Ep 1192 - Football Part 2: Stadium Upgrades, Experiences, and Expectations

You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast, Galen Clavio joining you along with Scott Caulfield. It is Saturday the the 25th of January. It's hard to believe that we find ourselves almost at the end of the month, but here we are and we are ready to talk some IU

football. We had Taylor Lehman on earlier on this week to talk some of the XS and OS and we're going to talk about some of the other questions that you folks brought to us via Twitter or via the back home network discord. Scott, before we get started, great to see you. We've already had one costume change this morning as we showed up wearing the same hoodie. So I'm I've I've reverted to my let's shock the world fairly Dickinson T-shirt. How are you doing today? I'm.

Good. It's a probably happens once or twice a year. I mean, it's something something we all deal with. It's something it's a home field problem. Just, you know, show up with the say the Spider Man memes. As as as many thousands of different things are in the home field storefront online, you're eventually like you'll have that moment where you wear the same thing as somebody else. It's actually it's a big problem here in town our our buddy IU artifacts who chimes in

occasionally on the show. We've got to have this thing before we show up at a place to go watch IU to make sure we're not both wearing like the never daunted hoodie. It's it's an issue. It almost to the point I feel like we need some kind of online check in system among friend groups related specifically to home field apparel where someone gets to reserve. You might have to do it like

weeks in advance. Like you know, the weekend of February 8th, I'm going to be wearing the bison hoodie and nobody else. Can and it all sounds great, another social media platform until like 2 years from now, people are ranting about politics on the home field check in and then it should be shut down. And it's like, I'm going to white sky to get, you know, whatever, like blue sky to get my new, my new home field white sky. Well, I, I was thinking like at

that point, blue Sky's done. So like you have a new color like red sky or green sky. It's I'm going to the new app. Like that's where you can go to just check in your home.

Field without any political discourse and then it just keeps keeps propagating over and over again yeah it's the nature of of human beings to make all of their discourse completely intolerable after a certain period of time anyway Speaking of home field they are presenting sponsor not just for us but the entire back home network and. We think you should go visit them, use the code home 23 and get 15% off your first order and got the last like I I got

another. I don't need another hoodie like I need a hole in, you know, like I need a hole in the head. But the the College Football Playoff stuff is leaving their site, I think Monday. And so I was like, I'm like, OK, I'll look at it again. It's like, oh, that was, that was fun. And like, I, I've always believed like if your team wins a title or you get there, like buy as much stuff as you can. And so I, I did and I bought two more hoodies. There you go.

It's we talked about that on the last show. Do that, folks, if you're an IU fan, or if you're an SMU fan, or if you're a fan of any of the teams that made the. College Football Playoff. Go get that stuff before it's gone, because you'll want to have had it at some point, even if the loss still stings. And of course, there's thousands of other options on the Home Field Apparel website, so go check them out again, Home Field apparel.com, your place to go for the finest in college fashions.

Also, folks, just a reminder, Back Home Network's going to be back home again in Indiana. I'm already here. But the rest of the Back Home Networks coming back to Indiana, or at least the vast majority of it on the 8th of February will be at the upstairs pub starting at about noon. IU plays Michigan that day. If you were at the event last year, we had a lot of fun. We, Scott and I did a live show at upstairs during that Penn State game that went great, let

me tell you. But we had a great time seeing everybody. So hopefully you folks are going to be back in town and we'll get to hang out with you at the upstairs pub. We'll have more information coming up here soon. Still a couple of weeks away, but looking forward to it here on Crimson Cast and Assembly Call and Doing the Work pod and and all the the rest of the shows in the constellation of the back home network. So absolutely looking forward to that coming up.

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So anyway, Scott, we put out a call to the peoples and asked them if they would send us questions about IU football 'cause we get so many people in our comments now, they're like, I wish this was a football podcast again. It's like we are planning on continuing to cover football. I promise you folks, throughout the course of the spring as we get updates, a little bit of a quiet period right now as the

season's over. Things have settled down quite a bit in terms of transfer portal movement. Still some stuff floating around there. We've got, you know, there, there may be a lineman or two that Indiana might be able to pull in. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but that's where we're at with everything. And we will be continuing to

talk about football. We've got questions that we wanted to, to dive into and so we'll go ahead and get to that right now, Scott, I, I guess maybe before we get started, as we go in and talk about football and talk about some of the changes, Let's start with the big one, which is the season ticket alterations. We got emails that came out. I've gotten a lot of messages about this Indiana instituting a personal seat donation on top of the regular ticket cost.

This is something that a lot of folks, you know, have have questioned and a lot of people, Hunter Schultz asked this question, you know where your season tickets are located. You'll be charged a mandatory donation of somewhere between zero and $250 a ticket. The question that I've heard from a lot of people, why not just include this in the season ticket fee up front? So there's a couple of things I

think that are worth noting. First of all, we've been very lucky to have not had personal seat donations as part of the IU football ticketing experience. And it's largely been because of the lack of market demand for IU football tickets or just kind of the general lack of place within the IU sporting culture for football. As we've talked about many times on this show, this is the norm in most places.

I think this is, I think I use like the 14th school in the Big 10 to adopt this particular pricing model. It's very similar to personal seat licenses as you see in the pro game. And it's one of those things where it looks like, wow, why am I being charged this extra money? And a lot of people like, why isn't it just wrapped up in the, in the ticket price?

A lot of that's accounting. A lot of that is, you know, when it's a donation, even though it's not tax deductible, it does count in a different way in terms of, of how you can apply it. If you look at the fine print of the personal seat donation, it's, it's the varsity club payment that we're all very used to, which has been largely voluntary. It's been largely point accrual

based. Are you going to a system that a lot of basically all the schools that are taking football seriously from a financial perspective we're using, it is a bit jarring, but it's also, Scott, just kind of one of those things that happens in the industry And there are accounting reasons why they set it up this way.

And I'm not here to defend it per SE, but I will say that even with the highest ticket price and the highest personal seat donation price, I think the most expensive ticket in the house is like $720, which is remarkably cheap compared to the total cost you would be paying at most other schools that have good football programs. Yeah. I mean, you, you hit on a lot of those pieces that, you know, it's, there's a reason why they didn't just increase ticket

prices. And also, I mean, that would be jarring too. Like if your ticket price just went, you know, from whatever it is, you just add $250 to your ticket price. Like that's, that's very jarring. That's a big move up. But but it's, it's internal accountings and way the ways

they can use that money. And like having been a donor to the Varsity club for years, I know that, you know, the Varsity club always prefers money that's donated without attachments to it. You can donate money and say, I want this to go to baseball or I want this to go to student

athletes. You know, the minute you say I want this money to do this, it hampers what the Varsity Club is able to do with it. They want money that they can do whatever they want with it and it just becomes money and that's what they want. And that so that is, you know, it's not ticket sales. This is just, you know, slush fund money isn't the right way. But the other thing to look at is you look at, you know, and I'm just doing some very basic math here. Fun times.

You know, if you figure there's 30,000 seats in the stadium that are going to get a personal seat donation and the average donation's 150 bucks, just kind of round numbers, that's four and a half million dollars. Like that's why you do this, because it's real quick. Some people are going to be

annoyed. I I assume less than 1% of people are like, well, that's too much after last season, I'm not doing it. You know, if you figure there's, you know, what is it like 4000 tickets in the $250 range, that's $1,000,000. Like This is why you do that. It's money that's thrown in there. What what I thought was interesting is, as you say, in the professional sports, a lot of times you get a person, a

personal seat license. And that that word is different than a personal seat donation because a personal seat license normally means that you're licensing that seat and that becomes your seat. A personal seat donation is something that means you're doing this every single year. So this is going to happen every year. And I think that's important because the thing that I've been, they're also doing this year, which is different.

