IUCrazy2

I am 43. Yes, we made dumb decisions as a young adult, I did too...but he is not a kid. Not by any definition of the word. By the time I was 22, I knew when I was doing dumb stuff. He knew he was being an idiot here and that is why he tries to get the other guy riding with him to switch seats. These "kids" expect to be treated like adults in any situation except for when it comes to responsibility. Last I will say on it, I don't really care what is decided one way or the other on this. There are somewhat valid arguments on both sides of the issue. This is a new day though, the idea of amateur athletes and kids playing for the glory of old IU is dead and buried. This is the Ft. Wayne Mad Ants being sold under the cover of the old college model. There is going to be a transition period among fans until that reality sinks in. Additionally, the players are going to have to realize that the shift in thinking is going to change how they are viewed too. You are only a kid as far as that narrative goes to supporting you to keep winning games.

He is 22, he isn't a "kid". What he did was dumb. It did not cost his team this time, if it happened 2 months ago it would have. It also puts the coaching staff in a tough spot because he is one of the best players on the team, so it almost looks like a slap on the wrist and then back to the status quo for him if he comes back. He was doing 90, he ran from the police blowing stop signs while attempting to do it, he pulled into what I assume was their apartment complex and then tried to get another guy to claim he was driving...this wasn't like drunk driving, but this wasn't just speeding either. So it goes back to my post above, if TJD stays, you maybe punish him with a couple game suspension at the beginning of the year and take the risk that he might mess up again, because with TJD, the team maybe can do something next year. For me though, I would not take that risk if we don't have TJD next year. Nothing against the guy, but these little incidents in the past led to a guy getting hit by a car driven by his own teammate several years back. That stuff under Crean didn't start at a 10, it started with stupid little incidents that escalated over time. Curfew violations have now escalated to this. Bringing him back is a risk to the team culture. Period.

I would not tell TJD that the decision was up to him, listen, this is going to make some heads explode around here but all these guys are potentially getting paid. There is talk that TJD would make more money from NIL if he stayed then he would from a G league contract. So if I was a former NBA coach who was in charge of the basically semi-pro Indiana Hoosiers, my decision would be more like a pro coach. So if you have a guy around who is a secondary piece but is a bit of a distraction what do you do with them? Well, if you lose your main player in free agency, you tend to let them go and start over. If you still have your superstar, you are willing to put up with a certain level of distraction as long as on court results make up for the distraction. Xavier has shown on at least 2 occasions that he gets teammates caught up in his BS when it happens (or he joins in with teammates when they may be making poor decisions.) If you are in full rebuild mode with TJD leaving (half the team will be new guys at that point) do you want to continue taking chances on someone who makes poor decisions? Is the risk worth it for your culture if the player is not likely to impact the W/L record much anyway? I say no. I like X, but the guy is Jeckyll and Hyde.

My hot take, my decision on X as Woodson would almost be completely controlled by what TJD decides. If he leaves, I would probably ask X to go, turn the ball over to the young guys and start the rebuild. I don't think we do much without TJD anyway. If TJD is staying, I give him another chance and make a push for a BIG title.

It is absolutely about lack of on court results. This final four and now Championship game is also a stark reminder of how far we have fallen. We used to be in the same breath as those teams. We have fallen completely off the cliff. So having that, all this off court stuff that seems to occur every year just gets old. And honestly, it isn't just the losing, we seem to have more than our share of WTF stuff every offseason. Woodson's team, we will see what he does. However, this is the part of college coaching that people predicted might be toughest for him. The part where stupid young men do stupid young men things in the time between seasons.

It gets tiresome having this constant drama around the program. Just all the time. Year after year. Drama. Just would be nice to have an offseason discussion that revolved around how far we are going in the tournament next year and how this player or that is going to get us there. Coach drama. Player drama. Random made up admin position drama.... Indiana needs to get back to winning games instead of being this constant telenovela.

So UNC is tied for us with number of titles and Kansas was in over their head on that FBI stuff just a few years back and never faced any consequences...oh, and UNC had the fake class scandal as well. Who said cheating doesn't pay? Anyways, can they both lose?

The classroom that was on Twitter going nuts after one of the games got a visit from a few players this past week. I think it is pretty safe to say that Johnson and Leal are back for next year... Edit to add: This was X's idea

Um, no...cause I heard banner 6 in 2023. Some guy mentioned it up above or something. That is much more interesting than Purdue.

It won't matter. We are going to get exactly every piece we need in the off season, TJD is going to stay another year, and we are putting up Banner 6 in 2023. Heard it here first.

