You're listening to the back home network presented by home field. Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cask ale and caviar. Joining me once again here on the show. Nice to have you folks joining us. Once again, is this the 8th of September of 2022 and Indiana is 1 and 0 in football chance to go to and oh, pretty good chance to go to know this week as they take on the Idaho Vandals. Bowls. Of course.
Idaho not an FBS team. They're down in FCS territory and really not a great football program in general. Unfortunately, great great home stadium. They play in the kibbeh dome which I highly recommend looking up but Indiana, of course, probably had their best game of the year last year against Idaho, beat them 56 to 14.
So we're going to talk a little bit about that game, very little bit because there's it's more, it's mostly I use stuff, there's not a lot to talk about with Idaho that I think is Irrelevant but then we'll also talk tailgating. I promise you folks, some tailgate talks we're going to do that today before we get to all that. Just a reminder, that Crimson cast is part of the back home network. In the back home, network is presented to you by home-field apparel.
The guys, keep doing it. And the gals got guys and gals both at home field apparel, just continue to pump out.
Some of the best college apparel that you'll see and what's been fascinating on. Everything is just they keep coming up with new Ideas. You know whether it's Colts gear which I know is not college but bear with me on this last week and then what they've been doing over the course of the last several days is they've been revealing these great Championship t-shirts including one for the University of Miami, which longtime listeners of the podcast. Will know, I have a soft spot in my heart.
For the canes, I taught at Miami for two years and just a great shirt commemorating that 2001 title. They've got a USC one commemorating, mule five title. Even if a Michigan shirt commemorating their, their glorious split that National Championship in the 90s, which is the one piece of Glory Michigan's. Got to hang onto right now for basically the last.
Oh, but six decades, but look, this is a, it's a, it's a Michigan Michigan, it's a collection of t-shirts, that's I think, really impressive and I'm looking forward to seeing what else they come up with on this front. So by all means go over to home-field apparel, check them out. Fifteen percent off your first order. If you use the code home H ome and they are sure to have some additional awesome stuff coming
out here relatively soon. So again home-field apparel, check them out on the web, check them out. On the on Twitter, they got home-field apparel without the e on the end there and you'll find what you're looking for. I promise, let's get to the game.
So I you, as we mentioned, taking on the Idaho vandals, and I'm not trying to sleep on the vandals, because the Vandals, play terribly last week, I have to say they took on the Washington State Cougars and actually jumped out to a 10 nothing lead and at one point I think there was some real consternation on the part of Washington state that, you know, perhaps, they might struggle a little bit but it's it is also one of those where frankly, Washington State, not a very
good team and Washington State, ultimately, while it didn't look awesome, you know, from people on the Washington State perspective, To the things they're looking at it and they're saying, well, we could have played a lot better. And Idaho, basically jumped on the team that wasn't quite prepared Washington's. They ended up winning 24:17.
You look at the statistical performance of the Idaho players Giovani McCoy. Pretty good day through the air21 a 32. 212 yards and a touchdown did have two interceptions, rushing wise, Anthony Woods nine carries for
50 yards. And, you know, it's, it's one of those situations where you look at IU and the way that they played against Illinois, who I think is a better opponent than Washington State. And the fact that Idaho, you know, when they travel to Washington State, they basically just walk across the street because those two cities Pullman. Not very far away from where Idaho's located where, as I do as a get on a plane and fly all the way out here. I think Indiana is going to be
fine. It may not be as much of a rollover game as what we saw last year. Washington state was able to put up a lot of yards on Idaho, relatively speaking 358 overall, they really didn't struggle in a lot of phases of the game. The only thing they really struggled with was time of possession, but that was even something that didn't matter too much. Down the road of, you know, 200 plus yard passer for Washington, State hundred yard rusher and Nakia Watson against Idaho.
