@sammyj108 to me, at least, the lack of excitement goes deeper than IU. I am fed up with college basketball. To me, the sport is a joke.
i don’t love the NBA, but college basketball could learn a lot from the rules and guardrails that exist in a pro sport that has players with actual contracts. If you were an NBA general manager you could build a team with an understanding of long term roster construction. You can’t just poach players anytime you want like you can in CBB. There are rules around free agency. You at least have some understanding of how long a player may be on your team.
icollege basketball has zero rules. I would like to see the ridiculousness of pay for play go even further with the hope that the whole system would burn to the ground. Why not let a player play for the highest bidder on a game by game basis (play for Duke on Monday, Mich on Tuesday, KU on Wed, etc)? I would also find it funny to see no restrictions on eligibility. Let players play for 10 years.
football is king now. It always was, just not for IU fans.
@gerdis that’s a great point too and goes along with what I am saying. People are falling out of love with the Sport.
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I do understand the "falling out of love" with the sport discussion and I am not disagreeing with the sentiment but I will add this...I think a whole lot of those feelings are accentuated by the results of the team we root for. For instance, I live near Clemson and local talk radio gets a whole lot of mileage about the issues with college football and how things "aren't like they used to be" and "the system is broken". I am relatively confident IU fans are more passionate about college football right now than they ever have been but Clemson fans are less than thrilled with the "state of college football", largely because the Tigers (and most of the ACC) are slipping out of the sport's elite.
A shorter way of saying this...if IUBB was routinely competing for Final Fours and Big Ten titles, I don't think most fans on this site would have any problems getting engaged with college basketball, despite its many, many flaws.
@tjinman1987 That's the bulk of it... whether any of us will admit it, or not. When "we" discuss, think about, choose to watch, etc... really anything college basketball related, its through the lens of IU basketball.
I do think basketball does highlight all the new dynamics, more so than football does. Less players, larger percentages of teams leaving every year, more opportunity for non elite players to make money... So its not ALL that IU bball is lousy lately. But as you pointed out, the dynamics at play hit very differently when you're restocking with Michigan, Duke, UConn like rosters every year, and winning like they are.
Go beat Kentucky. Then go contend for the B10 championship. The fans, and the interest, will storm back. I missed half the games live last year... but I'm also typing away on June 30th on the bball message board, and I've barely looked at the football board of late.........
@tjinman1987 I agree there, but I mean just watching the sport in general. IU fans will watch IUBB. They may not go to games until they are given a reason to, but they'll watch.
We said it last year with IUBB. There will be check-in games for the fans. This year's is Kentucky in November (I guess Cuse, maybe UNC but it's an exhibition). If IU can beat Kentucky, they'll perk the ears up of a lot of fans. We'll see how they fill out the schedule the rest of the year, but those two are huge momentum builders for fan excitement.
It'd be nice to get things going in both sports and November can be really fun to cover.
I am talking about watching the random November top 25 matchups like SJU and Bama or Arkansas MSU last year. Those games just feel like afterthoughts.
Thank you for reading Hoosier Huddle
Personally I still love Basketball period. Especially IU basketball... I enjoy following the team and the recruiting. It's even more interesting now the my son is playing and playing against some of these highly touted kids we are recruiting. But I've always been that way with IU basketball. IU football is on the top of the mountain and it has been exhilarating to say the least. But it'd have to keep this up for a decade to flip me from basketball ... so any coverage you have of basketball is always welcomed here
@hoosiers94 IU football's fan base is still heavily buoyed with "fair weather fans". Its going to be really fascinating to see what the reactions are if we have some sort of "down year" any time soon... like a 9-3 type season where we're not in serious CFP consideration. Historically, that's pop the champagne territory, but obviously Cig has changed that.
IU basketball, however, is still largely comprised with deep rooted, die hard fans. When there's a really good product coming out of Assembly Hall, IU fans will pack it again. If they get back to competing for anything similar to what the football team has done the last 2 years, FF's and Natty's, it'll get nuts, very quickly.
yep... we will see how that continues if the record isn't CFP worthy I think it will still keep a lot of folks interested for a while. But you're correct in saying if Basketball starts to turn a corner the fans will come back out in force. The basketball crowd is aging but still around and quite large. If there's any semblance of a winner around they will come out of the wood work...
Whether people like it or not, college basketball has become a 3-month sport and that is exacerbated by Indiana football being really good. I understand people will always watch their teams, but the general interest in the sport is not year-round like CFB. It is focused on Late January, February and March. That's what it has become, unfortunately.
There's also not a ton of excitement. It's another brand new team, and IU has limited access to certain outlets this summer (those who traveled to road games), which makes it even more difficult to get unique stories out on players so fans can learn about them.
IU football could have been a blessing for IUBB last year and hid some of their struggles. Right after football won, IUBB knocked off Purdue and UCLA and was sitting at 17-8 and firmly in the NCAAT. Then the wheels fell off and we are in the current situation. There are no marquee home non-conference games to get excited about either.
IU will get Michigan, Michigan State Ohio State and Illinois at home. UCLA, I guess, is a cool home game, but it's no longer a vanity game. USC and Rutgers don't really move the needle. Maryland and Northwestern are the other home games. There's just not the excitement surrounding the program that there is for football.
perhaps ... I came over to you all from the Hoosier ... I was under the impression you all covered both sports equally ... on3 still has a lot of coverage on summer ball and AAU and the recruiting portion. You all are football folks I get it , no worries just a misunderstanding of what you would cover on an ongoing basis. And yes Footbal just won the National Championship... so there should be a lot of coverage on football. Completely agree...
@hoosiers94 we have covered basketball as well. We are not backed by a large corporation so driving, paying for multiple nights in a hotel to write a story about someone who has maybe a 10% chance isn’t really in the budget like those sites.
Sorry.
We’ll have IU’s (Team USA) travels covered unfortunately there’s no schedule out yet. We were NOT invited to the open practices (that was IU’s call not mine) and I’m not recycling stories that other people go get.
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@hoosiers94 I understand that. We are still not going to cover recruiting like that. Most of my staff is not based in Indy and last weekend, I was in charge of my child while my wife worked 3 12-hour shifts. I am not going to beg you to stay or whatever.
We will write about basketball when there is stuff to talk about. Happy to talk on the forums, but spending hours to go grab quotes from someone who may not end up at IU and spending a weekend doing it, is not worth the squeeze at the moment.
Thank you for reading Hoosier Huddle
@hoosiers94 IU football's fan base is still heavily buoyed with "fair weather fans". Its going to be really fascinating to see what the reactions are if we have some sort of "down year" any time soon... like a 9-3 type season where we're not in serious CFP consideration. Historically, that's pop the champagne territory, but obviously Cig has changed that.
IU basketball, however, is still largely comprised with deep rooted, die hard fans. When there's a really good product coming out of Assembly Hall, IU fans will pack it again. If they get back to competing for anything similar to what the football team has done the last 2 years, FF's and Natty's, it'll get nuts, very quickly.
I never cared much about IU football til the last few seasons. Now I will admit it is my top sport over bbal but only because they are winning. I was a die hard bbal fan for 30 years but the last ten years kind of wore me out and I lost alot of interest. Maybe saw half the games last year I used to never miss one. Not winning combined with the NIL stuff and roster turnover every single year has really made my not care that much the last five years. If we start making sweet sixeteens that will probably change though the connection to the players is probably gone forever thanks to the transfer at will rule.
I honestly could not tell you the name of one high school player we are currently recruiting and I used to know every one 10-15 years ago.
