TomRollTideRitter

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Oh. I’m watching on Peacock

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I am too now, but I think it’s crazy to not have a U.S. gold medal match on a broadcast or cable network.

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WTH they're cutting away from the match?

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Seriously. Seems like a gimmick to get me a back on Peacock for the 2 months every 4 years

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Also the comments are so mild. The comments from Hess are the only ones that are remotely controversial (and he didn’t come off eloquent), but I can’t imagine how someone would get fired up about it.

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Also, these guys will complain about this and say the Olympics are woke then turn on the Super Bowl where I guarantee a higher percentage of the athletes are woke than the Olympic team.

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Miami-scoff all you want but Miami pulls in about a little more than 3 million viewers per Saturday. This is more than Tennessee, Auburn, Vanderbilt and Missouri. Miami is the 12th most watched team in the country.

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Over 3M is correct, but they finished 19th in the country behind all 4 of the teams you listed. That was also in a season they made it to the national title.

LINK

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They would probably all foul out before halftime of every game

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Jordan’s NBA was a much bigger deal than the current NBA, at least in the U.S.

Finals used to average high 20M to 30M. Now they are in the high single digits or low teens.

Point is that if Jordan was around today the NBA would make the rules to benefit him and the Bulls.

This has been a disappointing year to date if we’re honest.

If Bediako stays eligible and we get healthy and we start hitting our shots, maybe we make a run in March.

If any of those don’t hit, I don’t see this team doing much.

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It absolutely matters.

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It still matters, but before this IU team, no team had won a national title game with less than 50% blue chips (4/5 stars).

Indiana did it with less than 10%. They are 72nd nationally, behind multiple G5 teams and dead last in the B1G, in 247’s team talent rankings.

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True

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What power conference program cannot win one if Indiana can?

I’m not saying these conventions are dead or worthless now, but this millennium, these beliefs were absolute until this IU team.

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Plus, as far as this conversation goes, the vast majority of us do not follow European soccer. Additionally, when it comes to professional sports, there isn’t much that surprises me.

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All American professional sports have rules to ensure parity, so European soccer, national team sports, or other college sports are really the only comparable things to IU’s run.

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Thoughts?

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It would cause ever ballooning costs just like the education system at large. Pretty soon every school would be charging every student football player salary fees.

A lot of these administrators of pseudo-government institutions make “free market” arguments like this, but fail to acknowledge, either by omission or ignorance, that these aren’t free market systems.

Schools, and by extension athletic departments, have no real risk on the expense side. The people running them are an expense, there are no equity partners, and ultimately, they’d get a bailout if they ever somehow went under. So they will just spend and spend and spend and demand more and more money.

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Do you think we're doing well with portal additions, or did they drop the ball like many said early on?

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On3 still considers this transfer haul a net negative. A lot of those losses were edge rushers though which we had too many of for the system we’re running currently. Arguably the d linemen we added are a better fit for the system despite being lower rated players in many cases.

247 has us ranked 4th nationally in the combined high school/transfer rankings, but that doesn’t account for the players we lost.

I’d say the portal additions are probably a C. There’s some solid pieces but no one to really get excited about, so I’d say it’s an average haul. Net of the guys we lost, it’s probably more like a D.

However, our high school haul is an A, so the question is was this year just a one off with a bunch of national title competitors built through the portal?

Until this year, there were good portal teams, but the national championship teams were built through high school with just some portal guys filling gaps.

Our portal additions are good enough to fill some gaps, but this year, the final four teams were largely built out of the portal. Our group certainly isn’t that.

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So many males don’t develop until early 20s.

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This is true, but is it really true of elite athletes? We pretty often see teenage Olympians and NBA all stars.

Indiana isn’t top 25 for average height or weight of its offensive line, so this whole men amongst boys narrative doesn’t track for me. They have smaller players than the teams they are beating.

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But it’s not a “launch” in the sense of malicious intent. Trying to officiate tackling, which in itself is high speed violent collisions, is just so absurd. Running full speed and trying to take a guy to the ground is always going to be forcible contact… he went low to get leverage to take a receiver down, his feet leave the ground because he’s running full speed and then has to pull up and dive to make a tackle. But because the receiver falls down low it’s “targeting” and that’s a “launch” … but if the receiver is just upright catching the ball that same “launch” is just a tackle.

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I agree with all this, but the rule is what it is. Blame the rule makers, not the officials.

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Miami will play at home for the national championship like lsu playing in Death Valley for the title.

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If Indiana beats Oregon, it wouldn’t surprise me if Indiana has more fans at Hard Rock than Miami

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Has the portal had such an affect on them that has led to none of them making it to the finals this year?

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North Dakota State was still the best team in FCS this year. They just were upset by Illinois State in the playoffs.

South Dakota State did have a lot of guys leave with their coach to go to Washington State and went from a semifinalist in 2024 to just 9-5 this year.

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Kind of a loophole in the personal foul rule there You can just rip someone’s face off and get away with it

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Yeah only in overtime though. It would be ridiculous to give Montana State the ball at the 10, so I don’t know what the fix for that is.