I remember from the starting, you know, Bill Lynch obviously came in under very, you know, tough circumstances.
But I would never say Bill Lynch was a, you know, braggadocious type of guy outside. And when he's throwing gum in the, you know, Michigan, Michigan game. So this is something you need. And you go through the list, you know, nothing Gennardo ever did was was what you would was good. Cam Cameron wasn't boisterous. And, you know, Matt Mallory's, you know, we're talking early 80s.
I can't, you're right. There's not a coach that's been this kind of confident with a bit of swagger before he's even played his first game. And I understand from fans who went through the Tom Allen experience and we got a little bit, you know, big as a program going into 2021 and kind of like, all right, now is our moment. And it all fell flat. So I, I get the idea of like, hey, we need to see results first. But I, I all I would say is like, I like it.
Like this is better. What, what I found funny on the reaction to all of these things and the reaction to, you know, how Signetti sounded at media day is it always does seem like the rest of the conference or other fans are like mean why, why are they doing that? Like why is Indiana doing that? It's like, what's the other option? Like just to continue? That's fine. We'll just be bad. Like that's what we're going to, you know, we're just going to hire a doorknob to be our coach.
And Nick, sorry, sorry. We talked about beating teams and I'm so sorry that we thought we could beat Michigan. Like that's like at some point teams that are bad have to become good again. So this there was something, I think the thing that stuck out to me the most from Signetti's comments and I, I went back and was watching them this morning
and it stuck out again. So he got asked about the, the appearance at the basketball game where he says, you know, Purdue sucks, but so do Michigan and Ohio State. And, and I, I loved his explanation. Like, you know, this is an entertainment business. We're in the we're in the business of entertainment and you know, we want to, we want to be everybody's rival, He says. I think later on in the press conference, I think a lot about the way that IU has kind of accepted its fate in football
over the course of time. If you think about like Lee Corso, you know, famously like goes like six or seven years before winning the old Oaken bucket, and then he wins the old Oaken bucket and he likes that, takes the bucket home and like sleeps with it and all that, you know, famously. You take a picture at halftime leaving Michigan. No, no, no. That was Ohio State. Yeah, that was And that was. And that was more of a joke.
But. But then later on, and, you know, and this has been really consistent. You've got the whole what have you done to beat Purdue today? Signetti got asked something about the Purdue rivalry and essentially was like, well, we don't play them until Week 12. We'll worry about them then. In state rivalries are great,
but we want to beat everybody. And, you know, I, I think a lot about how IU football and the the people that run IU football, like the Purdue game has been the biggest thing because that's been the barometer of success. Did you beat Purdue? Did you did you win three games and then beat Purdue? OK, great. Well, hey, it was a successful season. Like that was what you aimed for the only barometer of success because you're not beating Michigan, Ohio State, you're not going to a bowl.
And, you know, so the stories we've heard in the past about people walking around in the middle of the season and saying, well, what did you do to beat Purdue today? It's like, let's be frank, like IU and Purdue are about the same
level of program. They're both bad historically in the Big 10, as much as Purdue likes to pretend that they're better over the last 30 years, they're pretty much the same as Indiana. And you know, they've had some more success and, and even like, especially in the last few years, they've had shockingly little success compared to what they seem to think that they've had. And so it is kind of a an artificial lowering of standards when that's all you're focused on.
Not that beating Purdue shouldn't be an important thing, but I do like the idea that a new coach comes in and says, well, OK, yeah, Purdue's a rival, but it's one game out of 12. It's not what we need to fixate on throughout the course of the year, which does that's different from what we've seen from a lot of coaches in the past that IU. And so I I am appreciative of
that. And I think it's a very different type of mindset now with a lot of this, I mean, at the end of the day, and, and Signetti himself has noted this in a press conference. Like it's this is just talk. Like we're we've gotten to the point now where it's like you got to go do things as opposed to just talking about them. And this is where the big unknown happens to be. You know, Signetti's doing his job.
His job is to go out and get people interested in IU football, not so much fans, although that is certainly helpful because fans in the stands and means fans interested in donating money, which means NIL money, which means a bunch of other things. But you've got to make IU seem like a place that's a run by people who know what they're doing. And then B, are able people who are able to take that knowledge and translate it into results. And recruits pay attention to this.
High school coaches pay attention to this. And IU's got to do something to stick out and, and stand out that you cannot just continue to go along the way that Indiana's gone along and build slowly. You can make certain progress that way. But especially in the transfer portal era, you need a coach that's out there that that sounds clever, that sounds like they know what they're doing, that sounds confident, that's bringing A level of of swagger
to your program. Because those are all factors that are going to be utilized by recruits and transfers. And thinking about where am I going to go to school? And, you know, there's some stuff that's going on right now in terms of this proposed settlement, which we'll get to in a second, where it's like it's going to get harder, not easier, I think for Indiana to compete at the level it wants to compete at because of how far away they are.
So how do you bridge that gap? You've got to bridge that gap, you know, to to, you know, build to success. I mean, he had this, he had this comment and this was about nil, but he Signetti's comment was I'll quote here. Somebody asked me, how do you define success at Indiana? I was like, well, we want to be the best. I mean, you don't you, you don't bring your kids up, Johnny, you know, to be 4th best, I want you to be 10th best. Bullshit. We want to be the best.