It's not wrapped up in this, but it kind of is, is they're reseating the entire stadium for the first time in probably 5 or 6 years, which again, I'm for because for all the people who are complaining about, well, I've had these seats for years. This is where my family goes. It's like this is not the Indy 500. Like look at Assembly Hall. They reseat that every single year because it's a, it's the number one, you know, event ticket.

They're selling as it as a brand and they weren't able to do it with football and now they are. So I think you're going to see these two things happening every year. You're not only going to reseat every year, but you're getting a personal seat donation every year. But they would have called like a five year license. Then maybe they're not receding for five years. But I mean, both of those things are not like awesome.

But it it, it is the the next step of an evolution of a program that, you know, as you and I, you say like it's taking football seriously. Yeah, and, and look, I get people being like, why am I being asked to pay all this extra money? And I guess the question is like, where do you think the money comes from in college athletics? And and you, who are you competing with now? So let me use Tennessee as an

example. Tennessee actually had, I think what most people would say was a relatively inexpensive season ticket compared to some of their their competitors in the SEC. If you look at their price breakdown, I think it was for

this past year. You know, if you take, if we take away like the club seating, the the premium stuff, let's let's just go to like a the Bleacher seats in the West sideline of Neyland Stadium. The tickets are $450 apiece, which I believe is more is less was more expensive than all but one of the the categories in the IU one like the the most expensive, the tier ones, which are basically 567 and eight or 25262728 basically the 50 yard line on either side.

Those are $476 per ticket. All the blue seats around and above those, which are the next best seats in terms of sight lines, are 441. So you've already dropped below what Tennessee is charging you for season tickets with that to get those tickets, those sideline Bleacher tickets, the equivalent in Neeland Stadium, the contribution is $1050. So the, and that's per ticket. So you're actually talking about

a $1500 ticket. So you're paying even for the best seats in Memorial Stadium, less or just about half of what you would be paying for the exact same seat there. Now you've, you're talking about a, you know, Tennessee's had sustained success. Indiana, this is their first year where they've really been like this level of successful. So I'm not that concerned about the, the, the increase there.

And, and as you can see, like you could talk about, well, why don't we wrap this up in the ticket price. You can see that the industry standard here is that we don't do that. I know this sounds like I'm like, like justifying it, but it's just like this is the business reality to me. It's more of a surprise we

didn't have this system before. Well, and also like, think of this kind of like you, how you pay real estate taxes in Indiana, you pay in the arrears like this is you're kind of paying for last year's performance. Like, you know, they, they had a great year last year and now it's like, all right, we can do this. This is kind of like you're paying the 2024 tax, taxes in, in April of 2025. You know, this is this is what you're paying for that performance.

I mean, honestly, you know, I will say this point not getting us off track, but like, if you're going to be more annoyed at payments for production, you should be more annoyed at what you're paying in varsity club donations and what you get priority points wise for IU basketball over the last 20

years. Like that's, that's what's always been more frustrating to me is like, you know, if IU football goes out and does another 2 and 10 like they did after the 20 in the 2021 season, then, yeah, like, I'm going to be slightly annoyed the way this happened. But again, I, I do look at this as as kind of, you know, in the rears first thing, because IU was in a spot like, I'm sure they wanted to do this for a couple of years. They just needed a good season to do it.

They got it and now they're doing it. I mean, it's not going to go away. Now comes the, you know, performance has to kind of keep up with this. But as you said, I'm on, I'm in the same boat. I'm not here to defend it, but it's like, you know, an extra 200 bucks. You know, my, my seats are in, you know, Section 8. We're in the blue section of the map, which I still think are

fantastic seats. Like even if I had the opportunity to move, I'm not sure I would like, I kind of like where I'm sitting and I'm not in the premium 250 ticket, you know, so it's 200. We have 4 tickets. That's the decision that I make to get 4 tickets. It's 800 bucks. Like, all right, that's not awesome. But I, I also donate to the Varsity Club. So, you know, maybe I, I slick a little bit off of that and move this up there.

It's like, it's not, it's not a ton for an entire season ticket, you know? Yeah. Well, an. Entire season ticket and you know, I, I, Yeah. Anyway. I'm I'm just thrilled my the place I like to get my tickets is in the yellow. So I'm I'm in an even better spot. We'll see how that actually plays out when they do the seat reord.

And the thing that I would all, sorry, the other thing that I would say is it would be frustrating if it didn't look like Indiana was using this money to try and better the program, But they are, I mean, I listened to your, your podcast with Taylor Layman and was like blown away when you guys were talking about the, I mean, I knew the salaries had gone up with the salary of our defensive coordinator where it's like like $2,000,000, like it'll be in the top, you know, 10 in the country

in a year or two. And it's like, oh, and like, you know, you see what they're doing, they're trying, you know, some, some premium seating on the ground level. They're having better concessions. You know, you keep hearing about how we're, you know, top ten in the country and NIL like, and and they're you know, they're they're paying Sidetti, they're getting good coaches like across the board. We look at IU football. There's no real area. You can say what it looks like.

They're just lining their pockets and not using this to make the program better. Like they are using this money very effectively to push this program forward. So, as you said, like, yes, they get a lot of money from the big 10 network, but this also just needs to come from the donor base. So I'm. I'm OK doing it because I'm a fan, I'm part of the process, and it does look like the people who are in charge of the money are putting it to really good and effective use.

The other thing I'll say is that what's hovering over all of this is this NIL settlement and the idea that you're going to have to move that within the confines of the athletic department. I mean, we don't know. There's legal challenges to it. There's going to be some questions about how all this plays out, but the reality is every athletic departments having to prepare for a future where they're going to have to pay for the NIL payments internally.

And there's only a certain number of levers you can pull, like the money doesn't just materialize. It's why you're starting to hear about sports getting sunset at other schools. That will continue.

And unfortunately, until there's a sane group of rules that are instituted in college football, which does not appear to be coming anytime soon, you're going to continue to see these kinds of things because it's unfortunately just kind of the way the business has been allowed to conduct itself in general. And IU is put into a position that all the other schools are where you have to adapt to it. There's not really much of A, there's not much else you can do

about it anyway. Let's let's move on to other questions. So we had a bunch of questions about the stadium. Ryan asks, what are your hopes for the renovations to Memorial Stadium? How much would you want the seating capacity to increase? We've talked about this on the show before, but there, you know, there's been a bunch of talk. Alex asks what might, what might the East Stadium club look like? He also asked about the season ticket donations.

I've, I've been saying this for a while and, you know, we get a lot of questions about the, the nature of the stadium with it. We, we've heard there's going to be renovations. I think, you know, first and foremost the biggest things that I would like to see and, and this actually answers Patrick's question as well of what changes do you want to see to the game day experience, get the lights and the sound up to standards.

You know, you look at a lot of these other stadiums, they've got the cool light effects coming in. They've got much better sound systems than what a Memorial Stadium has been able to provide. One of the things about this season that was an interesting proof of concepts to me was getting a chance to hear what Memorial Stadium sounded like with a full stadium of IU fans at maximum volume. And what we discovered is that Memorial Stadium is actually a pretty cool little stadium in

the big scheme of things. It, it gets loud, it's, it contains sound. Well, I, I don't, I mean, what really you think what they, they enclosed the stadium into a bowl configuration in what, 2017 or thereabouts. It was somewhere in that range. And then we really hadn't had an extended period of time where we could see what that was like.

And it's, it's funny, the number of people like on the, on the college football subreddit who would see the stadium on television and they'd be like, that's a neat stadium. That's actually kind of a cool little design that you've got

going there. You know it even in the, the college football game, I see a lot of people in those forums talking about like how Memorial Stadiums, one of their underrated stadiums, never thought these things would be talked about in relation to Memorial Stadium. Never, not once. But the question about capacity, you know, so the Mora Stadium if you round up seats about 53,000, I don't know. I, I do not think you want to go down the road of expanding it at this point.