So, you know, I look at this, I you game more as a way for I you to try to fine tune some things and you know, it'd be nice to see. I you get a big victory, get
more. Confidence as they head into next week's game against Western Kentucky, which I do think is going to be more of a problem than then maybe people are anticipating but, you know, overall, if you look at IU, you can say, I you probably didn't play close to their best in that Illinois game and they still managed to come out with a victory. So as much as Idaho might have shown something, I think Indiana has shown a lot more, some
positives. As after ruminating, on last week's game to think about congregate basil, lack It was interesting going back and watching his performance again, basil, act, I think had a lot of throws in the middle portion of the game that were just not on Target, and I'm going to attribute that at least, for the moment to still trying to get
timing down with his receivers. Plus the fact that Bay's like didn't have a lot of time in the pocket to wait for players to get to where they needed to get to not great. In terms of completion percentage. Last week for Basil Act only 53.8%, which is Really only a tenth of a percentage Point, better than what Michael penix
is season completion. Percentage was last year, you know, and actually that's about what penix through through historical appendix was always in about the, at least the last two years. Was always in that kind of 56, 57 percent range. He was a little bit better as a
sophomore. You know, obviously though, I think basil acts going to have to get more accurate, you think, back to Peyton, Ramsey and you'll want to Ramses main, you know, Positive things about him as a quarterback was how accurate he generally was 66 percent in 2018 68% in 2019. Like he was he was really right on the mark for most of his career and you know you go back to even someone like Nate said Phil, who wasn't quite as accurate as Ramsey, he was still
passing right around 60 percent. And that's ultimately to me about the minimum of what you want, basil lack to be throwing. And again some of that's not his fault, some of that is going to be a timing thing. A lot of it's going to be the line and the lines, obviously in more trouble now because they've lost Matthew Bedford for the year with an ACL tear. That's a big loss for the IU, offensive line. Now, it's hard to say how much of the lines problems.
Last week were due to losing Bedford relatively early in the game and how much of it was just the line potentially not being very good. That the line structure, the the coaching the strategy being utilized It does not look like it is anywhere close to where it needs to be and that's probably the area I want to see the biggest Improvement this upcoming week. You have to get better play out of the offensive line especially against Idaho.
Idaho just really should not be able to penetrate and stop the run game. This should be a game where if this IU offensive line is going to be good. They need to demonstrate it in this game. They need to be dominant throughout and, and yes, it's going to be difficult, replacing Bedford. That was a guy that everybody. 22 coming into the season and saying that guy's going to have to be a big difference maker.
He's gone now. And, and you know, the IU offensive line just has to show up at this point. They have to continue to step up and they have to play a lot better than they did last week. Yes, Illinois is. You know, they're, they're gonna, they're at that. That's a that's a decent defensive line.
It's a defense decent front, seven for the Illini, but they get significantly better through most of the Big Ten and that is what concerns me. So keeping an eye on that if, you know, and it's one of those Deals where it's hard to evaluate the rest of the offense fairly without getting a larger sample size of what the blocking is.
Because obviously, Sean, chivers did not have a great debut, 15 carries 28 yards and was, you know, I mean I you essentially only if you take basil acts rush and then you take the sacks out, I you ended up with like 46 rushing yards, you know, if you do then the sax obviously kind of negatively contribute to that the way that they do. College so that it's a little hard to get a clear accurate representation of what all is
anticipated there. But I do think ultimately You have to have a situation where you hand the ball off, whether it's too shy, vers or whether that's to Josh Henderson and that have some room to operate and you're not just not going to be able to pass the bowl all the time with and, you know, and obviously, the pass blocking wasn't the greatest either, there was some her, he's in the pocket that needed to be
addressed receiving Corps wise. I like what we saw out of Indiana in the game, cam camper looks like a big 10 wide receiver. Certainly caught like 111 catches 14. It's / reserved for 14 yards per catch and DJ Matthews. Look great as well, you know, so good to see both of those to the amount of targets that those two. Got on top of AJ, Barner really gives you a sense of where Connor basil, Act is confident and comfortable throwing the ball and that's a great way to
start. If you got three, good wide receivers who are able to get open and catch the ball that frankly is maybe two more than Indiana had most of Last season. So that is a good positive progression. As far as I'm concerned and we'll see, I mean, you know, Devon, Swinton certainly was in the game. You didn't do a whole lot in terms of yardage Emery. Simmons had one big catch and then another smaller one.