So when I talk about no self-imposed limitations, that's what I'm talking about that that kind of mentality, you know, it's hard to say. I never know for sure with coaches if they're saying these things in press conferences or if they're not like what is their actual belief system? How are they actually approaching things? You know, you can, you can talk about this all you want.
How do you actually make it happen in practice when you're dealing with with your players and you know, how are you defining their levels of success when you have coaches that don't outwardly talk about these things, does that mean they don't think that they're important?
Probably not, but. I do think as much as we don't know about what makes a coach successful and effective versus not, other than things like being very detail oriented tends to help, you know, working smart tends to help like things like
that. You can't help but gravitate towards a coach as a fan or as somebody who's looking from the outside in that seems to have command of themselves and what they're doing and seems to be able to say things that make sense in terms of what equates to success. Again, you've got to wait to see it it happening, but it does feel like a breath of fresh air when he goes out and does this spiel in front of a bunch of people.
It's like this guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about and he seems like he hires people that know what they're doing. And that really does make you feel more confident, even if there's not necessarily a lot of tangible evidence saying you should be more confident. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's and again, I'm not I'm not the biggest fan of of media that a day stuff because it doesn't in the end, it doesn't really matter and you can have nice
sound bites. What I do like is you, you did mention, you know, selling the program and and the NIL piece. You know, I, I do like that even though he's a little bit on the older side of coaches, he, he does seem to understand and be forward thinking with the way NIL and the transfer portal is going. We're like, I mean, one of his, one of his quotes is, you know, he talks about getting hired and he's like day one of the job. I got 10 offensive starters in the portal. Half my defense.
I didn't know that kind of joking about when he took the job. But then he goes on to talk about how like, instead of being like, you know, we're a lot of some coaches in the last year or two and turn that into like, and this is the problem with the portal. Like you just you get like starts bitching about the portal NIL. It's just like, no, like, and then I got to go to work and I'm going to start solving this. And it does feel like, you know, he understands the the way this
is going. There's also, you know, and again, man, you and I are both kind of glass half full with football right now. So we're looking at this and trying to, you know, looking at the positive side of things, but they're also does seem to be, you know, it does feel like it's kind of the, you know, the proverb, you know, run, but, you know, be fast but don't run or something like, you know, Signetti does feel like he's understands.
You know, I probably only have seven or eight years here at IU to really do something where at times it has felt with other coaching Staffs kind of like, hey, this is a process. We're building the first steps this year of a four or five year process with Signeti. It does feel like he kind of sees like, man, I'm 62, I don't have 20 years to flip this
around. Like it does kind of feel like we're not trying to skip all the steps, but we're trying to be quick without running and kind of being like, hey, we're, we're trying to be good and we're trying to be good now. And I do think that is what a lot of people are gravitating toward because every every other time and we've had a major regime change in football. It always feels like the discussion is like, well, we got to tear it down to the studs.
This is this a long process. And we know in Indiana you're not going to get success overnight. You start getting like all these. It's like, well, that sounds like a three-game, the three win season, like before even started, I've never felt that was signeting like, and that's The thing is. And then everything, the little pieces that I'm hearing is that, you know, we're not skipping the steps and we're doing things the
right way. And these are all the things that, you know, this is what he's known for is being kind of a leader of a program and building a program. And so that's I think where if I just distill it down, I think that's what people are really gravitating towards the the feel of we might actually be good this year. Not like, you know, win the big 10 good, but 567 wins good. I hope it's better than five wins that that that. Yeah, we're, we're not doing the predictions yet.
But yeah, well, no. And, and look, it was interesting. There was a nice piece in the Daily Hoosier that that Seth Tao wrote that talked to some of the players. And one of the the notes from I, I'm trying to remember which this was Aiden Fisher, who played at JMU. He was asked about Signeti and how that whole situation is, you know, working in terms of looking at him as a coach from the player perspective.
And his quote was the thing with coach Sake and how contagious his attitude and self belief is. It's huge for our team. We have a guy that's going out there and he believes so highly in himself just because of the way he prepares himself. So that kind of leads into us and we believe so much in ourselves and what we can do because we have the guy at the head of it who's taking care of things on the back end to where there's nothing that we're not prepared for.
It's because he's taking care of those things behind the scenes. And I mean, ultimately, I think what you see with a lot of really successful coaches is that very thing you know, it is, it is very much do you have the confidence in what you've done that you've managed to secure all of the details. And as we talked about many times in the Allen era or the Wilson era, wasn't it was it was really inherent in both of those two very diametrically different types of coaches.
They were always felt like there were details that weren't being accounted for. Now we may see this team on the field after a month and be like, wow, there's just a lot of details that still haven't been accounted for. But I thought it was telling Signetti saying in the media day, you know, there were a lot of guys that did me a favor because they left, you know, rather than stick around.
You hear stuff like that. The things that I've heard here locally about how IU has been progressing in practices and in spring and whatnot, and it does feel like there's just a much greater attention to details, a lot more businesslike in a lot of ways and so. That that's I've heard that too, that you know that on and AM and it's just comparing where we were with Alan it it felt like the things I was hearing from the Alan when you know, things were going on.