I think what you need to do is establish and and solidify demand in terms of regular seating. I do think that what you need to do is add additional premium seating and when you get past the lights and the sound and that kind of like general atmosphere stuff, premium seating is probably the easiest thing to add in terms of an architectural thing. And I would love to see them setting something up on the east side as as was mentioned up

above the seating section. It's a really good spot for like kind of the beginnings of the second deck. You build a string of luxury boxes up there. You put yourself in a position now where you're able to generate a bunch more revenue you.

You make the stadium look a little bit cooler, especially if you do it right in terms of how you like the color that you set those things at. And you know, if they're, if it's some kind of a glass and limestone combo that fits in with the motif of the rest of the stadium to me, like that combined with a real hard look at that press box that looks like something out of a model train kit at this point. Like that's got to get fixed as far as I'm concerned.

Like that's got to look more modern and something that celebrates what heritage Indiana does have. You know, you look at some other stadiums and they've got whatever bowl victories that they've had or whatever, like playoff appearances they've had recognized in the stadium. People should walk into Memorial Stadium and not just be excited by the atmosphere in the crowd, but they should also be able to get some kind of sense of the heritage of the football team.

What? And I know Indiana doesn't have a lot, but there is some they've they've had draft picks, they've had NFL players that have done well. They have won some bowl games. They've been to some some big bowl games. Like all of those things combined. I think you're you're not going to get all of that within this upcoming year. But as we look at the next couple of years, that's what I would like to see, not a stadium seating expansion. I don't think they need that yet.

Yeah, you took a lot of the good stuff. Sorry, I mean I'm going to have to re restate. I can't come up with more because a lot of the things I was writing down and thought about you you took. But I agree with you. Like the thing with we talked about it a lot this season. I agree. Like an expansion would be fun and like going to 7080 thousand would be cool. Hey, I'm not sure we can meet

that demand yet. But also, as we talked about, you know, what makes the stadium cool and fun I think is that it's a little bit smaller, it's a little bit more intimate. But it, you know, we're never going to scare other teams in the Big 10. Like Michigan's never going to be intimidated by coming into Memorial Stadium, even if we expand to 80,000, because it's like, OK, you're still not Penn State. You're still, you're never going to catch up to those guys. That's a fool's errand.

We we buoy our team up and we can do that with the size of our stadium now. So I agree with you like not expanding would be there. I I was thinking, you know, when I saw this too, premium seating because I was lucky enough to to be have a game, the Maryland game where I was down on, you know, the South end zone on the field and they have like, you know, I think 12 little field suites down there. It's really cool, but it does very much feel like I used to

joke. You know, we we have access to like a a room during the game as a varsity club member. It's in the excellent center. Now before that it used to be in like the bowels of Memorial Stadium and you would walk down these stairs and there's like exposed wires and I was like, this is where you're sending your premium donors is through this like hall of death. It felt like like I'm in the

middle of a saw video. The, the premium seating down there is nice, but you know, it's, it's, it's temporary, like they, they are temporary stands, temporary tents. They have little fridges and food and you can like you can sneak in back into the stadium to get to an area where they're serving drinks and food. But it all feels very, this is not what it was meant to be built for.

So I agree with you. And I think those premium type seats, you know, back to the money thing, they bring in another money revenue, but those are ones that I don't think would be hard to fill with some of the corporate sponsors in the Bloomington in the area. You look at what they did at Assembly Hall, that little area, you know, the, the premium CD

area they had is not huge. I've never seen that like not full like even for games where it's there's not a lot of people, a ton of people were there. So I, I agree with you on that. I agree on the lights. I think that would be cool. I had heard that when Indiana last put in their LED lights, it was like an extra 50K to get the ones that turn off and on and we didn't, we didn't do it. It's like that was that was a mistake because it would be cool to have that. I think having that kind of

light show would be cool. I love the idea of, we had talked about it earlier in the season, the East side is where you have expansion growth because I, I love the idea of kind of covering up the top of, of, of Assembly Hall a little bit on those shots when they go out and it just becomes the IU football thing. But I also think, you know, I, I, I do think, you know, if you build something more permanent for premium seating at field level, I think that would be

cool. But I do think it needs to be more permanent on the South side and same thing on the north side. The north side has a ton of extra room over there and you have like a little, a little spot there with like the ROTC. That's nice. That still feels, you know, you can I I think that that north side end zone is a lot of room to to build something permanent.

And whether it's a tunnel that fans or, you know, students are near when the team comes out or something like right now, it kind of just becomes a catch all of like, well, that's where the band's going to wait and we'll have a little ROTC, which I love the ROTC, but we have them over there. We have like couple cheerleaders like it's just kind of this this mishmatch of like that's what we'll throw stuff.

We're not sure where it goes. It becomes like the junk drawer of the of Memorial Stadium. So I think something on that side there you could do a lot of very cool, you know, low level premium seating, which is interesting like something you don't see a lot of in college, you see a lot in NFL stadiums, you don't see a lot in college football stadium. So it could be a nice addition having, you know, some very permanent high level, like premium suite level seating in a

college football arena. Scott's number one priority is not sitting with the normal fans. He he wants to be. He's kind of one game. I got lucky, had a friend, My God, you were like you're sitting on top of the Excellence Academy for an entire season. The Scott Caulfield like a wine tasting suite is going to be a tremendous feature of the 2030 Memorial Stadium that we're going. To good for it. My personal seat donation is huge.

But yeah, it's great. I'm I'm fascinated with the bidding war that Oliver Winery and Butler Winery are going to have over having you as their their primary. It's going to be amazing. Really looking forward to it anyway. No, I think all those are good points. And look ultimately. Personal Scott license like it's just geez. Wow, I know I'm I'm actually sad that that idea has been put in

your head. Now I'm we're never going to hear the end of it. No, but ultimately, and we had another question or two about the game day atmosphere and what we'd like to to see change. I got to be honest, I thought the game day atmosphere this year was really good, you know, and and the, the tailgate atmosphere is really fun.

And for, you know, as much as the tailgating scene has been criticized as an obstacle to people coming in and watching IU, as it turns out, the obstacle was bad football, not the tailgate scene. People wanted to be in the stadium. People stayed in the stadium when the team was good. That's that's how the paradigm works. And I think that you're going to see more of that, you know, the in stadium stuff again, I think some cooler presentational items would be good.

You know, I think the stuff they're doing with the field Mike is good. I'd like to see the on field promotions get better because it just feels and it's, it's a problem with all on field promotions everywhere. Like there's just only so many of them. And after a while, once you've seen them, they get really dull, you know, So I think doing some more things there to try to, to fix it up, it would be a good idea. But you know, the, the video board presentation, I think is,

is really nicely done. The, there was so much great work done in terms of concession lines this last year. There's so many better options in terms of food now than there were before. I mean, so many strides were made this year for those of you who get off the concession stuff. But you know, I, I didn't mention it because I agree with you. It's gotten so much better. There's so many more options. They've added a couple of the quick checkout stands, which are

fantastic. Just the grab and goes, which really helps out and having been to a game at, you know, Notre Dame Stadium, which was awesome. I've been, we said afterwards, like there was just lines everywhere. Like the line in the bathroom was 25 minutes. The line to get food was like 30 minutes. Everything was a line, at least in the upper level. You know, I used to joke that was always a problem, like Memorial Stadium couldn't handle a full capacity.

That wasn't the case last year. And I think we talked about it multiple times that you'd walk around in a full game. It's like this is actually running pretty smoothly. And but yes, there's going to be some lines when it's a full stadium, but it it really isn't that bad. So I agree with that and on the on field promotion, I agree with that. The thing that I like I talked to Jeremy Gray about it earlier in the year.

My only big thing that like their game day experience is you have a moment there between the 3rd and the fourth quarter now, like do something like, let's come up with something cool. Like at UCLA, they played California, they had a light show that was cool. And you know, jump around in in Wisconsin, like these things take time. You know, they tried kind of the the under eight time out from basketball to port that over. That didn't work, although I'm

still not sure why. Like they didn't give that enough time in my mind. But like right now they're playing like We Will Rock you. And it's like just I'm just like that's also not like we just need something and and make it stick. But I I would just say being at the game for that, it's not like that's that's sticking you. You have a moment there to do something cool. I'm, I'm, I'm generally with you, but I think these things will happen organically over time.

