You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast, Galen Clavia joining you. It is Thursday the 20th of March. Happy tournament day, day one if you don't count the play in games. Finally a good play in game yesterday involving at large teams as Xavier comes back and knocks off Texas and Dayton.
But today we get the full menu of things and hopefully those of you who are out there watching and listening to the podcast or enjoying those simultaneously, we have a special guest back on the show, Zach Osterman, Naive Insider for the Indie * And we will chat with Zach in just a second here as we've got a ton to cover in terms of the coaching search and everything else that's gone on. But first of all, just a quick reminder, we're brought to you by Home Field Apparel, the place
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just a little bit of everything. So head on over to the YouTube channel. We'd love to have you on in that community and as part of our subscriber base. Over 7000 people now there. Join the crowd. It's what everybody's doing. All right, Zach, welcome back. It's been a long season for IU basketball and I wanted to first start off by kind of getting a bit of an epitaph and of course a post mortem on the Woodson era, which is now ended after Four Seasons. Indiana barely missing out on
the NCAA tournament this year. So two times in four years, Indiana doesn't make it. And it was certainly a mixed bag in a bunch of different ways to see the the era seemed like it ended perhaps better than it looked like it was going to end at the beginning of February. But if you reflect back on these Four Seasons with Mike Woodson at the helm, what's your overall impression? What are you left with as far as as how this period of time went for Indiana basketball?
Well first, if there's a video component to this, I hope it it. It caught me having to physically remove my 7 year old because he was trying to find a a piece of a Lego that is not in my office. This is a common thread on Crimson. Cast of Scott's sons do the same thing during the show on a regular basis, so you fit right. It's a it's a crisis of of substantial proportions anyway.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't know, it's it's kind of funny like the the Woodson era just feels like it kind of covered a lot of ground, a very short space of time because there were these sort of like distinct storylines that like it. I don't want to say there weren't common threads, but the first year was so much about Indiana has to get back into the tournament. Indiana's got to break this this
streak. Indiana has to get to a place where it's not, you know, sort of grappling with this, this this almighty struggle just to just to return to one of college athletics more forgiving post seasons. And then the second season was, you know, defined by I think expectation at a level that no other Woodson season was in terms of, you know, Indiana was pre season big 10 favorite that year. That was also Trace Jackson
Davis's senior year. You know, that was a that was a group that I think, especially by the end of the season, you very you very much felt like a lot of that was kind of an all or nothing year in terms of, you know, you knew trace was leaving, Race Thompson was leaving Miller cop was leaving Jaylen Pitchfina was leaving. There was just like such a sort of maximize everything about this year.
And then I think, I think the last two years are the 1st 2 that feel a little bit more interconnected and, and maybe not necessarily in a good way, but more I think in the end reflective of, I mean, certainly obviously what eventually moved Indiana to, to, to move on from Mike Woodson or, or everyone to move on. I know Woodson, you know, sort of announced he was going to step down, but also maybe a bit of a sense that that this was this was not a the, the
direction of the program was just one that that kind of couldn't be sustained essentially. And you know, I mean, I've covered Tom Crean's nine year tenure, Archie Miller's four year tenure and now Mike Woodson's four year tenure. And it is funny to me how distinct, how much it seems like we sort of packed into four years under Mike Woodson. And I mean that like largely on
the court. I'm not talking about controversy or, you know, headlines or I mean, I mean, like largely on the court, it feels like Indiana, you know, kind of almost kind of endured 3 distinct eras within one for your tenure. Maybe that's a little bit reflective of the portal era and how much teams turn over and the fact that, you know, if there is less continuity than you are constantly feeling like you're almost kind of seeing each team in its own sort of space and time.
But yeah, I mean, it it I, I honestly haven't stopped to think that much about, you know, kind of Mike Woodson's four years just because there has been so much going on in the last few days. But that is probably the way I would describe it is that it it does feel like we we packed an awful lot into a short space of time.
I mean, I think you you hit on something really interesting there, which the portal era, it did feel like in Mike Woodson's tenure, it almost felt like Mike Woodson got hired in a different era, one where you were still focusing on traditional recruiting. NIL as a matter of course was still not a thing. It wouldn't become a thing, you know, really in earnest until, you know, shortly after he got
hired. And this last year was a a roster assembly like we've never seen in the history of Indiana basketball. And, you know, you've got key players coming in from outside. You had a couple of of holdovers who it'll look like they were going to become role players.
It is really interesting, though, that this season ended up almost getting saved by the guys who stuck around as hypothetical role players, while many of the folks that got brought in through the transfer portal ended up having to play more supporting roles. Not it's not, you know, 100% across the board. But if you don't have Trey Galloway and Anthony Leal playing the way that they play down the stretch, you're not even in conversation probably for the NCAA tournament. So yeah, it is.