There was a very, a very flat organization where it's like, you know, anybody could talk to anybody and like you could move up and, and not in a bad way, but it, everything that I've heard is that it is very businesslike and it's a very
higher hierarchical. So it's like if you're a tight end, you talk to your tight ends coach before you talk to the offensive offensive line, you know, the offensive coordinator and it, it does, you know that very few, very few of the players are actually dealing with Signetti, which is kind of the way it should be. Not, not just everyone's talking
to everybody about everything. It was a comment from Mike Kadik, who has been around for a while and, and is certainly very familiar with how things go in that same piece by Seth. And it basically said, you know, we're, we feel like we're getting essentially a different level of support. The quote was with Coach Signetti and the confidence he brings to the program, this community. I think the fans are getting behind him and us. And I think that's what we needed.
We needed some support. Not that we don't get support from the fans in the community, but it's feeling different this year. It it and it does. We've talked about it, other people have talked about it. The vibe is just so different in terms of how the fans, not all of them, but most of them are perceiving this program. And at the end of it all, it's coming from Signetti and to a lesser extent, his staff and the way that they are conducting themselves publicly, trying to get people excited.
And they're succeeding. And it this is again, it's an intangible thing. And we've look, people got excited about Tom Allen. You know that you had the whole breakthrough thing and it felt like coming off of that Pinstripe Bowl year, there was an. That was marketing. No, I hear you. But like that was all marketing because like that was the marketing department pushing the breakthrough thing. That wasn't like that was that was like that.
As you were saying, I was creeping like a lot of this excitement. There's not really a marketing plan for the football season this year. It's really just Signeti being and, and this is one of those like it's, you know, not to get into a Hollywood thing, but it's like some people just have it. I, I don't want to sit here and just completely glow him because we, we come out and lose the FIU in Western Illinois. Like things are going to be a
little bit different. But you know, you, you can just kind of tell when you see coaches, some of them have it and have that intangible, some don't. And we all know it. And I, I do think Sigdetti has it and it's all we have to go off of right now.
But I, I would say the difference is a lot of the times the interest in football was based on the marketing department kind of pushing along the team where this feels, this feels like it's all signet because I haven't seen, you know, as a season ticket holder, I haven't seen like a lot of marketing stuff from the football, but not a bad way. But it's not like there's a slogan that's going out there from marketing. No, there is. It's never daunted. Have you, have you not?
I forget you haven't been on on social media for like 3 months. Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm the one who actually left. Everyone says they're leaving. Scott. You did leave Scott. Scott has gone to the gated. Community of social media Which what? What? That sounds that just sound way worse. No, I just I, I was never. I'm still as engaged as I was, which was never I I check on stuff during games and that's about.
It no, there's this whole new thing on Twitter that's fascinating, which is this never daunted hashtag, which has kind of become the rally point for a lot of the online fans for football, which is great because it's, it's and then even like, like there was a leaked photo of a bison in the, I think it was either the weight room or in one of the other areas with the never daunted slogan above it. Like it.
But that came, it felt somewhat organically throughout the process of, of all of the things that have gone on over the course of this spring and summer. And I just, I'm excited because there's excitement. The video of them moving the rock, I did see that, yes. There's just little things and well, look at the, again, at the end of the day, what happens when you get on the field is
what's going to matter. And I think it's interesting because Signetti pointed it out and a lot of IU fans have pointed out like nobody's taking IU seriously amongst the traditional media. Like the traditional media voted Indiana 17th out of 18 teams. There are some cracks in that. It's interesting because we've we've heard a couple of podcasts, not ours, say Indiana could win eight games this year. You know, one there was another podcast I've lost.
There's so many of them have lost track, but like on the 11 guy said, well, they they're not going to be very good. Another was like, they might have more wins than Michigan State and Washington combined. I mean, there's it's all over the place. And part of this, and it kind of goes back to something you said earlier. It's such a reset in college football year over year now because of the fact that you bring in a brand new team.
I mean, we think Indiana's done that because they've got what, 35 transfers and a bunch of guys who have been starters. Signetti mentioned. Like this is a team that's going to have like 31 seniors just in terms of like, not just the guys that were stuck around, but all the transfers that came to that don't have any eligibility left after this year. But Washington, I think has even more. Like Washington was like around 40 transfers.
It's half your team, you know, So when you're talking about, you know, when Signetti himself in press conferences is talking about, it's really hard to prep because you don't have a lot of tape from guys that are going to be there to watch. You don't see a lot in spring ball. He was mentioning, like, trying to scout Washington specifically. And it's like, we're going to have to look at or at at Arizona footage because that's where Jed
Fish was from. Yeah. That's what a lot of coaches are having to do if they're struggling to know how to evaluate teams. Media have no shot. I mean, nobody's watching that much film. You know, nobody's paying that much attention. Nobody's got access to that kind of material. So it's, this isn't a criticism. But most of the time these polls and the way that people project, it's going to be based off of the profile of the school and what the school has done up to that point.
And if you look at Indiana and you saw how Indiana played last year and the struggles that they had, and then you look at the Big 10 as a whole and you're trying to evaluate based upon that. Of course you're going to have Indiana in like the bottom one or two teams. I, I don't see what the argument would be against that. But that's all that you're basing it off of. You're not basing it off of knowing what Indiana's got because I don't even think Indiana knows what they've got.