I don't, I don't think you try to pick something and stick with it. I think you try a few different things and see what ends up being fun. I mean, the reason the William Tell Overture didn't work between the third and fourth quarters is, is it's it doesn't scale to a football environment. It just doesn't. I mean, it's it's kind. And I look, I'm one of those rare people who I'm like, I'm kind of done with the William Tell Overture thing. It's fine.

But I've been watching it my whole life get. To your vote, I'm bringing it to football then if you're out on it. Well, I mean, I think I think my vote matters. There's, there's surely other. It's kind of like when we talk about the rotation of songs that get played and it's like the the that should probably be broadened, you know, because after a while you go to these games over and over again. Some people love the same thing over and over again. I admittedly am not one of those

people. I like some variety. I like to spice it up a little bit, you know, And so that's that's where I'm coming from with that it and it's maybe that's a hot take. I don't know. But I think for football, not only does the William Tell thing not scale, but I also think that's a basketball thing. That will always be a basketball thing. There's other things that can be done with football. Let's see what they can come up with.

But I would say let's use this year to to trial some stuff and figure out like what's going to get the best reaction, What feels the most organic to the the emerging burgeoning culture of IU football internally? I'd rather it came out of. That so we'll see what happened something this year, like you have the talents like so I hope my my hope is, and I'm assuming it's going to happen like you have towels at every game next year. They're all different.

You know, you get a different towels like you collect the series that that becomes, you know, maybe oh God, bad idea, Scott, don't say it. Maybe the next year's a personal towel license. So 10 bucks in your seat gets no. But like to me, it's like you that was what was cool as this year is like he's I really do hope the towels continue because that was something it's like, oh, this is a tradition. Like this is something that was

built. We were there for it and now you just need to keep building those. But yeah, I hope the towels come back for sure. We had some other questions Hoosier Review asked what one local Bloomington restaurant would you want added to concessions options? So we got a bunch of them. Finney Hospitality Group was in there with Social Cantina this year. Ever Bowl's in the stadium. Buffalo Louie's is in the stadium. Upland Beer. Stadium now, right?

Yes, yes, that's right. So and I mean I live down here, you don't. So, you know, I guess better. For you question, Yeah, yeah. It's it's an interesting question because I, I think the, a lot of the food I think that would, I mean, I'll, I'll say, I'll say the following and then I will give an exact, you know, reason why that doesn't make sense. A lot of the food that should, you know, that I would like to see in the stadium doesn't really work in a stadium atmosphere.

But then like ever bowls in the stadium. When I think stadium food, I don't think acai bowl and yet it's really good and it's a it's a really nice healthy option in

the stadium. If you they're in assembly Hall too, If you want to check them out, they're up on the the second deck there, not the balcony, but the like right at the corner on the West side on the I guess would be the northwest side, you know, So if you think about the other options around town, you know, the I I don't know that there's a clear choice. It would be interesting to get. I don't know. We, you know, we got, you've got wings options, you've got pizza options, you've got some

healthier fare. I don't know that I've got one where I would say we absolutely, positively need to get that in the stadium. It would be nice to have like a, a good burger option that isn't any of the current ones. And I don't know who the best provider for that would be and whether that would actually translate particularly well to a

stadium environment. Like things like wings and pizza are kind of you're, you're pre making them, you're just getting them them and getting them warmed up the cook to order stuff. I'm not sure if that necessarily works 'cause that just invites a lot of lines. But ultimately what I like is the fact that there's so many different options in there that work as far as just food that you can take back to your seat and food that you can get lines. So I don't even know if there's one right now.

Is there anything to stick out for you as something even in the Indianapolis area, 'cause I'm certainly so locked into Bloomington, it's hard for me to get a sense of what's going on elsewhere. No, I mean, there's stuff I love up here, but then it's just like me talking about my like, I love Ale Emporium, but like they don't have a spot in Bloomington, so it'd be crazy to have like Ale Emporium wings down there. I mean, I was joking. Like you should have a Chick-fil-A.

I'm like, oh, they do have Chick-fil-A there. Like they do like that's always busy. No, I, I, I like the, I think you're right with the burger idea. And that's where I just, you know, like, I don't think Hinkle's hamburgers are still rocking in Bloomington. They're still rocking in Bloomington. They, they are the last business that's likely to go into Memorial Stadium in terms of like their setup. I, I, I, that's, yeah.

But I, I was, I was thinking when we were in college, there was the guy who sold hot dogs outside of Kilroy's when he left, like 2:00 AM, like maybe you get a hot dog cart, like all of that. But no, I, I, I think it's a testament to how, how much they've grown the food fair at Memorial Stadium and the different local options that, you know, it's, it's tough for us to come up with an answer because there's not one out there.

It's like, oh, this is a great, you know, great restaurant in, in the area that, that should be in there. And I mean, they have, they have all the liquor you want too. So I mean that would it's there too. Let's move on to some other questions. We did a question from let me go actually head head to the discord. So this has been this question ties in a lot to a lot of the other questions that we've had

in the same area. So Jared asks, what is the new bar for success with IU football, IE, what's the minimum level of accomplishment for next season that won't leave the majority of reasonable fans feeling disappointed? And so we got a lot of responses, people throwing out win totals. We had a lot of people asking questions about like, how many, how many games do you think Indiana's able to to win this upcoming year given the

schedule? There was a, you know, Brendan Bolander asked what are fair realistic expectations for the 2025 season? You know, what's the floor and the ceiling from a record perspective? So I I'll, let me try to answer this. Justin Bobbitt as well, like, you know, with the portal talent I use brought in along with the returners, is it reasonable to accept expect a nine and three or ten and two season in 2025? So there's kind of two separate answers here.

What's the minimum reasonable expectation? I'll remind everybody that this is a football program that just does not have a lot of historical success. If you, you know, go down the entire history of IU football, I think they have 11 seasons where they've won seven or more games, 12 if you count 1994, which I don't because they didn't really win that game against Michigan State. It was forfeited to them after the season was over.

This is the first time Indiana's won double digit games and the last time Indiana had won nine games happened in 1967. So you know, to me, I think minimum reasonable expectations for this upcoming year, it's probably the seven win mark. I think there would still be people that would be somewhat disappointed by seven wins. I just, I think it's important to remember that it's hard to win a lot of football games. And the idea is raising the floor first before you can raise

the ceiling. You could say that. And, and again, I'm kind of taking seven wins in a vacuum and not looking specifically at the schedule, but you think about, you know, taking last year momentarily out of the picture, an IU football team winning seven games in any season up until the beginning of the 2024 year would have been a cause for celebration. Last year's team winning seven games would have been a cause for celebration.

The fact that Indiana overachieved to the degree that they did, I don't think should be necessarily what changes that. And I expect Indiana to win more games than 7 next year, given who they've got coming back and who they brought in and what their schedule looks like. But I also think if they win seven games next year in the regular season going into a bowl with a chance to win an eighth, that would feel like a pretty good year regardless of whatever is going on because it means well.

Hey, unlike say 2020 when they won 75% of their games and then went out and went 2 and 10 the following year. There wasn't the huge regression that you've gotten historically when Indiana has had these seasons where they won a bunch of games. So that's my answer on the on the first part of the question, Scott, what would you say? I mean, they got to make the College Football Playoff. You got to fire Signeti. No, no, I I'm in exactly the

same boat. I've been telling a lot of people the same thing that, you know, it's about raising the floor and it's about, you know, building consistency. And so to me, you know, IU football, you know, up through Tom Allen, Kevin with the whole time has been like, we get to six wins in the bowl and let's do that two or three years in a row, and I still think that stays the same.