I think it's a sign of the times to some degree. I mean, do you think obviously there was there's a lot of question marks about how Mike Woodson got hired, what that process was like? We've talked about that a bit over time and that became a big talking point just in terms of the job during this cycle. But it it does feel to some degree like if the trajectory of college athletics had not changed, you know, maybe this turns out differently, but it
did change. And Indiana suddenly found itself in a spot where it it just wasn't measuring up from a competitive level. And that is unfortunately Adna that it shares with what happened in the Archie Miller era and what looked like it started to happen at the tail end of the Crean era, too. And I mean, it almost feels like Indiana's been behind a step for a decade now. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's also really hard to contextualize Woodson's hiring like #1 Scott Dolson's still in his first year
on the job. Or maybe like, I guess just the other side of year one, number two, COVID. I think we all forget Covid's still going on. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm talking with other reporters about what we're hearing at the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis. We're all still wearing masks. The attendance is still, you
know, like 1/3 capacity. Nobody had any money then because everybody was, was wondering just how big the budget shortfall was going to be once kind of all the dust settled and everyone could add up all the money they didn't make on tickets and what they, you know, nobody knew quite what they were going to lose from their TV inventory. So like even that felt a little different.
And, and I think it was Scott Dolson, in fairness, trying to embrace some of the more modern aspects of college basketball, even though the problem, I think part of the problem was we didn't really quite know what those were. We could guess, you know, the idea it's going to look a little bit more pro model. It's going to be a little bit more like free agency and year to year. And, you know, but I think that you still didn't know. I mean, NIL didn't come into into effect in until that
summer. And really, I think it's probably fair to say wasn't properly in place until the following spring or summer for the most part in terms of, you know, schools and, and what it eventually became their affiliate collectives kind of understanding how to build up a
large scale NIL operation. You know, I, I remember talking to, let's just say a mutual friend of ours, I think I'm allowed to tell this story who, who runs a, a business and was looking into open doors or one of those things kind of at the advent of NIL. And there, there were athletes who said that like the starting fee for NIO deal for him was like $15,000. And that was for, you know, like social media posts and things like nobody knew anything then.
It's kind of my point. And so, you know, in some ways there is probably an extent to which like Woodson's tenure almost kind of tracked a lot of the developments of this stuff.
And, you know, now Darren Devry's tenure will will kind of bring revenue sharing into it. But I think that you make a valid point about this team and this season about how, you know, I mean, I think one of the quotes that really stuck out to a lot of people on Wednesday when Darren Devries was talking was that a roster isn't a collection of players. It it has to fit together. And I think there was a feeling, you know, that that this roster maybe didn't quite do that.
Now, that's always a little bit on the coach and a little bit on the players. And, you know, I, I when when we've kind of done our post mortems. One thing I've said, you know, pretty consistently is I think Mike Woodson thought he had this roster in a good place and then it was clear that he didn't and it took too long for him to rearrange it in a way that made sense and worked. And, and ultimately, that's why Indiana kind of comes up just
short of making the tournament. But it, you know, in a lot of ways, I think Woodson's Woodson's hiring is kind of like something unto itself in this program's history because of the place and time that it happened. But his tenure, I think has tracked a a lot of sort of and reflected, as you would expect, a lot of the developments in college athletics that, you know, that we were all probably just kind of trying to get a handle on as they were happening.
And now while we're, you know, now we have this brave new world of revenue sharing, I think everyone is is probably able to operate a with with a little more confidence in the ground underneath their feet. That doesn't mean Darren Debris is is going to, you know, immediately outperform Mike Woodson, but I think that there's going to be a lot less sort of, you know, figuring out as we go along essentially.
Obviously we've known officially since roughly the beginning of February that Mike Woodson was not going to return. The timing of that a bit odd historically, you know, given that a lot of times as we just saw with say Texas, Rodney Terry just got fired today or this morning. I. Didn't see that. I wondered if he. I wondered if he was going to. I didn't. Yeah, that. That just got announced, but that's normally when these announcements happen. Kevin Keats right before the ACC
tournament. I mean, are you getting a jump start on things? And there was a lot of speculation about the search and the way that the search went. You and Michael Nazolik had a a really good article today in the Star regarding kind of the background of that process.
And obviously, I want people to go read the article, but it was interesting a how much it seems to mirror the process that they used to hire Kurt Signeti. But also I think everybody's curious about how the timing of this actually worked.
There was that little segment of the press conference on Wednesday when Devries mentioned something about Pam Witten and Scott Dolson being respectful of like him still focusing on his team while things were going on, which seemed to indicate like these talks have been going on for a while. This wasn't something that just happened in the last week. Yeah, I mean, and I think West Virginia fans have taken it a certain way. And I guess I understand that.