We don't know if Curtis Rourke is going to be a big 10 caliber starter. We don't know if all these transfers are going to come in and play well. We don't know, you know, how Signetti's approach is going to translate. There's all these intangibles and there's also intangibles with a lot of the teams on Indiana's schedule and you go down the list like how does Maryland recover from not having Taga Vailoa as their starting
quarterback? How does UCLA recover from not having Chip Kelly and not having a lot of NIL money? How does Washington recover from losing all of those people and having a brand new coaching staff come in? How does Northwestern recover from deciding to play in a 10,000 seat stadium? You know, I'll be like, there's just all kinds of those things. Michigan State's another one
where you're like, who knows? So there's there's very few Givens and I don't blame people for underrating or underestimating Indiana because if I didn't know, if I wasn't plugged in to the Kurt Signetti rejuvenation machine, I would probably underrate Indiana too. I'm, and we're probably sitting here, you know, we've been dogging UCLA and talking about how that's potentially an easy win.
We're looking at Washington being like, well, they may not be very good and we're you're not sitting there with an IV drip of Jed Fish quotes from the offseason or something like that. So, you know, same with me. So it's just one of those things where it's a natural to put Indiana in that spot. And I actually think it helps Indiana because it will position them in a place where perhaps they're not taken as seriously, at least in the first year.
And that may be what Indiana needs to, you know, win a couple of one score games that they lost last year. So 2, two things. One, as you talk about, you know, teams having so many variables as they're preparing for do do you think Signetti has made a real tactical error here by naming a starting quarterback in Rourke? I mean, should we go back to another variable It's just not having We shouldn't. Maybe we should not name a
starter and just try that again. You know, I, I, I got to say, this is the frustration that I've had You and I have talked about this a lot. When you see something that doesn't matter being pushed forward as something that matters, it really does reduce your confidence. And this is, I think this is a great lesson for leaders in any
walk of life. If you're, if you're ACEO or if you're running a division of a business and you fixate on something that is clearly not an advantage, but you keep talking about it being an advantage, you're going to start to lose people. And I think that's kind of what
happened. I mean, the it's, it's still fascinating to me that we spent that much time being like, we, we couldn't possibly let you know who's going to be the starting quarterback because you know, that's going to give the other team an advantage for what a drive, you know, and, and it's funny now, especially in this era where teams are changing over by a ridiculous degree, like you've got, there's so much more subterviews just kind of built into college football
because you don't know what the roster is going to be from one year or next. But hey, guess what? That's how a lot of football works. That's how it works at the at the pro level. When the average career length is what, three years, you've got all this change over. Somehow those coaches are still able to do what they need, need to do. So I am glad that there's some stability, that there's a clear
hierarchy. I do think that that helps to breed, you know, a, a mindset of here's what we're going to be doing and it's nice to get away from that particular mode of operation. Yes, yeah, the, the the second one and I, you know, again, like, like you said, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not digging into UCLA's offseason. I'm barely digging into IU football's offseason, but where I do think, as you know, people who are paying attention to IU football and I think Signetti is seeing this also.
You know it, it does feel like the quiet, quiet confidence is coming from the schedule. You might have been talking about this for like almost three years. You you saw ahead, you saw how advantageous the schedule was early on and then even with the new Big 10 pieces. But, you know, we'll be doing a pod, a preview podcast soon going through each game, but you would assume the first two games, FIU and Western Illinois, those should be wins.
And then, you know, if, if you're just taking how people looked professionally and seemed to run an organization, you know, I did see some clips of Desean Foster at media day. I, I, I feel good with where we're going coaching versus US and them. And UCLA isn't exactly a world beater. I mean there's and you just keep
going through the schedule. There's a world where you know, we're we're hosting Maryland. I also noticed that the Big 10 did list their games for the Big 10 tailgate and that will be the the game that Indiana gets. So the Maryland game on September 28th, the Big 10 tailgate were there.
It's not quite game day, but you could have a scenario where that's a four and O Indiana team with the Big 10 tailgate, like a real hyped up environment playing Maryland where you could be looking at going five and O and two and O in the Big 10. That's not illogical. And so I, I'm not going to keep going from there, But I just, I think there is a real path to
seeing that as a possibility. Not like we have in the past where it's like, well, you know, maybe if Michigan State sucks or if, you know, Minnesota's not as like this is a real path to a real kind of nice pivot point in the season where it's like there could be a lot of enthusiasm. And I, I feel like that's also where some of this confidence is coming from.
Yeah, it's there's so many options that the season has in terms of like the option is the wrong word, but there's so many directions it could potentially go. It's nice to have that pathway in front of you where if you take advantage of it, it's a nice runway for what could happen through the rest of the season. It's also a young team, it's a new team, it's a team that's still going to have to learn how to mesh.
And so we'll, that's where the balance has to come from from us as analysts and pundits to, to try to evaluate where things are going. It's just, I'm just excited. There was such a trepidation going into last season. I remember sitting here last year and just kind of being like, well, I guess we're going to run this back. And, you know, it looked like we're going to run it back for
two years in a row. So to be in the spot that we're in now where we're talking about this and you got entertaining stuff going on at media day. It's just it just the the the the overall, the old. Well, I didn't say vibe because it's more than because we used vibe a lot last year. But the aura around IU football is different. And we'll yeah, the patina. That's right. Yes, it's it's it's nice, a nice Foss for bronze at this point.
