by Kent Sterling College basketball coaches have a weird combination of hope, anguish, impending doom, and the weight of the world on their shoulders every October. The odds are against them, their schedule sucks, players are refusing to learn at the preferred pace, and no one understands how difficult this season is going to be. […]
TOM CREAN: First of all, the State of Illinois and the history of the Big Ten lost a really, really good one yesterday with Wayne McClain’s passing. I didn’t know Wayne as well as most, but had great respect for what he did as a coach certainly in high school and then what he brought […]
by Kent Sterling It’s impossible to have any clear notion of what Indiana University’s immediate basketball future holds, but the media will get a quick preview of what the Hoosiers will look like in 2014-2015 today as coach Tom Crean allows a peak behind the curtain. Late signees unwanted by others, a transfer from Illinois […]
by Kent Sterling Football surprises last weekend? Not in Indiana. First the good – the Indianapolis Colts were dominant for the second straight week in a league where parity is king, and the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame hammered the type of team that it should. Purdue fought like hell through the first half against […]
by Kent Sterling When two powerful and confident men lock horns, the victims are everywhere, and the latest unfortunate episode of the Bob Knight/Myles Brand zero tolerance standoff is former Indiana point guard A.J. Guyton pleading with his mentor to be on hand for his induction into the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame. It […]
by Kent Sterling There is no season quite as silly as the period between the opening of football training camps and the regular season opener. We try to read tea leaves to figure out what the hell might happen, and no one is wrong because the measure for success is 100% subjective. Now, we get […]
by Kent Sterling Unhappily lost in a maze of perplexing classes and crowded parties, I got very lucky on August 30, 1984, when an almost always smiling force of nature danced into my life. At a party in Walnut Knolls apartment D-19, college students were doing a lot of what college students normally do on […]
by Kent Sterling It’s been awhile – a long while – since Indiana University students and alums got themselves all wrapped up in the fortunes of their football team. There was a brief time after Terry Hoeppner was hired when the magnetism of his personality compelled optimism, but his illness and tragic death gave fans […]
by Kent Sterling In a USA Today piece posted yesterday afternoon several athletic directors representing Big Five conference universities spoke of the difficulty of drawing students to football games. Purdue’s Morgan Burke was one of them. Burke’s comments were certainly reflective of the collective mindset of those facing the challenge of compelling students to part […]
by Kent Sterling Winning press conferences is not too tough. You state your goal, talk about how it will be achieved, and then walk confidently from the room. Indiana Football coaches have won a hell of a lot more press conferences than games over the past 20 years, but things feel different in 2014. The […]