That's, it's going to be interesting to watch that receiving Corps continue to develop, whether we see some Donovan McCulley on a more regular basis and whether he's able to round into shape. Last thing I'll say defensively. This is actually a game where I'd almost be willing to sacrifice some yards and even some points to get some reps to younger players, who need to get some game action.
You know, clearly the secondary is in really good form already and I think that that's going to be something that will only get stronger for this IU team as they continue through this first part of the season but the especially the defensive line and just the kind of the front five or six that I you likes to put up there that you got to get some more guys in the mix.
You had a lot of defensive players, make tackles in this game, I think what 25 players made at least one tackle, if you throw special teams in and and of those 25 23 of them were defensive players, I think Matthews and Barner both registered tackles, although one of those, I think was on a turnover that I you had committed but you know, Nick James freshman defensive lineman, got two, tackles in the game briah. Or AB Ryland linear who's a defensive back. Had four tackles three of those
were so low. Which was good to see Des on McCullough already contributing with six tackles, but I'd like to see more of the sophomores and juniors kind of getting into the mix of things just, you got to get some more reps because you're, you know, that one of the big problems IU has historically is they tend to suffer injuries that happened a lot last year that release at the defense.
You've got to take these opportunities in these sorts of games to get players up and running and figuring out what they're doing on the field because they're probably gonna have to play a decent amount. In the course of the season. So anyway, that's kind of the overview of things. I'm sure we'll have more to talk about specifically afterwards and then we will absolutely have some things to talk about as we get ready for that Western Kentucky game.
But as of now, you would expect this Indiana team facing an FCS opponent that they blew out handily last year at basically the same point in the season, to be able to come in and handle things. This is more about a fine-tuning week and figuring out what didn't work and how to fix it from week one. Anyway, you all had some other questions that we wanted to tackle. And by the way, I know that the basketball schedule just came out. We're going to tape a separate
podcast on that. That'll come out probably over the weekend as we break down Indiana's full schedule, which is now available overall and some interesting stuff there, but we're not going to talk about that in this podcast. So let's see, we had a first question. This was actually not a tailgate question, but from Ross Baker, can we send Kirk Ferentz to Canada? Imagine Artist might paint with the rouget de to his palate. You always do Wonder like Kirk Ferentz.
He's been coaching his whole life with four downs and yet, this is a guy who if there was a person in coaching tailor-made to only have three Downs to work with. It feels like Kirk Ferentz, is the guy. Imagine the number of punts that he could generate during that
both for him. And for the opposition, the number of times you could pin an opponent inside the five, I really like I feel like we've missed an opportunity here and it's Maybe. I mean if you're Saskatchewan, if you're, you know, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, if you're the Montreal Alouettes, I think you got to give this a look. I would I would pay over market value to get Kirk Ferentz up into the CFL and see what he could do. Let's see. Some other questions here.
So assembly call Jared asks if you had a thousand dollars that you had to distribute to IU athletes and some kind of Ni L deal related to your tailgate, how would you allocate the money and what would you have the chosen athletes do that's a that's a tough question I so it feels like the easy answer here is OU you have like celebrity chefs come in but I don't think that's fair to either the athletes many of Are not not chefs, they're not, they don't maybe cook for themselves very
often or if they do, it's very basic and that's not a reflection on athletes. That's college students in general, I was the Oddball who would make like lasagna for the four or five apartments around us when we lived in North Lane condos in 1999 2000. So you know, I think I wouldn't want to pay unless there was somebody that was like a knock-down drag-out, awesome cook.
If they wanted to come in and just man The Griddle for a couple hours, I would just drop a thousand dollars on that person right then and there that would be money. Well spent and I we would, we would certainly have them, you know, sign a waiver. So that you know, if they didn't cook the food properly, there weren't any any problems as a
result of that. But I actually, I would love to have athletes come in and maybe either be food testers because one of the things I'll say, Is people are very gracious when they come to the tailgate and I often worry, I don't get completely accurate feedback on the food and I want accurate feedback. Like I'm I'm not interested in. Oh, thank you so much. This was so generous, I bet I certainly appreciate that, but I love honesty.