But yeah, it's it's it's just fun and I'm excited and it's great to see the coaches right now having fun with it and the players, you know, seem to be in a good mindset. And then I guess the last thing I'll say on this mindset, as I think we talked about when Signetti got hired, mindset is
such an important thing. There's as much as we like to make a, you know, the, the difference in terms of teams from a physical perspective isn't always as big as we think it is, certainly between the very top teams. Like Ohio State's athletes look like they're from a different solar system than Indiana's in a lot of cases. But mindset helps a lot. And we've seen teams that don't have the talent of Ohio State compete against Ohio State, beat Ohio State, including Indiana teams.
Where did that come from? That either came from great scheme or great mindset. I think Indiana's got the chance to have both, and that is exciting. And I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like over the course, especially that first month where you're still seeing the settling in happening because that can set the pathway for the rest of the season. Yep, yeah. Anyway, we'll, we'll keep up to speed for you all on that.
They'll be plenty to talk about. We'll have some, some fun interviews coming out throughout the course of this upcoming next couple of of of of months and I guess next month. It's only we've only got, what, 36 days until the season starts? Very soon. Wild. Anyway, let's let's move on slightly. I want to talk about the college football video game. I recorded something last week where I talked about some problems with the game. You know, there were certainly
some positive things. I've enjoyed actually playing the football. It gets devilishly difficult once you get above like varsity level, but they actually dropped a patch and that patch fixed some of the things that I complained about last time and I haven't had a chance to really dive in post patch too much. But you've been playing as well. Would have been your overall reflections on the experience of playing college football for the first time in a long time.
So we, we were at a lake house last week. So it dropped. I I was not in in a position to download a game. You were at a lake house? I don't believe that last year. Yeah. Yeah, last week. Yeah. So, but it's like it was family time, vacation. Like, I was not going to be like, hey, well, you guys go have fun. I'm going to play NCAA Football for 10 hours. So I I got it, you know, like three or four days ago. I listened to your podcast first
and then started playing. So I went in with some of your thought mindset. I've I'm still only year one in my dynasty. So I, I don't, I don't know some of the longer term things that you're talking about, but it was funny going into the recruiting and I heard you talk about how like, you know, kind of not super intuitive and not sure. And I'm like, all right, well, that's just, I'm, I played a ton of NCAA. I'm sure Galen's just missing
stuff. So I go into the dynasty and then it's like week two, I go in and it's like, wait, why? Why are like half my points already gone? Like why, why is it like auto recruited? Like going like checks the auto recruits Like, oh, no, it doesn't auto recruit. Just like what you do one week automatically goes the next week and then like a little red gem pumps up and I'm like, I think that's bad. But like what? What is the gem?
Is that good? Or besides, like I'm literally I've done more Googling for this game than I've ever done where it's like NCLO football 25 red gem. What does it mean? And it's like, oh, there's a red gem, there's a green gem. It's like it does you see it, it kind of makes sense. But there's also like all these icons in the recruiting that I'm just like, don't know what any of these things mean. Maybe I sound super old, maybe just Googling is the new directions.
But there there was kind of an unintuitiveness that you are 100% right. There's still little things like I created a custom playbook. I cannot find out how to make it my playbook in my dynasty and I've been Googling trying to how to figure that out. Outside of that, the gameplay is really smooth. Some of the stuff did come right back. I was able to find some of the yeah, thanks for your, your comment down there. I tried to warn them the, the, the gameplay is very smooth.
Some of the things came back. You know, the, I started in freshman. I played a game as Texas, just, you know, kind of the fun offense. I was just crushing somebody like, like, all right, this kind of came back. Then I, I stepped up the level to varsity and I noticed it getting a little bit tougher. But no, it's it's thus far, I think you're a little bit, you were a little bit harder on the game than I would have been. I would say it's a recommend to go out and buy just because it
is, it is fun. The gameplay is fun. And you know, I hopefully they can fix some of those longer term things. I just have not had to get with it. But once you once you kind of understand how the mechanics of all the recruiting pieces work, like once you figure stuff out, it's all right. But yeah, there is a there's definitely some Googling. It's going to need to happen when you get going.
And, and I, you know, I think that it really depends on how much you need absolute or at least a perception of absolute realism in order for it not to be immersion breaking. That ends up kind of being the, the borderline for a lot of people in this case. I look at it like this. It's a fun game. I actually think the patch
addressed quite a bit. It just takes an adaptation and there's going to be some things in the SIM engine that don't work very well simply because of the the weird way that college football is shaped right now. But I think you can make some changes yourself to the mix that help. There's some, there's already some stuff out there with Googling, whether it's YouTube or Reddit. Both of those communities have done a really good job of diving
into some of the mechanics. I've picked up some tips on the recruiting front, which have helped. I picked up some tips on the gameplay which have helped. And I feel less awkward. You know, I think for a lot of people this is a weird launch because, you know, it's, it's aimed at us, Scott. It's aimed at people our age.
Yes, it's certainly aimed at younger people, but the bulk of the excitement seems to be coming from people between like ages 35 and 50, not coming from people ages like 12 to 25. Now, I think that will grow, but I'm actually surprised at how close they tried to get to the experience that most people had before. And yeah, they missed a mark on some things, but I think that they can round those things into
shape overtime. It's just it's also an interesting era for this sort of thing because what you end up with is this situation where people get really vicious online when there's things that happen that they don't like and you know, everybody. Because when you are critical or when you are when you're complaining about something, you're going to get more attention on social media. And so that's been the 1st place that most people have gone.