If they win, whenever they want. If things go south, lol, never. Honestly, nobody cares when he goes on vacation as long as things are going well. We all know the name of this game. You look at Archie Miller's recruiting the 4 years he was here, if word got out that he was taking vacations during "important" recruiting times, you can guarantee that would have been on the list of reasons why "he gotta go". "Chance to get his team better and he was off sitting on a beach somewhere staring at Mrs. Miller..." (Insert comment about her attractiveness here). You know it. I know it. Everyone here knows it. I would guess that the hardest part about being the IU coach is having message boards full of yahoos keeping track of your every move. That sucks. Then when you are 9-11 in the BIG and they are looking for every reason under the sun to explain why, "Well, if he wouldn't have been on vacation when guys were entering the portal, maybe he could have built relationships with some better players." It is crazy train but you know I am right.

Things go pretty quickly with the portal, not 2-4 years and Woodson has not been building relationships with guys that long. Edit to add: And again, I am not not picking at all....right now. If everything goes well, nobody will care. These things only matter when things do not go well.

Yep, we are on the same page. If this works out, great, enjoy the vacation. If it doesn't though, this will be one of the things that gets harped on incessantly as to why we are not winning, particularly if recruiting does not continue to improve.

Can I be 100% honest here? I think everyone has this take until they don't. Those vacations for Coach Knight were all good until the Patterson, Miller, Reed, Eggers, etc. years where his time off during recruiting ended up meaning that we were not getting the players into the program needed to win games. So I will tell on myself now. Being on vacation at the moment is all well and good as long as it works out. If it doesn't, this is the type of thing that is going to be a data point in a list of what went wrong. Just being honest.

I don't think it was that thought. It was that the NCAA rulebook is about telephone book size and not all the rules make a ton of sense and our head coach is brand new to it.

Yeah, I was being a bit tongue in cheek.

You wouldn't be saying that Rabjohns bites free content and then charges for it would you?

Yeah, it is the wild west. Forget these large buyouts to coaches. $10 million and we could have bought enough players that even Miller would have had a hard time losing.

I posted this on another forum, but if I had a big booster with cash to burn, this is what I would try and do. Get them to start a seed company who pays the players to be their employees. They then seek out advertising opportunities for the kids. So if the local Buick dealer wants TJD to do an ad, they come to the Cook Advertising and Consulting Firm and we set that up for the player. The player gets a 60% cut of that deal and the firm gets 40%. The player also receives a base "salary" from the firm so that each NIL deal they are able to land, is really a bonus to them. Start with $10 million, the money it took to get rid of Archie Miller. Invest all that money from the start. The market was averaging 14.8% gains over the past 10 years. So in one year, by doing nothing but "exploring" how your company can work, you make $1,480,000. The next year you start paying the 13 scholarship players a base salary of say $30k (average). Then you start looking for places to hire the kids out. Buick dealer has $10k for an ad campaign with TJD? Cool. He gets $6,000 and the fund gets $4,000. You just keep investing that starter money and it is not long before each player is getting $100,000 + their 60% cut of the NIL engagements.

Could have used that shooting this year...

This is what everyone wanted. Kind of hard to feel sorry for them now to be honest. The minute you start getting paid out in the open is the minute this turned from an amateur league with a pro undercurrent to a pro league with an amateur undercurrent. Yeah, kids were getting paid 5+ years ago too, but it was something that they had to at least somewhat try to hide. Not anymore. If you are getting that pro contract offer (a scholarship) you might want to make up your mind quick. Coaches don't have to kiss a 16 year old's butt half as much anymore when they got 20 year olds waiting in the portal every year. Edit to add: the churn and burn of tweener player like TJD becomes more in doubt as well. Players don't have to go pro to get paid, so that could mean less scholarships at the big schools. Take those 2 Murray State kids that just entered the portal. If you are Kentucky, do you take a run at them for a year or two or do you grab another one and done Freshman and hope for the best there? I would grab the Murray State kids myself. So if you are that one and done waiting around for a Kentucky offer, you may not have it come this summer. And the list of other schools you have on the backburner may get tired of waiting on you. Double edged sword perhaps, kind of hate what paying players does but on the other hand this could cut back on some of the primadonna stuff you see out of recruits.

So you are saying that Howard is running both a love and a hate operation against the handshake line at the end of games.

Who could have foreseen this...(insert my shocked face here)

Unacceptable. 🤣

I don't think Woodson liked the idea that he needed sitters if you believe guys like Rabjohns. Not wanting to go into things really any deeper than that. We have our staff, they are going to get the opportunity to do things in the manner they see fit, and we all hope it means more wins for the program. We had an up and down season. Woodson got the team to recover in March to get us to a point where he met my expectations. I honestly kind of aired by complaints after Fife was let go and I am just going to kind of sit back and let Woodson do his thing this summer and see what we get next winter.