It's like, wow, that, that really was over seasoned or, you know, that was missing a flavor that it needed or something like that. And, you know, I found most athletes to be polite but also very Direct and I've always respected that about the athletes that I've worked with over the years. And so I would probably, I would like three athletes and I could give them 333 dollars a piece. I'll pocket the extra dollar for my trouble, I guess.
And and I have them actually officially taste test, what's coming off the grill or The Griddle and, you know, maybe give a five minute review of what they're tasting.
We we've done that before. Actually, John, Bannock, Who was a former soccer player Bloomington native was kind of co-hosting a show with one of our former Sports media, students, Julia, gay, and where they would go around town and they would go to like the crepe place that used to be open on Indiana Avenue or they go to the bubble tea place or they would taste test food and talk about it.
And I really enjoyed that show. So I think I'd like to bring athletes in to do that or to play cornhole with the people at the tailgate because I sometimes feel bad, I'm always at the grill. I can't go over and interact with people, you know, we got and when I'm interacting, I'm like, I want to talk with you and I'm enjoying, I'm happy you're here, I enjoy seeing you, but I also kept to make sure that the hamburgers don't burn or something like that.
So, it would be nice to just have people come and act as social ambassador's, I guess at the tailgate. I think that would be a good that would be money. Well, spent that I would feel good about and that I think fits right into the spirit of n IL. And actually, it's funny because I'm reading these in order, but I hadn't read them at a time.
But from a borrow starkly, give it to Tamar Bates and haven't played cornhole against fans, and then dusted to appear at Gannon, but he has to play while holding his baby girl in one arm because that's apparently a skill. All dads have to master, I can confirm that Dustin being a dad. And and also having had done that on a number of occasions. So that would fit right in with what we're talking about here. I think social interaction in a controlled environment.
Which I think is important for athletes because people, you know, people can sometimes not know how to act when they're around athletes, not all the time, but sometimes that would probably be my favorite thing to do in that circumstance. So that's the answer for you. We had some general questions about tailgating last week that we didn't get to an arrest Bennett. It asked a question about what was new on the grill this year and, you know, it's interesting.
So we got the black On griddle, a couple of years ago and the great. Great addition, my thanks to my mother-in-law. That was a, it was a Christmas gift and it it's been a great companion piece, and it's actually kind of taken over as the primary thing at the tailgate. So this last week we did some new stuff that I hadn't done before. Well, one thing we had done before which was our the, the shrimp, and bacon and jalapeno poppers which I do two different
versions of those. One with jalapeno and the other with red bell pepper. And the reason for that is the flavors are always good. Some people like the heat, some people don't. So I really tried to focus on adapting recipes when it's not going to like fundamentally alter things. And actually my wife much prefers the bell pepper to the jalapeno. Not that she doesn't like spicy food but there's something about the sweetness of the bell pepper.
That goes really well with the Savory nature of the bacon and the big change I make with those Is I do not put cream cheese in mind. I know a lot of people, they think cream cheese has to go with poppers, but to me, the cream cheese. Cream, cheese is such a, it's a blunt force, object of a flavor. It really takes over almost everything you put with, its kind of guacamole in a way like guacamole, just overwhelms, whatever you pair it with.
And what I've found is that taking the cream cheese out of the poppers and just making them essentially keto style. So it's just like a pepper about a third of a slice of bacon, a piece of shrimp and a toothpick that cooks up, really, really nicely. And I think ultimately what we're looking at in, you know, moving towards that. Sort of thing is a, it's a more Savory thing to eat.
But it's also a situation where you can eat more of them and the flavors stick with you a lot longer and you get the right types of flavors. So we had that last week we'll probably Again, a little bit later on in the season, the new thing that we did with the tailgate was shrimp Po-Boys which was a kind of an idea out of the blue. But I was like, I bought a bunch of shrimp to make poppers and then I ran out of bacon. I ran out of peppers but I had
about two pounds of shrimp. Left was like, what am I gonna do with these? And so I was like, well Po-Boys make a lot of sense because if you get the right type of bread and you toast it on the griddle which is one of the great features of the Blackstone is that you can you can toast really easily on there without burning.