I would point out, Will Wade literally said he was talking to NC State in a press conference yesterday and then it was confirmed about an hour later, I think that he's going to take the NC State job at the end of the year. And and a West Virginia fan might say, well, yes, but that's different because he's at McNeese State. And I understand that sentiment too. But the process isn't different. And you know what is? Look, I, I I thought about this in relation to the Archie Miller
hiring. Indiana Dismissed Tom Crean on the first day of the tournament. Archie Miller lost, I think in his first game that season or that that tournament against Wichita State. Sean played to the second weekend. And the way that the the way the supposed timeline all worked out was Archie joined his family wherever Sean was and said, well, they were all just kind of having a quiet moment in a room together. Said, you know, hey, I'd love your opinion. I think I got a shot at this IU job.
And by the end of the weekend, I remember because I was I was back home in Atlanta for some reason, by the end of the weekend, it was all done. So you had a timeline of, you know, coach fired on the 1st on the day of the tournament, starts new, you know, next coach loses his first tournament game and is hired basically coming out of the second weekend of the tournament. That timeline doesn't exist anymore because of the portal, especially this year.
And we don't have to get too in the weeds with it. I know MM and I like always rolls his eyes when I start talking about it too much. But I do think it's important for people to understand at least a little bit the April 7th deadline. That's going to be very, very important for roster construction for basketball this year and the ability to kind of, you know, operate under quote UN quote old NIL for one more year. You know, that that timeline
just doesn't work anymore. That sort of, you know, we'll we'll all wait until seasons end and then, you know, that's when we'll talk to candidates and whatever else. And listen, you know, even before all this, search firms were having some of those conversations, even if athletics directors weren't. But I think what you found is,
is a bit more of an ability. I think This is why search firms have become so much more important and, and why you've seen kind of their influence spread is that I think probably more what you're talking about is the, you know, the, the, the sort of hard and fast conversations you're setting, the, you're sitting the table so that when everybody sits down,
that stuff can happen quickly. That's the stuff that tends to happen, I think after a season is over, you know, is, is the literal in person, I'm going to sit down with the president. I'm going to sit down with the athletics director. We're going to talk about the, you know, how this works, but so much of the stuff that used to happen in person, you know, after the fact or after, you know, between the end of a season and the hiring just has to happen in a in a different
timeline now. And I don't know for a fact when everyone spoke to everyone, but I don't think you can come away from yesterday with any take away other than that that yes, Indiana spoke to Darren Devries at some point while West Virginia season was still going on. But having said that, that is just the way it works now. And if you aren't prepared to operate according to that timeline, then you're going to suffer for it.
Because the other thing, you know, and and I, I would never have said this five years ago, but I do think it's relevant now. I think there's going to be an expectation that Indiana is, you know, should be able to compete pretty quickly here. You know, if you look at like the Ken Palm top 20, you got a Florida team that's in year 2 under Todd Gold in 130 games. You got a Texas Tech team in year 200, Grant Mccaslin, you know, 125 games.
You know, Saint John's in year 2, obviously under Rick Pitino's been a big story. You know, we can keep going down the list to to somebody like Mark Pope, obviously, yeah, somebody like Louisville even. I mean, even throw in in Illinois in the sense that Brad Underwood's been there a while, but that roster turned over completely and there's still
20th and Ken Palm with 21 wins. There are six seed like that's you know, you don't have to go out and win a national title in year 1. But the idea that again, the old timeline of and and this guy's going to come in and he's going to retain a few players and then he's going to recruit his own guys. And once those guys are sophomores and juniors, that's when you're really going to see the fruits of it. Dusty Mays, another example, you know, it it, that timeline just doesn't fit anymore.
And so you have got to be prepared to move really, really quickly. And Indiana is, I would be very surprised if we're not talking about, you know, by the beginning of next week, staffing being in place, maybe even one or two transfers, you know, sort of if not on campus, maybe already committed. We'll see. This stuff moves really fast anymore. That's just the way it works. We heard Scott Dolson, we heard Pam Witten talk about why they felt Darren Devries was a good
fit for IU basketball. You know, they talked about a coach that could operate as Aceo. They, they talked about his, his process based nature. Again, very, very reminiscent of their comments on Kurt Signetti and not just their comments, but what we saw out of Kurt Signetti this entire year. From your perspective, not, not Witten, not Dolson, but from your perspective, observationally, both with IU basketball and nationwide, do you feel like Debris is a very good fit for IU basketball?
And, and you know, what is it about him that makes you think one way or the other about how he fits within this particular structure and what IU wants to be? I think I mean, I, I, I can see it both ways. And you know, on the one hand, I don't know that you would have looked at Darren Devries, you know, at the beginning of the search and said that's an absolute home run.
On the other hand, number one, I'm I'm very much the person that bangs the drum for the idea that nearly always coaches or programs like this hire coaches that then become, you know, great, become elite in those jobs. You know, Bill Self to Kansas, John Calipari to to to Kentucky. Those are the outliers and you know, and I said this to people, to IU fans I knew at the front end of this process, I said, look what Louisville did last year. Look what Kentucky did last year.
