It’s time for Indiana University leaders to make the same commitment to football they've made to basketball.
And I don’t want to hear any more excuses about this being a basketball state. I’d say the Indianapolis Colts dispelled that myth several years ago. A winning football team attracts fans and makes money. A winning IU football program would turn fall Saturdays in Bloomington into Bedlam. I mean that in a good way.
Think for a moment what an IU vs. Notre Dame clash would mean in this state if both teams were ranked nationally. It would be huge. Because IU attracts supporters from every corner of the state that never attended the school, it would be much bigger than say a Purdue vs. Notre Dame match-up under the same conditions. It’s the same reason that no matter how much Purdue’s basketball program wins, it will never be as big as IU. I’m of the belief that IU made Bobby Knight, not the other way around.
An IU athletic department official last month said he has learned that just because the school fields a good team, doesn’t mean fans will automatically come to Memorial Stadium. It takes several years to build a following, he said. Baloney! IU officials need to learn this: Indiana residents are smart about sports. They know scheduling three college teams not much better than Bloomington South and putting up some early wins, doesn’t mean you have a good team.
I don’t want to go too hard on student-athletes, but IU currently has a team with an offensive line that couldn’t block Jell-o. And Kellen Lewis is a good athlete, but not a Div. I quarterback.
It’s time for IU to stop messing around and hire a coach who can recruit, teach and has a game-day plan that at least gives the team a chance to win. I’m sorry, Bill Lynch is by all accounts a wonderful person. But he’s not going to take IU to the next level.
This is more than an emotional plea. Building IU into a national football power makes good business sense. A winning football program has a lot more potential to make money than the basketball team ever will. Want proof. One winning season last year, and the IU football team outscored the basketball team in revenue $17 million to $12.3 million. The football team accounted for almost 40 percent of the $44.7 million that IU’s athletic department brought in during 2007, up from only 28 percent in 2005. Increasing per game attendance by 20,000 to 25,000 brings in another $4 million in annual revenue—in ticket and parking sales alone.
I’ve been told you can’t attract a high-quality coach without tradition. Fooey! IU needs to take its increased earnings—and borrow some from the future if necessary—and go buy itself some tradition—in the form of a $2 million to $3 million a year head coach. Tell me why not. IU already pays basketball coach Tom Crean nearly $2.5 million a year. Bill Lynch, by the way, will earn a $250,000 base salary this year. What does that say?
Some of IU’s most monied alumni certainly would further financially support the school’s athletic department if school officials made such a commitment. Why do I think that? Because some of IU’s most monied alumni have privately told me so. They’re tired of being associated with a losing football program. They’ve had it with being the Big 10 doormat. And they’d pay handsomely to move up far enough to at least get a peak of the penthouse.
Many of those IU alumni live in a city where they learned a long time ago that the value of sports and winning goes far beyond the playing field. It’s time for IU officials to wake up and learn the same lesson.
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Indiana, even with all the money talked about, would still always be at a disadvantage because of its deficiencies in recruiting base.
iu should put money into fielding a good team. As Purdue has shown, you do not need a constant B10 champion or national contender to bring in fans and dollars.
We have a new stadium addition, presumably that includes top flight training areas, etc.; we are soon to have a new AD that can make his mark with this hire; we are just finishing the Sampson debacle correctly following it up with a similar approach to the one redcommended by hiring Crean and look what it has already accomplished: it seems we have assembled a prominently recognized top 10 basketball recruiting class for 2009.
In addition, IU is an internationally recognized brand and not just for their Basketball. [By the way, I agree that without IU, Bobby Knight would not have had the accolades he has and rightly deserves.]. Our schools of Business, Music 7 Medicine just to name a few draw fans, alumni, students, professors and grants from the world over.
so, just thinnk what a cash cow football program could do for the entire university community! The time to act is NOW!!!!
Could someone please tell my why the IU football team's uniforms are a different color than the basketball team? Don't most universities have ONE color scheme?
Indiana's musical school doesn't need football to be its showcase. It has a world-class reputation on its own.
Question: Do any of you complainers actually go to the games? If you don't, then you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. When you bring five-star recruits to the stadium and they see 40 percent of the seats empty and witness the drunken carnage taking place across 17th street, Knute Rockne himself couldn't convince them to cast their lot with Indiana.
Rick Greenspan, for all his faults, hired the right guy. But then he died.
Give Bill Lynch a chance. He has a contract. Honor it.
And the drunkeness I refer to is not in the stadium, it's across the street, where thousands of students gather to party with no intention of going to the game.
My point is, the lack of support is part of the problem.
But here's what we should do. Let's go hire that big-name proven winner. So what if he doesn't graduate players or has a few recruiting infractions in his background. As long as he wins, all will be swell.
Wait a second, we just did that in basketball. And that sure worked out.
You can not just say spend money=success. Big time programs get big time coaches because they live and die with said program. (Mich, OSU, AL, FL) I don't think IU was in the running for Rich Rodriguez or Nick Saban b/c major programs can match dollars AND offer more upside. You grow tradition you don't buy it.
And Bill, as a long time Boiler fan, winning is needed to fill the seats. We averaged around 40,000 per game until we brought in Tiller and started winning and then we packed the place. Our attendance jumped 10,000 per game from '98 to '99.
They finally got fed up with a medicore football program and went out and hired a name, Ron Zook. While Zook didn't have the greatest history at Florida, he did have some name recognition which went a long way to showing fans that Illinois was serious about putting a winning football program together. He recruited top level talent and put a winning team on the field in just a couple of seasons.
Who wanted to go play at Illinois? No one. They were winning 1-3 games a year and attendance was starting to dip below 50k a game. Now, with Ron Zook, they are recruiting 4 star players and an occasional 5 star player, they are selling out games, they have made the Rose Bowl.
I don't see Bill Lynch ever being able to recruit 4 and 5 star players to IU. I don't see Bill Lynch ever being able to get IU to the Rose Bowl, let alone another bowl game.
He may be a decent assistant or positional coach, but he just can't cut it as a head coach at a BCS school.
It's time to move on and find ourselves someone who can coach at this level.
It would have been great if BL could have been the guy but IMO the reality is that while he is a very likeable guy he will not get IU to where they want to be.
It is a real shame that with 8 home games and no Michigan or Ohio State on the schedule it looks like IU will be at home vs being at a bowl game.
GO IU!