It's like, let me go be loud and angry about something and that will lead to more attention being given to me. It's not going to help with the game. And a lot of times it actually provide provides an inaccurate picture of where the game is at. So yeah, I know I would definitely say buy it. I just wanted people to go in with some expectations based on what I had seen. And then credit to EA, they did drop a patch short shortly after
I did that. I'm sure it was my podcast to kind of push them over the edge on those things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They'll be a sponsor soon. The other thing that I was kind of surprised with, and again, man, forgive me, things change quickly. I know it's not Division One. It's, you know, football, the FBS or but I was I, I just remember what like we talked about in one of our previews, like the Idaho team and the KIBI Dome, like Idaho's not in the game.
Like I, I remember there just being like a plethora of teams, like 140 teams in the old game. I was surprised at how few of like obviously all the teams are there, like you're missing Michigan or Michigan State or something. But it's like they're, they didn't seem to be the same number of teams. Like, you know, as again, starting out a dynasty. I'm like, all right, I don't want to. I'll start with a bad team.
And it's like there wasn't as many bad teams available or just kind of it, it felt like a little bit more like what college sports is now just the cream rising the top and here kind of the top 50 or so teams. Although it was, it was fun pulling the stars that you're giving me that look. Maybe it's just Idaho that was missing. Idaho, yeah, 'cause Idaho's not FBS and they don't have FCS teams in there, but there's like 130 teams in the game, so it.
It felt like less, but maybe, maybe that's with my memory. I think it, I think it's because there's everybody's packed in conferences. And I mean, I would recommend and 'cause I think it's a valid, it's a valid point because you're used to seeing more conferences and you can see more teams. Go to ESP NS standings page for college football and page through it and you'd be like, how many teams are in the American. Yeah, how how many teams are in the Sunbelt?
It is wild, like how clustered college football has been. And that's I because I I did have a similar thing there to the point where I'm going to start a new dynasty this weekend where I just do a complete realignment based upon what I want college football to look like. I think that's a better way of going about things. Sorry. Go ahead.
I'm I'm in a dynasty with my brother-in-law and he's Eastern Carolina and it's like I got to remember what conference they're in. It's like they're in the American. They're also East Carolina. They're going to come and beat you up. So I'm playing UTAP and there's many times I'm like, I think I should be in the sunbelt. Like no, I'm in Conference USA like feel UTAP as a sunbelt team.
The other thing where they miss the mark definitely for like people like you and I is there is no cross play on dynasty games. Obviously cross play exists because there is real cross play for you and I can play online. You're an Xbox. I'm APS five guy. You know, I'll, I'll just say this in our, in our world of political divisions, Galen, we need to be coming across the
aisle. And I think this is where EA Sports needs to understand that we're not, we're not a red country, not a blue country, we're not APS 5 country, not an Xbox country. We are an all gaming country. Like not having cross play for dynasties is is kind of silly. It makes me wonder if there is going to be a $20 patch coming
out that solves that. But it does seem like that's that that's kind of almost a real F you to a lot of the fans because like you have to know this is an environment where, you know, I would not say there's one clear gaming console standard. It does feel like PS5 and Xbox are both have a pretty sizable market share. It's not like you're talking about, you know, you know, VHS and Betamax back in like 89 or something and and then every other game has cross play enabled.
And then even within your own game, you have cross play enabled in other areas. To not have it in kind of the one key part that everyone's really going to want to play does seem like almost like an intentional miss for some reason. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. I, I think that'll probably get fixed down the road. I mean, I, I get the sense even with two years to work on things, there were just, there were some things that they just didn't do. And I think you, there's some,
some criticism there, certainly. But it is disappointing when something that was promised as a, a feature doesn't end up actually happening. And there's been a few things like that. But look, again, I'm willing to wait until right before this the regular college football season starts. And this is, I think one of the big differences between the old, like the last time college football came out as a video game was 2013, like it was 11 years ago. It was a very different world
back then. Yes, there were patches, but the the way that video games get downloaded and used these days is very, you know, everybody was getting a physical copy of the game in 2013. Very few people are getting physical copies of the game in 2024. It's not to say that it isn't happening, but a lot of people are just buying on whatever the store is, PS5 or the OR the Xbox store, and downloading directly from that. There's patches that come out more regularly.
In some ways it's a much more stabilized system because you're not reliant on an Internet. You are relying on an Internet connection, but you're not reliant on them getting it right the first time. But it is disappointing, and we see this a lot in the video game industry in general where stuff gets released in a not ready state because there's an announced sell date and then it has to be patched. So if you dive in early, you can get disappointed very quickly.
And that is a problem that I think a lot of people maybe are running into with this game. And again, I think, as I said on the last show, just let it breathe a little bit. And I think they're going to get a lot of those problems fixed, at least I hope so. They got Memorial Stadium right. Yes, looks good. The only thing, and this is kind of always been an issue with the college football games.