And then essentially, you have to get the right marinade, which my wife makes and she what she essentially makes is this combo marinade of milk and cornstarch and some spices. You let that sit overnight and then when you put it on the griddle, you get a little bit of a crust that forms around the shrimp, which is an important part because you get both flavor
and texture out of that. You cook the shrimp, they don't take too terribly long and then you get like a rebel Aid and a You get some sliced tomatoes, maybe get some onions. You know, you put all that together and boom. You're good to go. It's a very straightforward dish, you know, you get about six or seven, shrimp / po boy. So they're kind of miniature. They're not like the big ones that you get in Mississippi or Louisiana but they work really
well in that environment. And that was a big hit. Those went really quickly. I was actually surprised at how many people really dug those. We didn't even have a great rental laid because it was hot last week and I was worried about mayonnaise and other things. Sitting out. So we ended up going with either a kind of a sweet barbecue sauce and some cases or a medium Peri-Peri sauce which is not something that people normally think about when it comes to either Po-Boys or tailgating.
But it worked really well, gave a bit of a kick and was I think a good addition overall. So those are the big new things last week and, you know, this week still kind of figuring out the final aspects of the menu. But I know later on during this Season. The plan is there's going to be some cheesesteaks, both the beef variety and then also chicken that's a that's a classic griddle. Tailgate item and I think works really well.
You will probably do some kind of a taco bar which again is one of those things you don't think about is being a good idea on you know, a tailgate setup but the you know essentially you've got the perfect station to heat tortillas you get the perfect Station to Vegetables, you've got the perfect station to cook, taco meat, and get everything up and running, and then you can just kind of bring everything together and distribute that
out. So that's certainly something that's coming up over the course of the next couple of months as we go into the season plus of course breakfast. Tailgates coming up later again I defer to my wife on a lot of the breakfast stuff in terms of the specialty items and I know that we're doing, I think chicken biscuits with a marinade that is very similar to the marinade.
You get you, when you eat it, like Chick-fil-A the, the stuff that they put their Chicken in, we've got a similar kind of marinate that we've been able to develop over the years. That's always a welcome addition to the breakfast tailgate, it always goes nicely alongside like sausage biscuits and things like that. And we've been doing those of who you have stopped by the tailgate over the years. We've done this gets for a debt. What 12 years now?
However long we've been out doing tailgate 12 or 13 years so we keep trying to add new twists. To all of that to see how it all equates. And, you know, we've had some successes, I think more successes than failures and chicken, sometimes I think it's overdone in the, the world, but especially and I will say this, with, with the griddle chicken thigh meat is slept on a lot.
I think chicken thigh meat in general, I one time I did a ranking on Twitter, like the most overrated, an underrated cuts of meat across all of the different types of meat that there are And chicken thigh to me. Like, if you go to Chipotle and you get chicken, you're getting chicken thigh generally. Speaking your, you're able to do so much more with chicken thigh. It's got a much more, robust flavor it handles heat a lot better.
It's got a higher fat content than chicken breast or chicken tenders or things like that, but it's got I think a much better versatility, especially when you're cooking outside and it works for breakfast. Just as much as it works for lunch and dinner. So those are some things to keep
in mind on that front. The other thing I'll say is from the standpoint of when you're setting up your tailgate menu, one deal that I'm always really interested in conveying to people is you want to make sure if you're cooking on site and I've talked about this on the podcast before you want to make sure that you're not giving people something that's going to require a whole lot of Sure is to eat effectively so I try to avoid anything that would require a knife or a fork or a
spoon now. Something like tacos it's kind of a borderline thing but you you know if you don't overload the tortilla shell and you've got like bowls paper bowls that you can help to put the the tacos in. That's normally fine. It's where you get into trouble is where you try to do something more ornate and I just don't think it works. You know, the whole idea behind tailgate food is that it shouldn't Doesn't have to be
overly fancy. You know you can get kind of fancy at times but if you're going to do something that is fancy, you better make sure that the delivery system into people's mouths is not something that causes them a whole lot of consternation. So just something to keep in mind as you move forward. If you're just getting started with tailgating, it's one of the big mistakes people make is they get a little ambitious and they don't take into account that.
