Excellent.
Great improvements. Let's now raise the ceiling.
Should have demoed it and rebuilt. But I guess all this is better than leaving it as is.
@iunorth That would be ideal, but athletic dept finances appear very tight.
The decision to spend on facilities vs player payroll is an interesting one. I’d say players, but we need a baseline of facilities as well (of course stadium projects with a great ROI are no brainers).
I was all set with a buzz joke. Thunder stolen.
@tammany hopefully they're lipsticking it, and after another good year or two, they invest in a top notch new facility. I've posted this in the past, but that facility, in many ways, is the single most important building in all of IU athletics. Football drives pretty much everything, and the players spend most of their time in the practice facilities. After touring Notre Dames new practice facility a couple years ago... to say we're not in the same stratosphere with them would be an understatement.
Make a new building that's multi purpose, put some of the schools in there that could have direct tie ins with the athletic department (Sports medicine, Physiology, Sports nutrition, etc...) And just make it over the top cool. Let Cignetti put his stamp on it.
Obviously need the money. And none of this matters if you're not able to "pay" top tier talent. But at some point, we're going to need a better practice facility for football.
@iunorth That would be ideal, but athletic dept finances appear very tight.
The decision to spend on facilities vs player payroll is an interesting one. I’d say players, but we need a baseline of facilities as well (of course stadium projects with a great ROI are no brainers).
Then Dolson needs to be calling up boosters every day. Cignetti will not be pleased if his demands are not met.
@iunorth If we tie it into the school like you said that could be a creative way to pay for it — dip into IU’s academic facilities budget. Hold a few classes there but just have football use 90% of it lol.
I liked how Cignetti stated something along the lines of this stadium better not look like it does now, when he retires. I have to imagine if we get to a point of a waiting list for season tickets after this season crushes it, we will want to start looking to add capacity. Which is a wild thing to consider being that just one year ago, it was the last thing on our minds.
@tammany I'm just spitballing, obviously... but was thinking of it as a much larger facility than it would need to be for just a football practice facility. Have "one end" of it be classrooms, other types of facilities, then have a bulk of it be a badass new football only facility.
Call in Cuban, have a "wing" of it be a new Cuban Media Center... Call in some huge whales in the Medicine fields, give them a wing for sports medicine, physiology, sports training and rehab, etc... And then piggy back and use some of those funds for the football part of it. I gotta think it gets a lot easier if we can get a big chunk of shared components/infrastructure like the roof, electrical, plumbing, etc... covered because of the non football related donations???
@iunorth Sounds smart. We’ll see what Scott and Pam can do.
Some stadium sponsors would be nice, but aside from that we really need some whale donors to get generous. I’m not sure if Cook, Simon, Ned, Andy, etc. have more to give.
Of course this is easy for me to say, it’s not my money. I definitely don’t move any sort of needle in the slightest.
@tammany For sure. As good as it feels like our football program is going to be, we're still not a "football school" by any stretch of the imagination. At least not in terms of having donors like the big boys have, that can shoulder large capital projects like this one would be. We do have some very, very wealthy alumni though, that might be more excited about having their name on things like I mentioned. Might be a way for our unique circumstances and realities to be overcome.
Push, beg, promote, advertise, reward and cajole for any donation and offering. It won't be a big deal unless effort is displayed and exerted to make it be a big deal. Like the tomcat spoiling the silence of darkness, "you gotta make calls if you want results".