I, I wish they would go, and this is a very minor Scott thing, but I wish they would go deeper in some of the alternative jerseys. Like if you're, if you're IU, like UTEP has like 3 jersey choices. Like it's just, you know, three colors. Same with IU, although it's like they, they have two different versions of the Trident and the eye helmet. And I can't tell the, the difference, but there are two
different versions. But it would be cool if they brought back like, you know, the, the Oval and the, the, the, the Chrome striped helmet. You know, if if there was a little more attention to detail for teams with all of their their throwback possibilities, makes it a little bit more, a little more, you know, things you can play around with during a dynasty. I agree. We'll see what happens. I mean, my, the one thing I always like to do is do the so the create a team stuff all
happens online. I always like to create the Chicago Maroons and put them back in the Big 10 that you know, and then like then we have a nice regional conference. I'll probably going to do that. There's actually some somebody's already created the Chicago Maroons on team builder. I'm going to put that original Big 10 team back in the Big 10. That's a good rebuild challenge if you're looking to to do
something unique. So that's something that I will probably be attending to. Stuff like that though with IU, like little detail things. I think a lot of that is going to get added in future itinerations. It's a lot of stuff. You get 130 teams in college football. That's a lot of little details that you got to hit across the board. I am interested to see how they handle all of that as we move
forward. So anyway, it's the 26th of July and what we're going to try to do moving forward here is, you know, we're we're going to ramp up a bit on the football side, you know, basketball kind of in a holding pattern. We know what the non conference schedule is going to be, Scott.
We don't know what the conference schedule is going to be. We probably aren't going to know that until the end of August. I would guess maybe even early September. But this will be we'll do a lot of football stuff here over the course of the next few weeks as we try to get a sense of what this team's going to look like.
Obviously, we're about as much in the dark as everybody else in terms of how the pieces are going to mesh together, but I think we can start doing some studies and some interesting things about the teams that Indiana is going to play and just how Indiana is we think is going to attack things.
Obviously, you know our friends over at Bite Sized Bison, Taylor Lehman, he's going to be doing a lot of great work with data and we'll have him on a few times to talk about what he's seeing and some of the projections going on there. But that should be a fun next month as we ramp up for that first game that Indiana hosts the the end of August. Tailgate is always a hot 1, so we'll be prepping for that as well. On the food side, we'll talk about a little bit of that. So I'm excited.
We're looking forward to football season being back as it really does feel close and looking forward to chatting about this with you. Any anything else from you before we wrap up today? No, it it's a, it's a very quick minor postscript. Can I can I make one thought on the schedule for basketball? Yeah, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, please. It's, it's not a fully formed thought and I, I, I never fully like going down the road of, you know, hey, I'm a season ticket holder and like, I'm spending money on this. But it, this is, you know, when the, everything that you said about the schedule makes sense
and I think it's all valid. I think the piece that is sometimes missed or not discussed is it it it is just kind of a bummer as a season ticket holder, how many games in the non conference that Indiana controls are just games that I really don't want to go to and I feel like I'm paying for and don't get. And you and I used to joke about going to like what you and I would go to the premier non conference game and I I went back and looked in the last like
five years. So last year there was two games, you know what, one Kansas, we finished season ranked 27th. I guess Army is also a named team, but they were 300 and 44th. But it's like you didn't know like I know Army versus like, you know, Merrimack State or whatever. The year before was North Carolina. That's fine. The year before that I remember was like St. John's and you're like, I guess, I guess this is it. The year before that was a COVID. That was the COVID season.
Like there was just that was a funky year. There was not a lot of non conferences fine. The year before that you had Princeton and Florida State Princeton, I just go again with the name 150th in the country. And then the year before that you had kind of a nice year. You had Marquette and Louisville both coming to Assembly Hall. That that's kind of fun. I, I, I would just say with the schedule, the thing that's kind of a bummer. And, and this ties into football as a season ticket holder on
both sides. And I firmly agree with everything football is doing with the schedule. And I firmly agree, like we shouldn't be scheduling, you know, better schools and football. But it is just, you know, in a world where the varsity club wants money and now NIL wants money from from donors. And then, you know, pieces of that used to be part of kind of the program are now costing extra in football.
And then you have to pay for your tickets and those ticket prices go up. It is just a bummer. It's like there's not a lot of fun teams coming through to see. And it does feel like this is where basketball can step it up. And I was looking at the schedule, you know, just over the last couple of years, it's a lot of, you know, Kennesaw State and Merrimack State and you know, you, you can go, you know, we played Xavier on the road. Why not get a home and home with
them? You know, and I look, you know, there's, there's teams like DePaul is not great. They're a regional team. You know, I'm also, as I'm saying my own argument, I'm kind of knocking it down. I'm not sure it really matters like if you're just trying to get wins, get wins. But I do wonder if there's something, you know, maybe you look to get some, you know, Evansville or just more regional teams that are also not great to pad some of those wins, at least to make them a little bit more
of interesting games. If you're not going to pull one or two better, you know, non conference games at home. But I would just say that's, you know, it's kind of been Indiana's MO the last five years to have one OK team come in. It just sucks this year at South Carolina and not like a Kansas or a North Carolina. It kind of feels like that year and you know, 2122 with Saint John's.