Those are programs that are your peers in terms of the way they expect their basketball team to perform, the way they support it, the the energy of their fan base, the money behind it. Those are Indiana's peers and one of them hired BYU's head coach, who probably, you know, if Mark Pope had played his his college basketball at UCLA, maybe he probably, you know, he might still take the Kentucky job. But obviously that's still very influential in him being the guy
there. And the other one hired a coach who'd been at Winthrop and Charleston. So and they both did great. I'm not criticizing either hire. My point is they both hired coaches that they were going to have to make into what they wanted them to be. And we can. I won't go through the whole list, but history says that is kind of the common task that coaches walk here. If anything, hiring from another high major program is not super common.
Now we can we can also have a philosophical discussion about whether the Big 10 and the Big 12 really operate, you know, on the same playing field anymore. In some ways they don't. Well, on that real quick, I think some Big 12 schools do well and granted there's going to be some revenue differences, but I think if you look at like the Kansas, Houston, Arizona maybe, but but this is where the Big 12's this interesting body because there's no argument that West Virginia is in that upper
echelon. So you know, even within that and I think to some degree within the ACC, you've almost got a bifurcation within the conferences about who the haves and the have nots are. And I guess what I meant was more, you know, if you're a coach, you're thinking about next year, but you're also thinking about 5 years from now and five years from now, 8 years from now, 10 years from now.
The Big 12 in the ACCI suspect are not going to feel necessarily like direct competitors to the big 10 and the SEC financially. And and and not just financially like, oh, how much literal money they have, but for example, how much money they can put into revenue sharing and how they can split it up and how NIL can support different things. So on the like, I I look at their in debris and I see reasons why some people might be skeptical or at least cautious.
I also just generally think, and I said this at the outset of the search, that, you know, this job to me is a bit of a, a paradox. And one of the elements of that, one of the, the, the, the core sort of elements of that paradox to me anyway, was that on the one hand, I think it's going to be easier for the next head coach to kind of make the fan base happy quickly.
Like just just find a competitive level that in a consistency that the team hasn't seen, especially like stop getting blown out, you know, like on the road and stuff like that. But on the other hand, I, I also thought like it was going to be very hard to hire someone that everyone wouldn't look at and be like, OK, prove it. Because 25 years of this now, we've tried all these different head coaches, you know, at this point, we're done just kind of
blindly buying. And you, you kind of got to prove it to us essentially that that you're, you've got that level in you. And I think both of those things kind of exist. And that's why I think on the one hand, you look at this hiring, you say, OK, he is going to have to prove it a little bit. But you look at it on the on another. And I think there are some, some justifiable reasons for, for
optimism. So you know, Tony Adronia, your friend and mine had a good point, which was that I think, I think in only maybe one of his seven seasons as a head coach did debris not improve his Torvic rating in the court season. Now, I think it's a good point. I think it's a little dangerous because the problem is the computers, especially in the portal era, are are going to tend to naturally downgrade mid majors at the expense of high
majors. Cause high majors will spend the offseason bolstering their roster with players that the the computers say should make them a lot better.
This is why, for example, you've seen Indiana struggle against it's it's pre season Kim pom number in the last two 3-4 years consistently under Mike Woodson. But I think Tony's point is valid, which is his teams have consistently gotten better against the formulas that you need to like you to make life easier in February and March in college basketball and that we don't need to get into a debate. I I have thoughts on those formulas as well, but that's that's a a conversation unto
itself. You're not a not a big BPI guy these days like. I, I think I, I mean my elevator speech is that I think the, I think the net, Ken Palm, etcetera, need to be reconfigured for a world with super conferences. Because I think what, what we are seeing here is that you, you have these conferences that are so large and are so naturally inflated in those numbers by the quality of coaches and and players etcetera, that they just sort of it's a closed loop. Exactly.
They, they feed on themselves and we say, my God, these conferences are amazing. But the problem is that they're just beating each other. And like, I had a friend yesterday who said Oklahoma's a 19, the only one, six games in the SEC, What are we doing? I said, I have bad news for you about Texas. You know, the formula needs to be reworked a little bit if it's saying that 6 and 12 in any conference is good enough. But that's set that to one side.
I thought one thing that was interesting about Indiana's own analysis. I know Scott Dolson sort of trumpeted the the the record in close games. And I'm always a little bit skeptical of stuff like that because there's so many things that can turn a close game.
But one of the things that that struck me was I, I, I think Indiana did this, you know, kind of specifically to make sure if it was looking at a coach who had a big body of work in the mid major that they weren't kind of hiring another Archie Miller type where the numbers looked good. But the performances that the the underlying performances were were more concerning. Archie won 90 games, I think, in his first Four Seasons at Dayton. He inherited that job from a coach who'd won 97.