I, I agree with you that last year was I have so much optimism about what happened last year and the fact that I feel like people that the entire staff knows what they're doing that I, I like you, I'm able to raise the optimism a little bit. But I'm with you, like seven wins seems very like a very fair ask of this team. And if they fall a little bit short and get to five or six wins, OK.

I mean, I would, I would color a couple things in there that to me, it's like, I I wouldn't go so much for records, but little things like can you hold serve at home? You know, again, we got to look at the look at the schedule. Like I'm sure there'll be some years like we're playing Oregon, Michigan, Ohio State at home. It's like maybe not the case.

I know it's not happening next year, but like, can you hold serve at home or at least go 5 and one at home and, and have a, you know, a very much over 500 winning record home. I think that's key. I would also say that, you know, it's been 34 years since we've won a bowl game. Last year was really different. That was a bowl game. Asking us to win a road game at Notre Dame is different than, you know, winning, you know, whatever, you know, an insight

bowl game. But it's like, can you win a bowl game coming up this year? Like can we get that monkey off our back? Can we just start kind of knocking these things off? But I, you know, I've, I've been very, everyone I've talked to have been like, look, this year was awesome. This year was outside the bounds of what I expected. And we can't just go nuts on our expectations. And yeah, the schedule looks interesting next year. It's like we have 3 tough Rd.

games, you know, Oregon, Penn State and Iowa. You know, any other year at you know, we did this 12 months ago. I'm never be like, wow, can you go 2 in one of those games? Like, no, you'd be like, all right, well, there's three losses and then Oh my God, can we at least beat Indiana State? You're just you, you, you have to. You didn't move the bar that much. Like College Football Playoff is not something we need to be talking about in the preseason this coming year.

We need to talk about going, can you go six or seven wins? Can you make a bowl? Can you do that two or three years in a row? And then you've shown all right, now we can move up. And these things are not always linear. Like you, you look at Northwestern's kind of when they have their growth curve, it's like they won a bowl, won a bowl, missed one and then went to a better bowl and then like missed one, like moving up. So you're going to have ups and downs.

But I, I echo almost everything you're saying. And as I look, you know, for this year and for the next year after. I don't think I'm ready to say eight wins is what we need to get to for a successful season until, you know, if if they go to a bowl this coming season and they win a bowl and then maybe then the year after they go to a high level bowl. At that point, it's like, OK, you've gone three years in a row. You've had one CFP make maybe you're close to another one at

that point. After three seasons like that, then it's like, OK, now I believe enough to say now eight and nine wins is what should be the the ceiling. And but honestly, that's probably the top of the ceiling I'm ever going to get. I mean, in India, you're still in the Big 10, like Oregon, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, like they're all still there.

So if you're, you know, there's only one team that really gets to say we're going to win everything and the national championship this year, bust it's like that's Ohio State. And if you're talking about 9 or 10 wins as you're ceiling, that's really damn close to that.

So anyway, I just, I think thinking 7 seven wins is not that far off from like what kind of top level expectations for an Indiana program could be, unless we get, you know, 10 or 20 years of excellence, which sign me up, I'm in for it. But no, I, I think that's my biggest concern this year is people just having unrealistic expectations.

And it's like you get to that first game against Illinois, who will also should be also be ranked in that game if they lose it. And suddenly like, Oh my God, like we're, it's like it's, it's one game. Like we can still get to six wins. We can still get to seven wins. We're still building something here and it's not always going to be pretty.

Yeah. I mean, ultimately by look at it, the ultimately the, the so much of last year, we talked about this a lot on the football, the XS and OS pod with Taylor. There's there's systems in place, there's things that you're doing, you're trying to view. Last year was about building culture and Indiana took advantage of a favorable schedule as well as an influx of culture and it all worked. Will it work again the same way this year?

I think so, because I think this coaching staff, they've they've stayed together. They know what they're doing. They've done a really good job in the portal. There's still some pieces that they're missing, like an edge rusher, as Taylor mentioned, and reinforcements on the offensive

line. They could still get those, but right now, like I think it given where Indiana has to play and the way the schedule lays out with a lot of cut tough games clustered relatively early in the season, unlike last year, it's probably going to be a little bit difficult for Indiana to reach the same heights they did last year. Now lot of off season to happen between now and then. So we'll have to see how things play out.

But as you mentioned, like from the minimum expectation perspective, I feel like we're, we're well in the range at 7:00 to 8:00 wins where you should feel good about that season. What I look at for this upcoming year, I, I don't think like nine and three is an unreasonable ask. As was, as was mentioned, like you look at the schedule and you look at the, the way that it plays out. Indiana has some pretty tough games.

They got Illinois at home. Illinois's ranked I think 13th in, in a couple of different polls. They're going to be very good. They got to go to Iowa. IIU does not play well with Iowa. Historically. Iowa's a really tough team to play on the road against. That's a winnable game. Both of those are winnable games. You got to go to Oregon. Oregon's going to be a top ten team again. And then later on in the season you got to go to Penn State. Penn State has a top five team.

I mean, they may be the favorite to win the Big 10 next year. You've got a lot of winnable games. You know, you've you've got the three non conference games are very soft and and that's probably good going into this year 'cause you're going to have a lot of new pieces. You got to get acclimated. You got Michigan State at home, you got UCLA at home. Those are both talented teams that underperformed at Maryland, Wisconsin, at home, at Purdue.

I mean, look, ultimately Indiana has to play at a high level consistently. And it's hard for us to really say, yes, they're automatically going to do that until we see them do it again. But I do think nine wins is doable. I think even 10 is doable.

You know, a lot of it is going to hinge on what happens in those back-to-back weeks where they play Illinois and Iowa and if they can get through, if they get through those two games and get to the buy and they're five and O, then I think you should re evaluate your expectations. And if they don't, I I'm not freaking out about it. You know, those are both very tough games and those are games that Indiana didn't necessarily have on their schedule last year in terms of overall caliber of

opponents. So I am really fascinated to see how this plays out. I think the schedule still sets up really well for IU and it's certainly a joy seeing neither Michigan or Ohio State on the schedule. That's a nice change of pace, but they do have two of the top three or four teams in the conference in terms of total talent on their schedule and they got to go to both of those. That's going to be a tough sled in terms of getting back up into CFP conversation. And again, I just think I, I

know what you're saying there. I just, I think, you know, it was awesome this year. We, we, we can't be talking about CFP conversation, you know, with this team with any, any point going into the year. Like I think that's going to set people up for a rough year. And I, I think it's just, it's not where you should be. And I look at it this way, like again, you have the three soft non conference, you know, Illinois at home, at Iowa, at Oregon.

That's a really tough stretch. Those are all teams that are probably going to be ranked or if not totally ranked. Iowa's a tough place to play. It'll be up there. I'm assuming that, you know, you, you could lose all three of those. But The thing is, you come home, you play Michigan State, UCLA, again, both teams that I would say I agree with you underperformed.

And we we're probably in echelon above, you know, if you lose all three, Illinois, Iowa, Oregon, you come home and win those two, you're still 5:00 and 3:00 at the end of October. How many years like Caitlin, we'll be doing like 20 years. Like how many years like do I just want to be 5 and three with a chance to win our 6th game? And it not being the one game against Purdue, you'd be looking at five games to get one win to be bull eligible. Like I will take that every

year. I, I think to me it's like that's more the mindset we need to be thinking of to try and be happy and exceed expectations than even to ever mention the College Football Playoff again. Because I think getting in those areas is going, it's just going to be tough. And it's like something that it's, it's asking a lot of this program to do like in back-to-back years or even 2 out of three years. To me, it's again, can you be in a spot where you're, are you comfortably in?

Do you have a bowl wrapped up in November and you're trying to now get a better bowl in November? That to me is like, that's a really good place to be for this program. That's something we. We also haven't been in very much at all. Right, Yeah, I can already see the the comments like, oh, you guys are just like, you know, soft pedaling here and you know, you're making excuses for for IU or your or you don't have a high enough standards. Just saying we've been doing

this long enough. This is rarely a linear thing. And you can look around college football, it's rare that you would go like eleven wins and now that's the floor. That's not how it works and well.