Most people are kind of eating and running or they're eating and talking with people. And so you want to make sure that you're not only thinking about the meal, but thinking about how they're going to eat the meal and what the environment is that they're going to eat in. So just keep that in mind and I think you'll be okay across the board on things. Right. Another question that people came in with that, a couple of people asking me, you know, I'm doing my first ever tailgate
this year. What should I use? And some people are like, should I get a griddle and the griddles are good choices? You know, the and you don't maybe don't need to get the big 36-inch 4-burner griddles but there's there's three burner griddles and to burn or griddles that work just as well. It's a smaller, quantity of food but you if you're just starting you probably have a smaller quantity of people who are going to be eating the food with you.
So that's perfectly fine. You know what, I always remind people is I didn't get the griddle, two years ago, I did 10 years of tailgating where my only cooking vessel was a Weber portable propane grill. You know, so I generally and I they don't actually make the particular model that I bought 10 or 12 years ago but I really like the Weber Q 1000 or the Weber Q 1200 especially if you can get a stand for it so that
it's elevated off the ground. But I found that both of those have generally ample cooking room, they cook really evenly. They're pretty easy to clean all things considered and they are Are very versatile in terms of not just what you can cook but how easily you can transport them in the type of fuel that you using the Q, both of those, the 10:00 and the 1200 utilize those green Coleman, portable propane, gas canisters, which
you've probably seen. If you'd walk through like dicks or Cabela's or something like that. I think they've actually they used to sell them at Kroger's down here and I guess it's just Kroger, isn't it? Sorry. But they're, you know, those canisters. Actually, you can get in some cases to full tailgates out of the canister, if you're judicious in, how you utilize them, and I've found again, like, almost everything that I would want to cook.
That didn't require a flat surface was was great on the Weber Q, 1000 or 1200. Give the, you know, I mean, hamburgers actually still prefer when I'm doing sausages or hotdogs, I'll bring the cue 1000 that I've got to cook next to the griddle because I'm just not a huge fan of how the griddle handles tubed meat. I just don't think it Cooks quite as well. I think you need more of an open
flame for that sort of thing. Now, certainly I think hamburgers are better on The Griddle and there's a lot of things like the shrimp that don't work nearly as well on the Weber as they do on The Griddle but you can get by doing a lot of good tailgate stuff. Using one of those portable propane grills from Weber versus what you might be. You trying to do with something else.
One thing I will say is unless you are experienced and or planning on sticking around for a while, I would avoid using charcoal for two primary reasons, one and look, I'm a big charcoal at home guy. I don't have a gas grill at all here that I use at my house but I do use gas when I'm traveling to cook, because propane grills cool down a lot faster. You don't have this messy. That's too hot to put in the trash bag and you know, you're like, where are you going to put
this? You know, you're either going to dump it illegally and litter or you're going to risk, keeping it in the grill and not have it be completely cool when you put it back in your truck or car. So you know what I've generally found is I get done tailgating, I turn off the grill and it's cool enough to put back in the truck with in like 25 or 30 minutes and that is not always the case with the charcoal.
So if you're getting started or if you're looking for an upgrade from whatever you're currently using, I'd rather Command a portable propane grill, and you. Fortunately got a lot of good options. Coleman's, got some decent options as well. I just happen to like the Weber stuff a bit better. So anyway, I think that's going to wrap it up for this show about 30 minutes long and we look forward to talking with you again in coming weeks.
We'll be back with our regular post game review podcast, Scott. And I will be coming to you on Sunday morning sometime, so be sure to keep an eye out for that and let us So if you have questions, you can hit us up on Twitter. At Crimson cast is probably the best way to do. So you can hit me up to dr. G. C, on Twitter, always happy to hear from you folks.
Thanks to home-field apparel for their continued sponsorship and they're just overall good natured - of being the good brand and thanks to all the folks at the back home network and we will catch you folks on the flip side, bring back the Bison. So long everybody.