I think Drake won. If I'm remembering the numbers right there in our story, I just don't have them in front of me. Drake won 40 games in the four years that the preceding Devreese's hiring said. They won 977 and 17 in the four year. Yes, and he he won like 95. He won 2420262527 and 28 in a six year span.
So the point is, you know, that that what they were looking for is proof that someone built something, not just that they inherited and sustained and maybe sort of refashioned in their own, you know, through their own image or their own philosophies, something that they built something and Debris very much did it. Drake and I know there are people who say, well, it's 'cause he had his son. Well, he didn't for the first three years.
So, you know, it it, I mean, you know, he goes to the NCAA tournament in, in 2021. There are people who have reservations about his lack of, of NCAA tournament wins. And I understand that. You know, I don't think that's that's completely unfair. But here's where I come back to the idea that the job kind of makes the coach a little bit. Danny Hurley had not won an NCAA Tournament game for anyone until he won the first one on the road to his first national title.
He had been to the NCAA tournament four times, twice at Rhode Island, twice at UConn, and he'd not won. Unless there was a First four-game in there somewhere that I can't, I don't see. Excuse me, I'm sorry, I take it back. He did win two games at Rhode Island. Then he went Four Seasons at UConn without winning a tournament game before he won, before he won the first game in his first win at UConn was during the 2023 run to his first to the two national title.
So my point is, you know, you can kind of see those sorts of things both ways. What Indiana felt like it was confident in was it was getting somebody who was who had made his own success. And West Virginia's a small sample size, but I think I think A10 win improvement was the best single season turn around in that program's history.
And you know, you can certainly see some marker points in in West Virginia's sort of metric performances, particularly defensively from last season to this season. And that was with a pretty substantial roster turnover. And then, of course, he lost probably his best player, Tucker Devries, his son after eight games. So Indiana felt good about the idea that they were getting somebody who was kind of the author of his own success.
And I thought that was and a really interesting way of looking at why someone like Darren Devries might and and listen, Ben McCollum might wind up having a better career. But might, you know, separate from someone like Ben McCollum, right? The other interesting aspect, like if you looked at the names that were getting mentioned in the search, I mean, there's other factors at play just
besides success. You brought up a really good point earlier, which we brought up on the show as well, which is this is an era of college basketball where if you have the financial backing and you're already getting recruits and you're already having success, there's a bunch more programs that you can potentially win a national title at or at least get to national prominence than there were 20 years ago.
And you know, as much as people would be like, well, why, why wouldn't they'd be able to go out and get like a Scott Drew or ATJ Olzenberger? It's like you can get to a Final Four at Baylor or win a national title. As we've seen, you can get to a Final Four at Iowa State. No one would have, I mean, you grew up in the South, like a very occasionally in Auburn or in Alabama would have a great season and settle back into the mire.
That's not how it is now. And, and the idea that you had to get to an Indiana or a North Carolina or a Kansas in order to actually be competitive for a national title, it just isn't the case. So as much as I think for a lot of IU fans, the initial rejection of debris and there weren't as many it act the, the response was actually a lot better than I thought it would be among the fan base.
But for those who were skeptical, a lot of it was, well, why couldn't Scott Dolson pull a bigger name? And and that's just unfortunately, I think for a lot of IU fans, egos like it's just not as important to be at an IU in order to have national success. Why move if you've already got a good thing going where you're currently at? No. And I think there's I think there's a few layers to that.
I mean, first of all, like, OK, so look at the look at the the teams that won the national title in the 90s, UNLV, Duke, Duke, North Carolina, Arkansas, UCLA, Kentucky, Arizona, Kentucky, UConn. And that decade, sort of you want to see it this way, wraps off with Michigan State. And then after that comes Duke, Maryland, Syracuse, UConn, UNC, and you don't like you're only three real interlopers.
There are UNLV, which had been so good in the 80s and 1990 was kind of the they went to a yeah, they. They've been good for 15 years at that point. 90 Arkansas in 94, which was you had a generational coach. And then if you, if you kind of want to see Florida as an interloper again with the generational coach, point is, you know, you, you, you get up into, you know, more recent years. Yes, you have your Kansas's and you have your Yukons, but you've also got Virginia in there.
You've got Villanova pulling back up in there. You've got Louisville coming back to a level of prominence that you really had lost for probably 20 years under Denny Crum. And then the other thing you haven't, I guess I that sounded really harsh on Denny Crum. He was a great coach. At the end of his tenure, Louisville had he had dipped a little bit of his. Career, like it, fell apart. Yes, it was, and Denny was a delightful interview too, by the way. We all miss him, but you know it.