But that that's just it. It's kind of 1/2 form thought that I'm not fully convicted on. But just as someone who's paying money, it is a bummer when you know, so many of the non conference games are just like this. This is all BTN Plus to me. I'm I'm offended by that last comment. No, no, no. Just like I. Mean like it's a BTN plus game? Like if this is a game that would be put on BTN Plus it's no
not. Having having done play by play for an IU game that was on Big 10 Plus last year, I'm a little bit hurt, Scott. But yeah, I get what you're saying though. And here's what I will say. I think, well, hey, people wanted people wanted fights, you know, we got it. No, I'm kidding. Here's the thing I'll say, and I think I said this when the schedule was first released, or at least the non conference one, there's a balance that Indiana has to strike.
When you bring in this many new players, you've got to have some on ramp to get to what is going to be a pretty tough Big 10 schedule just because of the slog of playing 20 games and having some decent teams in there. UCLA should be good, Purdue will be very good. You know, this team's Indiana's got to deal with I as I've had some time to ruminate on the schedule. I think it just highlights that IU is still in this weird mode where they're putting all their eggs in a, in a, in one basket
when it comes to the schedule. And that basket was Battle for Atlantis and they have to do well there. So this schedule is fine if you play good teams and at least beat one of them there. And if they if that doesn't happen, then the schedule won't be sufficient. And, and I do think that fans are willing to some degree to accept not playing name brand teams. If you're winning a bunch of games.
Like if Indiana goes undefeated in the non conference, then I don't think anybody's going to complain about what the schedule was. The problem has been that historically Indiana hasn't gone undefeated in the non
conference. And then you get upset because not only did I, you know, not get a marquee opponent to watch, I also just don't think that that helped Indiana in terms of what they were trying to do. And I, I am curious how that all plays out with this upcoming year because ultimately this, you know, Indiana just wasn't where it needed to be. And the advanced statistics back that up last year. What is going to make Indiana better is, is playing better teams going to make Indiana better?
Like you can't convince me that in 2023 Indiana wasn't helped at least some way by traveling to play a what ended up being a very good Xavier team on the road that they weren't helped by. You know, they played North Carolina, who seemed like they were going to be very good. Even the even the losses they had to Arizona and Kansas, I think help that team down the road in terms of understanding how to play against Tom competition.
I don't know how, you know, this year really results in that. And I think you can make the argument that last year those games really didn't help Indiana that much in terms of how they developed. So, you know, a lot of what we're used to is, again, it's the Bob Knight method of scheduling where you schedule all of these tough opponents. Izzo does this all the time. It seems to it. It historically worked for Michigan State. Has it worked that much for Michigan State the last couple
of years? Maybe not. And there's, you know, so you have to balance that other calculus of I know our fans want to play against higher profile teams, but ultimately our goal is or in our, what has to be our mission is get the team into the NCAA tournament. And there's a particular computer methodology that has to be utilized in terms of who you schedule to get to that point. And that stinks because we don't want to play like fans don't
want to see you play a computer. They want to see you actually compete on the floor. I don't know. I really, I, I'm torn on this because I get the, the pragmatic nature of the schedule. I just think it leaves Indiana open for stuff to go wrong at a level that perhaps nobody's going to be comfortable with. I, I agree with all that. I, I guess I, I just can, I was looking at it from the, the point of view like, Oh, that's true, but it's like there's somebody still has to pay for this.
It's like this is where Indiana is in a bind. As someone who's been a season ticket holder for gosh, like almost 20 years now, it's tough year in. It kind of reminds me of like the airlines and the baggage fees. If you remember way back in the day, there used to be no baggage fees in airlines.
Then like one of the years that the gas prices, air jet fuel went up way high and all the airlines like, all right, we're going to put a baggage fee, but it'll go away once the air, you know, the jet jet fuel goes down. It never goes away. But this is kind of what it feels like, like the prices you're always paying a premium price for IU basketball compared to other entertainment.
I'm also a season ticket holder with the Pacers and I pay similar rates for similar tickets And I I year in, year out, I always feel like the Pacers provide me a little bit more. It's also because I know that, you know, I'm getting I'm going to see, you know, high level teams come through game bridge. But you know, the thing with that, with IU basketball is just the, the price is always at the premium in the big 10 and the product and the schedule always isn't. And, and you're everything
you're saying is right. It's just like it, it just fills down like it's kind of becomes a problem. And I'll, I'll end on this because there's no, do not want to get deeper into this, but it, it becomes that problem where you, you, you can't really schedule like a Kansas or Michigan State right now because you don't have the team to compete for it. But this is where, you know, then you, you, you've got to kind of do the scheduling that
we're doing. But that's not super fun for someone who's paying, you know, two $3000 a year for tickets to be getting kind of a mid tier schedule. But, but it's what you have to do to get back up there. It's just, it's a bummer that it feels like every year you can justify away why it has to be this way, But it's like, all right, I'm still paying for South Carolina. Like that's, that's basically what my non conference is paying for. And the rest of them seem to be
giving it anyway. That's it's just the, the cost versus what you're getting. But I I understand all the reasons why, so I'll get off it now. On that note, yeah, we'll go ahead and wrap up well. We'll be back with more coming up soon. And we'll have some VIP stuff for those of you who are on the paid subscriber list hopefully within the next couple of days. So thank you all again for joining us here on the show.
Thanks to our sponsors at home Field Apparel and be sure to check out the rest of the back home network as programming is ramping up all over the place for Scott. I'm Galen, this is Crimson cast. We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the bison. Good to talk to you folks. Hello everybody.