It's it's funny because one of your questions with Taylor that that was asked to you guys was, and I'm paraphrasing with something along the lines of, you know, hey, we did really well, but you know, now, you know, can can you really compete with the Ohio States and Michigan's without getting that four or five star, you know, recruiting talent? You know, how do we fix that? It's like, well, good luck.

Like like you like you just don't in 18 months, but like, hey, we're going to start out recruiting Michigan for five stars. Like you're going to have to find ways to continue to, to compete against those teams because Ohio State's not going to stop recruiting. Like they're still going to get a bunch of five stars. And you're not the only team also trying to get those five stars. So it's a it's not a silly. All questions are awesome. We love them all.

By the way, Crimson cast is instituting a question seat license. So you know if you want to start. 30 and 5030 to get it on the air. But you know, it's it's like those kinds of questions like, all right, well, now we just got to start doing this. It's like, well, it's not that easy to just suddenly start getting a bunch of five star recruits like you. You always mention Iowa and Wisconsin as teams that you know, are able to do it without that.

They're trying. It's like they they are trying to get some of that top tier talent. They haven't been able to break feelings. Very few teams that get that much top tier talent on a regular basis. So I, I do questions like that make many wonder people's, you know, thought process.

Sometimes it's like you're Indiana's going to have to always be kind of keeping those expectations a little bit more tampered because I don't see a reality, no matter how much success we have over the next even the next seven years, a world where suddenly we have out recruited 5 stars by Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State. No, and again, as we sort of talked about on the on that show, it's it's less about that level of recruiting and it's more about doing a better job

with four stars, doing a better job with developing the talent you've got. You know, one of the things that was mentioned a lot around the the game between Notre Dame and Ohio State was that, you know, Notre Dame didn't have a ton of five stars. They had a bunch of four stars and they used the four stars, you know, really effectively.

They developed them very well and there was clearly a a talent shelf that Ohio State was on that Notre Dame had not reached, but they were still competitive in that game. It it's really and, and, and you know, now they lost. Notre Dame didn't deserve to be. There not throw that out there exactly, no. One deserved to be there, but Ohio State, but no. But, but ultimately the, the reality of the situation is you're, you've now catapulted yourself into a different echelon.

You're getting looks from recruits you weren't getting looks from before. You're in the group of things and you'll get you'll get some of those people. And I think that the message that Signetti and his staff have sent regularly through their, their coaching, through their behind the scenes stuff, through the way that they run the program is going to pay a lot of dividends. It's just going to take a few years to fully get it.

Because you're talking about, you got to you're, you're talking to high school coaches across the country. You're demonstrating what you're doing. You're, you're getting in the minds, you know, you know, the, the juniors and seniors, they've already kind of got a good sense of where they're going from the high school level.

So now you're playing for that next group of people who might not be here till 202620272028. So it does take some time and ultimately the record and what Indiana does with this upcoming year, it's going to be an improved roster in terms of raising the talent floor. Is it going to be good enough to go in and beat an Oregon or beat a Penn State? That's the big question. You know, you've never wanted

Penn State before. You have one at Oregon, but that was 20 some years ago and that was a completely different set of circumstances. So that's that's how our first Galen. Wants to bring it back to Nardo. Right. Yeah, they're bringing back Denardo. Let's let's do that. Some one of the things just for for for next seat in relation to this talking about next season. And again, sorry, I'm I'm kind of rehashing some stuff with you and Taylor's POV, but it was

really good. You guys also talked about, you know, like how is there? Is there a concern that, you know, there's a lot of film that's been seen on this this team? And I kind of look looking at it from a positive perspective. I do look at it a different way.

I think there might be a ton of stuff we just haven't seen yet because like we have to remember we had a quarterback playing the most of the entire year of the Tort ACL and he knew it, but the coaches also knew it. So you could be there drawing a place. It's like, I'd love to run this RPO sweep of this like, but I can't do that with a guy with a

Tort ACL. So that's going to be off the side and we're going to run this playbook like I, I, I don't think you, you, you can minimize how insane of a point that is that you had Curtis Rourke with a torn ACL the entire season and the coaches knew it. So there's just certain things. It's like we can't do that with a guy with a torn ACL.

Run whatever kind of actions or stunts that you want to run, you can't do it. So to me, I, I believe there's a whole bag of tricks and a bag of plays that just weren't able to be run this year. And and not, I mean, what Rourke did was awesome and it's amazing that he was able to do what he did, but I'm sure there were plays, roll outs or, or things they wanted to do with the quarterback position they just couldn't do because we can't put him in that position with

knowing that limitation. So like the fact that it's not that he's had it, but that everybody knew it and they were game planning around it and still had a unbelievably dynamic and fun looking offense. To me, that's a real positive going into next year. And I do think that's something that you can be really optimistic about. And I'm, I'm not as concerned about the like we have tape on this. Yeah, I know. I I think that that's all very valid. Matt asked. I was looking at future

schedules. What's the thoughts that on IU at UConn in 2026? Will IU buy out of that and have a home game? I don't see the point of traveling to a UConn. Also I wonder why IU scheduled the Virginia series the way they did their home in 2027 when they have 5 home big 10 games and then 2028 they go to Virginia and are on the road. Seems like they should have done the opposite. I mean I'll say this, I I would be surprised if that game at UConn ended up happening.

These things tend to get switched around. IU doesn't even have their third non con opponents set yet for the 2020 sixth season. There's one floating out there and look, there may be mandated changes to scheduling coming relatively soon in terms of who has to play whom and how many FCS teams or group of however many conference teams you're playing. So you know, teams outside the power conferences. You know, right now 2026, you're, you got Colorado State at home and you're at UConn.

The the question about why IU scheduled the way that they did, a lot of it really does come down to it looked good contractually at the time, but it's not anything that you can't get out of necessarily. And I, and I think ultimately the, the scheduling, we've been critical of the scheduling of IU football in in the past because it's tended to schedule without really thinking about the impact on I US bowl eligibility and overall, you know, success throughout the course of the

season. I, you know, I think back to a lot of those schedules that Kevin Wilson was playing against. Like why are you going to North Texas? Why are you playing a series against Navy? Who runs one of the most, you know, weird offenses in the, in the country? Why are you doing a home at home with Virginia? You know, the people would laugh at Minnesota's schedules and then Minnesota would win 8 or 9 games and go to a bowl game. It's like Minnesota's won what, 8 bowl games in a row?

Like that's how you do it. You, you get literally nothing out of scheduling these games the way that IU has historically scheduled them. And as much as IU took criticism for buying their way out of the Louisville game this year, they absolutely should have done it. That that that was the right move. So, so much of the way that IU fans and to some degree the IU athletic department historically looked at football was so backwards.

It was like, let's be it should have been, let's be successful. What is every how do we make everything set up in a way for us to be at the end of the season successful? And that the whole history of IU football scheduling, we've talked about this like go back to the 70s and 80s. Look at those non conference schedules that Lee Corso was playing. Look at the ones that Bill Mallory's teams were playing. Like, what are you doing? But even Ken Cameron, you know, you think about some of those

years, it's like. State and North Carolina. Why are you playing a a home and home versus North Carolina? Like why are you why are you bringing North Carolina State into your stadium? There's there's just like things that if you know where you're at and a stink with IU in particular at this point when you're in that intermediate range where you're still trying to move your way up.

For as much as people have talked about non conference strength to schedule, it didn't matter this year with Indiana and it, you know, even with the criticisms about Indiana, quote UN quote didn't play anybody. So much of their non or so much of their strength of schedule overall ended up being dictated by the teams in the conference. That's what matters.

Give yourselves the easy wins, give yourselves the developmental ability because what you need to do is get ready for the actual season, which is the conference season, because that ultimately dictates where you're going. So to go back to the question there, you get literally nothing out of a trip to UConn. Buy your way out of that. Schedule something easy at home. Give yourself an extra win.