The other thing that has happened here too is the money has changed in all the ways you would imagine what these programs can do. So for example, Alabama can pay Natoats an amount of money that A, makes it hard to pull Natoats out of Alabama and B, also gets convinces Natoats to say, yeah, you can put an, an 8 figure buyout in my contract.
Because the flip side is not only are you going to pay me the money I need, not only are you going to pay my assistants the money they need, but like, I've heard anecdotally that most NCC programs are going to start at 4 or 5 million in revenue share. You know, and I, I, I, I think that at least near term, I think their thought process is NIL can cover the gap in football. We'll put a little more toward basketball than people expect.
Obviously we'll see if that works long term, but there's just more money in especially the SEC. The SEC is kind of the big one here. Again, the Big 12, I think. And, and I'd point out Indiana did just take a coach out of the Big 12. You know, the Big 12 is 1 where maybe 578 years from now it looks different, but the SEC is the one where it's like, you know, Todd Golden 8 figure buyout. Bruce Pearl, I don't know what his buyout is, but he's incredibly comfortable at, at Auburn.
And Nate Oates has an 8 figure buyout. You know, I, I don't know what Dennis Gates buyout is, but I don't think Indiana was necessarily ever as as sort of intensely, you know, locked in on somebody. I think Mark Byington has like a $12 million. Yeah, his his Buyouts 12 if I'm not mistaken. If that's the bill, basketball coach has a $12 million buyout. I mean, yeah, it's that's that's.
The point is both because of the ways that these schools, the money these schools have allows them on the one hand, to keep these coaches comfortable and competitive. You know, whether it's their own salaries, their own staffing pools, their own resources, or it's NIL, it's revenue sharing, whatever. And then it also gives these, you know, these these athletics departments the leverage to be able to protect themselves with enormous buyouts.
You know, Mark Pope and and Darren Devries, I believe are at least publicly known to basically kind of now be the joint highest bought out coaches to be high. Like if it's a hiring buyout, not a firing buyout, Pope was at six million last year. Indiana's going to be with taxes, I think just a little bit. And they're also going to assume a bit of a little bit of the duty to Drake from West Virginia. So they're going to go a little more than 6,000,000.
I think that's basically about as high. The only one that's possibly higher is Ed Cooley to Georgetown. But we'll never know those numbers exactly because he went from 1:00 private school to another. So it it there are people who think that might be the highest buyout that's ever been paid. These schools just have the money to keep the the coaches comfortable and also to protect themselves, to not let the coaches get poached. Like, Illinois would never lose
a coach to Kansas now. They would just have too much money to be able to do it. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because there's an argument, I mean, there, there was a lot of rumors that debris was Iowa's number one target and that Iowa just could not come up with enough money on the NIL front. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean I Iowa doesn't have money. It means Iowa's spending that money elsewhere like they're they're putting that money
towards football. I mean, there's a theory I've heard and maybe it's been confirmed already, I'm not sure. But you know, West Virginia just hired Rich Rodriguez as their head football coach. They do not have an inexhaustible supply of available money to spread around. And cultural perspective, I think you can make an argument that football at West Virginia is just more more vital to their culture than basketball.
You know, there's a possibility that there were NIL commitments that weren't going to be able to be kept because that money now had to go to support the football program, that there are resource allocation issues at a lot of these schools.
It's why I thought, well, you know, even somebody like Tommy Lloyd might be a possibility in the search because of the huge financial issues Arizona's got and the idea that at some point they have to choose where are we putting the money and where is it going to have its biggest impact. So there's a lot of you, you bring up a lot of great points.
There's a lot of financial data points that end up entering into some of these decisions that the average fan is still not really attuned to a program to think about. Because I don't even think the industry has really gotten its head wrapped around how all of this is supposed to work. And you know even how the post settlement realities financially of college sports are going to shake themselves out. And where the soft power is compared to the hard power.
So like for example, the Big 12 right now, if you ask me for my, my greatest fear about if, if I'm, if I'm the Big 12, a fan of the Big 12 or a conference in the, or a team in just a Big 12 fan, I wear a Big 12 cap everywhere. That's a conference without a single team, single program right now that can legitimately compete for a national championship in football. And like that, I mean, that that is the currency in college sports.
It's, it's why the ACC, you know, sort of a went through a prolonged legal battle and B eventually willingly sort of ripped up its, its, its previous, you know, revenue sharing structure, not revenue with, with athletes, but within its own conference to make sure that it kept the two or three programs that it has right now that give it currency and agency in a College Football Playoff role in a College Football
Playoff conversation. Because that is, that is the next great frontier in, in, you know, basically who who controls the keys to the Kingdom in college athletics. Big 12 doesn't have that. So if I'm the Big 12 school, to your point, and I've got to figure out how to cut my cloth, I, I'm probably in most places, maybe not Kansas, maybe not Arizona, but in most places, I'm leaning toward football and trying to say we've got to be better at this.
Because then you look at like the Big East, for example, where there are people who think these, there are going to be some Big E like the, in all likelihood the, the big E schools are going to be the ones with the most money in just raw Rev share because they don't have to serve football. They don't have to feed football. But the flip side of that is the Big East is going to have precious little political power going forward.
And things like tournament expansion or when the tournament expands, when it's time here in four or five years to start renegotiating, you know, NCAA tournament television revenues and things like that, how that money gets spread around. And so, you know, it's it's you have all of these. You have a lot of different sort of constituencies within what we would call in basketball terms, the high major conferences that basically all look at the same problem trying to find their own
solution. The only two conferences that don't really have a big problem or at least have the least number of problems by far, are the SEC and the Big 10. And that is why you see, you know, schools when you see, you see coaches trying to get into those conferences and why, you know, West Virginia fans might be upset that Darren Devries leaves after just one season. But Darren Devries might say, listen, you know, hey, culturally it's probably a better fit for him, right? He's from Iowa.
Like I, I, I heard that when he took the Drake job, part of it was just like, I'm just so happy to be close to my family and, and, you know, yadda, yadda, yadda. But also part of it is just you've got to find your way into one of those two conferences. If you can use this as an example, West Virginia was rumored to be considering a
coaching change in football. Throughout last season, West Virginia had a prominent alum who was having a remarkable amount of success at a program that historically does not measure up to West Virginia in football. Doesn't even really come close, right?
If we're talking about, you know, 30 years, 50 years, 75 years, the cultural importance of football at West Virginia compared to where this coach was, the, you know, the, what would be perceived to be sort of the infrastructure around those programs. And yet at no point did it ever seem like Kurt Signetti was going to seriously entertain the possibility of leaving Indiana for his alma mater. But the flows reversed almost immediately when Indiana
basketball called. Yes, part of it is the prestige of IU basketball, but it's also that life in the Big 10. Five years, three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now is a lot more manageable than life in the mid 12. Final question for you on the podcast today, Zach, Indiana acted relatively early. They get their coach hired essentially 6 days before the
portal opens. Do you have any thoughts right now about the timetable from now until, let's say, the beginning of June in terms of, you know, when do you anticipate we're going to hear news on what the staff looks like? When do you anticipate we're going to hear? And are you surprised we haven't seen more IU players enter the
portal yet? And, you know, how would you expect or how would you you suggest IU fans approach looking at the way the roster will likely come together in terms of the timetable over the next 6 to 10 weeks? Yeah. I mean, I think we're probably talking more than that or fewer than that, right? Like like quicker than that is, is what I'm trying to say. You know, staffing I think will happen relatively quickly. There's different things you got to solve here.
Debris had, by my understanding, a pretty large staff of West Virginia. Indiana had the number one staffing pool in the Big 10 last year. So whether he wants to pull staffers from West Virginia, whether he wants to go hire someone from somewhere else, I think, you know, that's going to happen fairly quickly. I would expect there to be some sort of general manager type person within that, you know, and The thing is every program
has somebody like that. It's just that some programs now are making a big deal of calling it general manager and and boasting about how much they're paying that person. You know, like how you football has like AI forget what the exact title is, but basically like a director of, you know, like recruiting and player personnel. It's the same idea. It's someone who is trying to be a fence for this is these are the qualities we're looking for. I'm going to scout all these players.
I'm going to bring these players to, you know, the, the, I'm the talent evaluator and my staff are the talent evaluators and we're going to bring these players that we find to the staff to the head coach. They're going to say, let's pursue him, let's pursue him, you know, and so forth. It's, it's the same process. It's just that some people are, are making, I think A, and I'm not saying that like maybe some of these general managers aren't going to have a little bit more,
you know, influence or whatever. But I, I think there is also kind of an element of, you know, just sort of making a big deal about the title. When a lot of these programs have someone like that, it just maybe they call it something
different. Because let's let's be very clear that there is a demonstrable difference between the general manager and college who is directly answerable to the head coach and a general manager or a president of operations in the pros who probably has, at least at a fundamental level, the the authority to fire the head coach. So you can call him a general manager, but it's not what a general manager is in in the NBA
or the NFL. As for the roster, I guess I will take people in the weeds with us now because you probably know this. Again, Mike always rolls his eyes when I start into this conversation. But I do think it's important for people to understand the house settlement is scheduled to be approved on April 7th. It may not be, but as of right now, that's the deadline everyone has to work with. The NCAA has said that it's NIL clearing house will go into effect April 7th.