Put yourself in a better position to get to the College Football Playoff or get to a higher level bowl. That's the answer. Again, this goes back to what we've been saying is that, you know, over the next couple of years, our scheduling should be set up for us to get to a bowl, not not to bolster our you know, we're not trying to get to the College Football Playoff every season. So you shouldn't schedule to to try and get to the College Football Playoff. You try and schedule to get to a

bowl. The only thing I'll say with the Virginia scheduling is I don't, I don't know when that was thrown on the schedule. But you do have to remember, you know, in the last 24 months, there have been two different Big 10 schedules sent out. Like I remember they sent out the Big 10 schedule before Oregon, sorry, before Oregon and Washington were at like right after UCLA and USC were added at some point that this is less than two years ago, they sent out a three-year Big 10 schedule.

Like here's your, your, your teams and your protected rivals. This is your schedule for the next three years. And then 12 months, like it was like 8 months later, Washington and Oregon were at it. It's like, well, that's obviously not our schedule because I don't think that they're just going to play an 8 game series. And then suddenly it's like, here's your new Big 10 schedule. So when that Virginia game was scheduled, Notre Dame was scheduled. You know, Notre Dame's were

playing what 2029? Like these things get scheduled way off. So you know, as you met like these things are are constantly changing. I think some of it's just placeholders and we don't know there could be a tenth big 10 game in three years and that Virginia thing just poofs out for everybody anyway. The ACC may not be around Virginia could be part of the big 10 for all we know in a couple of years. Like these things are changing. You heard it here first, by the

way, that happens. That'd be awesome. Like you heard it here first. I'm I'm so I, I do think like it's when those things get scheduled sometime. But I, I agree and I've, I have a couple of friends who kind of still make fun of like you guys are playing nobody. It's like, yes, we should like look at our history. Like we haven't won a bowl in 34 years. Like I continue to go back to like last year was awesome. Our goal going into a season is not trying to bolster our resume

for the CFP. Our we're trying to bolster our resume to get to the pinstripe bowl and win that. Like that's what we're trying to do. Couple other questions. We had a an interesting pair of questions and we'll wrap up with this.

Aiken Hoosier asks how do you think the contrast in the current seasons will impact the balance of administration slash fan support both near term and long term for IU football and IU basketball 1 program seems to perpetually provide no ROI and the other feels primed to do that.

We also had a question which right we answer the question from Ari, should IU worry about an attendance drop off like later in the Mallory era if they're a perennial 8 win team instead of a championship contender like last season? So let me tackle the second one first and we'll work our way

back to the first one. I mean, I think you have an end of one with the Mallory era teams where we people looked at that and said, oh, people stop coming to games and you know, the, the, the product was viewed as stale and and so therefore that shows that IU isn't going to support its teams unless they're perennially championship contenders. That's I disagree with that evaluation of things.

I mean, I think what's important to remember, there's a if you look at that era, you know, there was a real peak in attendance for IU and in, you know, the rolling average for IU in the the 88 and 89 seasons, which was picking up on the huge attendance spike in 87 and 88. That's when it got up to its highest number really ever. You know, it was 5152 thousand

average. It did start to fall off, but it wasn't exactly like, oh, Indiana was perennially winning eight games every year and and then people stopped supporting them. You know you got to remember in 89. IU missed the a bowl game and and you know, Anthony Thompson lost off out of the national or the Heisman Trophy because they lose the last game of Purdue. They finished five and six that year. The next year they won what, six games? You know, they had another five

win season in that mix. Yes, they had eight wins in 1993, but A, IU basketball had kind of gotten back to its apex, and B, IU football to some degree, was still living in the Stone Age, like you said. Like you, you and I, Scott grew up in that era. We went to games. You want to talk about bad stadium experiences or stadium experiences that have literally nothing going for them. I present to you like 1980 to 2000 with Memorial Stadium.

It was a sterile environment, nothing exciting about it. The teams were were good, more or less, or at least competitive, but it there was literally nothing else keeping you in there and. Also, friends, we we talk about the old Memorial Stadium. It's like, oh, I remember rolling down the hill. Like that was the thing when we went to games, like there was two hills on both sides to the Bleacher bleachers that held like 200 people on the end

zones. And it's like we would take cardboard boxes and slide down the hill, then you'd roll down the hill. It's like, all right, we got to go. It's like, God, you know, they're playing a football game. I know. I mean, as as weird as it sounds and look, I'm I'm not fully

excusing things, but again. You know, if you look at where IU football was at during that era, it wasn't that different from what Indiana did from say 1978 to 1982 where they won four games, eight games, six games, three games, five games. Like in that period, they were slightly better. They made, they went to more bowls 'cause there were more bowls in the late 80s, early 90s, but there was no compelling

stadium experience. It, you know, it was still an era where people were were using the loophole of I can use football to get basketball tickets, better basketball tickets. I don't think that the, the, the core nature of the IU fanbase is that they don't support their teams. You know, the last time IU was consistently good to that level happened to be kind of right at the end of an era where IU was still treating football like

something that was there. They didn't really care that much about it. If it was good, great, if not, no big deal. There was very little marketing that I can remember around going to games. There was not a lot of media coverage. It's much different now. And I think there's a whole group of younger fans in particular and middle-aged fans who have been wanting football to be good. And there's been just enough seating the field, so to speak, over the course of the last decade.

It's a much stronger base. It's a much better game experience. It's a much better stadium. And it's A and it's a much more televised product. I mean, yeah, that's the one other thing about it.

It's like unless you went to the stadium to watch IU football, or unless IU football was playing a Michigan or an Ohio State and losing as they would be want to do during that era, you weren't seeing IU football everywhere and it wasn't being covered by by the papers very much or the television station. So it was out of save out of mind and after the initial excitement of going to almost going to the Rose Bowl in 87 and winning eight games, it it sunk into the background.

I don't think that that's going to be happening here. And I think if Indiana's winning 789 games, maybe occasionally getting to 10 or 11 in this era, I think that the crowds are going to be. There, I think it's going to still be a really fun environment and I, I will, I'm going to push on this a little bit to Ari, but I would say I'm,

I've fallen into this as well. And I fall into that same trap of like, yeah, now you know, we had that run of Mallory, but you look at it like, you know, Mallory's first year is O and 11:00. Second year is 4 and 7 from 86 to 96. All these questions, you know, is, is a bunch of eight win seasons. Is the fans going to tail off? That's 10 years. How many eight win seasons were there under Mallory? There were three. Like you had 10 years. There was only three, eight win seasons.

And again, I've been guilty of this as well. But you look at it, it's like. There were only two there. There weren't three. There were. There were two. There was 88 or. Sorry. You're right. You're right. I'm sorry. I was wrong. I hit the wrong button. There. There were three. You're right. 8788 and and 93. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you had three out of 10 years and you only had two bowl wins. So this idea of like, oh, it was just eight.

You know, they're going 8:00 and 4:00 every year going to a bowl, winning a bowl. It's like that didn't happen. Like you had eight and four and 87, eight and three and one and 88. And then you go five wins, six wins, seven wins, five wins. You don't get eight wins again until 93. So this idea that it's just this like constant perfect eight, it is not there.

I think you also mentioned something to like, not only was the stadium experience kind of boring, just during that time you're playing the same teams, like obviously, but like it's the exact same Big 10 teams every single year. It's like, oh, here comes Iowa, that's Northwestern. We know Wisconsin like, and teams didn't really change much.

Like Wisconsin came in and did what they did and like Northwestern came in and they sucked and Michigan came in and you just saw the exact same teams to to being a new era. It's like we're going to see UCLA this year. Like that's really cool. Like at some point USC is going to come into our stadium. Oregon's going to come in, you know, and then you have these rotating, you know, it's like, oh, we probably won't see Iowa for like 6 years.