I don't think it actually opens its doors until like July 1st or June something. But the NCAA has said every NIL deal signed on or after April 7th will be subject to fair market value analysis by Deloitte via the clearing house. Which means if you sign in an IL deal for $500,000, then if it's on or after April 7th, Deloitte gets to look at that. It gets to look at your profile, your, you know, your brand, how, how good you are, how many social media followers you have,
whatever. And say either A, yes, for, for the work done here, for the, you know, the, the scope of these deals. That's a fair number. That's, you know, that's his, his or her fair market value or B, No, it's not. And then the clearing house can reject the deal and basically send it back and say we don't approve this. Now, everyone obviously expects that at some point someone will challenge the the Clearing House's power to to to do this total. Hours are salivating right now over.
This then we'll then we'll see what happens. But it's everyone is operating or attempting to operate in a world where for the next, what is that like 3 weeks basically? Yeah, it's, it's a little over. It's about 2 1/2 weeks. For the next like 2 1/2 weeks, you can have your cake and eat it too. You can have NIL the old way, which is you can just, you can decide what the number is.
You know, like the the number I've heard is that basically it's about 85 fifteen, 85% collective money, 15% like the true NIL that you just go find because you're AIU basketball player or, you know, an Ohio State football player or whatever. So you can you know, you can have those numbers as they already are right now, but then you can also have revenue sharing, which is going to be you know, it probably at least a few $1,000,000 in a place like
Indiana after April 7th. You can have Rev share, but the NI LS probably going to be reined in a little bit, at least for now. So I think the I know the goal is going to be for everybody, and This is why Indiana making their hire as quickly as they did helps is you want to get as much of that roster in place as possible by April 7th.
And you know, yes, there are sort of waves of portal players and do you want to wait for somebody to come off of final four team or you know, you always see some mid major players that go into the portal, declare for the draft, go through the draft process knowing that they're going to
come back out again. Well, here's The thing is the players are going to have to respond to this too, because their agents, their representation are going to be saying, listen, you know, the financial opportunity for you is much greater if we get in ahead of this deadline. So let's get these visits done. You know, let's get all this.
But if if you're committed to planning college next season, I'm just telling you there is a a demonstrable financial difference between the opportunities available to you before April 7th and after April 7th. And so I think you are going to see things speed up pretty quickly on the roster front. The since I have gotten and that you you mentioned only a couple of Indiana players are in the portal so far. You know, you're in the breeze even said yesterday a lot of them are on spring break.
The since I've gotten is that there's an expectation most of the roster will turn over. Obviously already Indiana was was looking at a fair number of outs just based on, you know, graduation and things. But I think there were, I think there were like 9 players that in theory could come back, two of whom have gone into the portal. We don't know what Lou Goody's status is, but you'd like to get
the year back. You know, I would be surprised if you see more than just a small handful of those back next year already. Of course, everyone expects Tucker Debris to to come out of the portal to Indiana. I think a couple of other intriguing West Virginia players have hit the portal that I would imagine like Jonathan Powell's a six six for the wing shooter that actually played high school basketball cave cups. I I wouldn't be stunned if if Indiana would would like to get involved there.
I believe, and this is more tenuous, but I believe Darren Debris has some sort of connection to Josh Dix, the shooting guard who's in the portal from Iowa. So you know, they're going to be a lot of names as there always
are. But expect the portal in particular to move quickly because everyone's going to understand that it's going to be easier and for players, probably more lucrative to get in before the April 7th deadline and still be operating under the old rules plus the new rules rather than the new rules, and then amending the old rules to just kind of see what happens with the clearing house. So staffing I think will happen fairly quickly. You know, roster I think is going to move really fast.
And if you if you told me, for example, that, you know, Indiana's already got, you know, half its roster locked down by the end of next week, You know, again, also remember, like Prince Cecily still in maybe a couple currently committed West Virginia signees open their process back up, that kind of thing. I would not be surprised if Indiana's already got a sizeable chunk of its 2026 roster kind of sewn up by, let's say, a week from today or a week from
tomorrow. Well, I think that'll be good news for a lot of IU fans is I think everybody's ready to turn the page. I think everybody's excited to see what the roster is going to look like and what the coaching staff is going to look like. So after a lengthy coaching search, a coaching search that felt like it went on forever as the season was going on, it would be nice to just kind of turn the the the to the next chapter and let IU fans dream a
little bit in the offseason. So Zach, I appreciate you taking the time to join me on the show as always, and we'll look forward to chatting with you maybe at the end of the the roster cycle to see where Indiana landed on all these things. No thanks for having me. I mean, it's, it's been finally kind of coming up for air. It's been a a busy few days. So I think we're going to we we were going to podcast yesterday and that turned out to be a, a
fool's errand. So that we're going to I think we're going to I think we're going to huddle today as well. So. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to join us and we appreciate Zach Ostrom and being on the show. IU Insider for the Indy Star joining us here. Be sure to check out Mind Your banners and all Zach's work at indystar.com. I'm Galen Clavio for Crimson cast in the back home network. Thanks for our presenting sponsor, Home Field apparel.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, staying ever daunted. Bring back the Bison. So everybody.