Like I haven't seen Iowa play at Memorial Stadium for 7-8 years. Like there is a newness to college football now with these mega conferences where you get to see different teams playing different styles. So I think that's something to it as well. But yeah, I mean, I would let's sign up for five straight years of eight wins and let's see how the fan bases do. And I, I also do think this is also a funny, like these are great problems to have.

Like let's let's do it first. Like let's just have five years of eight wins and then we'll deal with slight fan eight win apathy at at the end there when when we get to it. But, you know, I, I do think sometimes that idea of like, Mallory was just banging out eight win seasons is, is not totally reality. Yeah, I, I agree with you there. The to go back to the initial question for me, a whole part of it. Yeah. Yeah, the the basketball part of it.

So look, all you have to do right now is go to a home game in Assembly Hall to see the effects of what's going on in the last couple of decades. I mean, you know, that Illinois game, the balconies were what, about half full. The, you know, the student section was not entirely full. The from the fan perspective, I think the fans are voting on their perceptions of IU basketball right now by by not really showing up. And look, people will come back to that because it's like Alabama.

Alabama was was not a good football program for a while there. And then they got good again and the enthusiasm was the highest it it ever had been. 11 good season bring bring an Oladipo type back and like it. It'll come back quickly, it'll stand back. It's like a rubber band, but it's definitely down now. It is. And, and so I look at it from the perspective of, well, the, the, the, the fan investment from an intellectual perspective that'll ebb and flow.

I think the big question that I have is who else hops on the football bandwagon? You know who who among the fans is like, I really want to support this football team. I want to make this part of the culture. You know, I'll say like, just from our perspective, Scott, we look at the numbers on the podcast all the time. This was the first year that football was in the same arena as basketball in terms of the number of people that were

watching or listening. And even with that, the basketball podcasts are still beating the football podcast by about 1000 people in terms of who's turning, tuning in now. Sustained success will help with that. And I do think that it's going to take a couple of years for that to build. You just don't have an intrinsic football culture within the IU fanbase yet. It doesn't mean there's going to be 1. And I think that it's it's going to be on its way.

And I think you can build that around Kurt Signetti and his staff and the success that this program is having the basketball culture as as mistreated and is neglected as it has been in terms of the last 15 years or so, 20 years or so. It's still there. It's still intrinsic within the state. It's still intrinsic within the way that the, you know, the folks that graduated five years ago, 10 years ago, they're still heavily into it.

I'd worry a little bit about students right now, but students want to go and have good basketball. They want to go watch it. It wouldn't take a lot for Indiana to be back in the mix. I think you just have to you have to make some changes obviously, and we've talked about those changes on some other podcasts, but that's that's how I view it. I think investment wise, the athletic department, they had to make an investment in football

and they did. And that's going to be where a lot of the money comes from that pays for whatever IU athletics looks like as we move forward. You're already heavily invested in basketball. They're not going to under, they're not going to bring that investment back in terms of resources for recruiting or coaching salaries that will be there as well. You're never going to make nearly as much money off of of basketball as you will off of

football. So that's where I look at it and I say to myself, I'm I'm less worried about basketball investment hurting football investment. The questions always been what will it take for IU to invest in football? What will make them think this is worth it? I think this last year when you put it on top of the success they had in 2019-2020, that has pushed them over the edge. I look at Indiana, I don't see a program that's going to under resource their football program.

I see AI, see an athletic department. It's going to be like we have to continually invest in this and there will be rewards as a result of it. I have a question for you on this point. You know that to me the open question is at as football continues to scale. Going back to our discussion on the the personal seat donations, you know, you bring up a point that is true. It used to kind of be I'm just going to get football tickets for the points for basketball.

As you start to scale the cost of both programs, you know that that would be the open question to me as a football continues to succeed and continues to increase, the, you know, becomes a a cost similar to like Ohio State or Michigan in how you're charging your fans. Can you do that and also charge the basketball fans the same amount? Like is there enough interest in both programs at a top tier

charging level? That would be my real question because you're still football is still a real deal, you know, cost wise for what you're getting. Basketball is not basketball. You are paying top tier pricing. Are there enough people who are willing to donate, you know, thousands of dollars for both sports to get the points needed to to get both tickets? That's an open question.

And it does the question I'll ask to you, Galen is like, is there, you know, I'm, I'm trying to think in my mind, is there a university where the fan base really supports both programs at that top tier elite level? Because they're there's programs that have good sports in both. Like right now Alabama is doing well in basketball and obviously doing well in football.

But but I think, you know, let's see if Nate Oates leaves, you know, if that doesn't kind of Peters out, are they going to continue to support at that level? Like Michigan's an example. It's had a success at both levels, but you look at them, it's like if they're not making the final four, that place Chrysler Arena is not full. They are a basket. Sorry. They are a football school. Same thing with Ohio State. Like they were into it when Greg Odin was there.

They they probably come the closest in my mind, but it's it's very unusual for a program to support both, both levels. Like normally when you bring it down to its core, every school is is one or the other. Or in some cases they're neither some. Cases. They're neither. But I got to be honest. I, I, I resist that argument inasmuch as I don't know that Alabama is through a huge amount of financial investment into their basketball program. I think they just hired a really

good coach by accident. I mean, you look at the history of Alabama basketball and they've had moments where they've been OK, but you know, prior to Nate Oates being hired, their their prior 2 coaches, their prior 3 coaches were Mark Gottfried. That's what I was saying. But my, my, my, my. But my point is. And then Avery Johnson, it's not like they went in and like threw a bunch of money, I don't think at Nate Oates and was all.

Right, I'm more talking about fan support, like the fan support of. The, but even that I, I think that is, I think it's, I think fan support is more, I don't know what the fan support actually is for Alabama. I don't know if it's that much. I don't know if it's really that much at Auburn. I don't know that it's that much at Tennessee. When you hire really good coaches who know what they're doing, you tend to look like you're throwing a bunch of resources at something.

I mean, IU didn't really throw a bunch of resources at IU football until after Kurt Signetti had already won, what, seven or eight games this year. You could look at that, say why IU threw a bunch of money at football last year. They didn't. I mean, they they hired Kurt Signetti for less money than they were paying Tom Allen.

So that's that's the kind of thing I think where it's a little bit tricky to to go back to your question, like there aren't a ton of programs that are having high level success in both. I do think though, that like Kansas is a great example. And Kansas kind of had the football season from hell this year, but they made a bunch of investments because they wanted to keep their good coach and Lance Leopold and he stuck around and they ended up playing

like spoiler this year. But they, you know, they're investing in the stadium. They're doing all these things because they had to. And I kind of look at IU as being in the same boat. They already have the basketball investment. I don't know what it looks like when you try to compare those two things. I think ultimately you are going to need to be good in both because I think there's going to be more money and more opportunities to make money in men's basketball.

Once the inevitable happens and the power conferences start creating their own tournament that breaks away from the NCAA tournament. People are complaining about it now. Certainly it'll be a very different type of tournament, but at the end of the day they'll be more money kept by the schools with the power conferences running that. Then there is right now where it's distributed throughout the entirety of the NCAA, not just

Division One, but everything. So I think the ROI is likely to be greater if you have a good men's basketball program. I don't think that's why these SEC teams have have got good programs right now. I just think they all hired really good coaches. Yeah, yeah. It's it's a really interesting thing though, and I think it's something worth watching as we move forward. Anyway, we're over time, we need to stop. So we'll go ahead and wrap up here.

Scott, as always, a pleasure. Good talking football with you. Looking forward to doing more of these throughout the course of the offseason as spring ball. We'll be here relatively soon and we'll see what roster Indiana goes into spring ball with. My thanks to our title sponsor, home field apparel. My thanks to all you folks who are part of the Crimson cast family.

We'll be back with more podcasting coming up soon and see what happens with IU basketball coming up tomorrow for Scott, I'm Galen, this is Crimson cast. We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the Bison, stay. Never daunted, so on everybody.