Are we done in the portal .....
- Thread starter Hawkangler
- Start date
Nice, using the Lord's name in vain. If you are trying to make a point, you are falling short miserably.
@QCHawkeye @Hawkangler - as "know-it-alls," surely you understand that every one of those Power 5 transfers Indiana brought in LAST YEAR were brought in long before Cuban and Melloncamp jumped on the bandwagon in recent weeks, right? They are kicking in money for next year's class.
Indiana simple out worked Iowa's recruiters and went after big fish rather than settling for low hanging fruit from IAA kids / Simpson kids that would kill for the opportunity to play Big 10 football. Indiana brought in guys from Mich, OSU, TN without Cuban's $. Imagine what they will do with it.
They have several billion dollar donors. They paid $4 million for Mendoza last year alone.
Simon is the real big money behind IU athletics
( Name on arena big)...and been kicking in for years. IU had a big payroll this year,dwarfing Iowa.
Actually what stands out the most is that Indiana is listed 18 times, with a handful of players coming from other Power 4 teams.
I wasn’t aware that Indiana was a recruiting powerhouse before Cignetti arrived?
Until he is knocked off his current pedestal, Cignetti is the King of College Football Coaches. What he has accomplished, has not been done with an Oregon type of haul of 4/5 star athletes.
He is the poster boy for “Championship’s can be won without a bunch of 4/5 star recruits”
One thing is for sure, the quality of athlete he will be able to sign in the future is only going to go up.
Yep. Legit players are going to Indiana now via high school and portal. If Cignetti stays with the Hoosiers....Yikes. Just another big-time obstacle in the way of Iowa getting into the playoffs moving forward.
Congrats to Cig. He gone done it.
Oh no, not the mythical "Lord"... whatever will we do?
Haddad was the one I didn’t think we would land.
Staff is overachieving in the Portal this year!
He hasn't played college football yet, though. So....we don't know if he'll be a valuable contributor.
Not saying some of the guys we portaled won't be quality players, but....If you think we're overachieving, I'd say your standards are quite low.
He may not even be the starting Punter, but he's got some experience kicking in actual live action Football games. And he's 6'2" 200 lbs. That sounds like a "speed of the game" athlete to me.
You are mistaken. There was an article about Cuban and Melloncamp in recent weeks, but Cuban donated $ when Cignetti was hired.
I think most posters on this board should try a quick search on google.com prior to confidently posting any old thing that crops up in the old noggin. (I did a search myself prior to this post, just to make sure I wasn't talking out of my butt).
Iowa recruited Haddad, and he will only be a redshirt freshman. I would agree that maybe they struggled on the Dline pulling guys in, but that could be argued. The rest though is most certainly overachieving considering who they beat out. Trent Wilson is a more than solid addition, but it doesn't stop there, the hawks are now in on his brother, an Oklahoma commit from the class of 2027.
I would love it if Iowa went after Girad Pringle jr, a RB from Miami, Iowa offered him in 2025. I'm assuming they won't though.
Fact is we simply don’t know, especially when said player is yet to get playing time.
We grabbed the portal DB out of USD this past season and I don’t believe he saw the field on defense. Just an example of why it can be argued that not getting your hopes up until production is shown can be an understandable approach.
Without seeing how the guys we picked up in the portal will produce for Iowa, there's really only a couple of things you can look at to judge how we did:
1. Did the staff get the guys they targeted or did they have to get a lot of "fall backs". We know for a fact that Diaz was the top guy on our entire board and we were able to fend off Alabama to get him. That's a big deal. Also, unless someone corrects me, I think all the guys we targeted and brought on campus, except for maybe 1, we got to sign.
2. Did the guys we picked up have demonstrated, on-field production. For all intents and purposes, with the exception of a few guys, every one of them had outstanding production, with several of them getting all american honors in their leagues.
3. Did we pick up guys that have multiple years of eligibility remaining that will allow the staff to continue to develop them and get them acclimated to P4 football. Again, with the exception of 1 or 2 guys, everyone has multiple years of eligibility left.
So I think by that criteria, Iowa had an outstanding portal season. Again, if the production on the field doesn't materialize, then obviously we will say otherwise. But until then, I think all objective criteria point to the positive.
This is an interesting question. Indiana has a population of about 7 million -twice the population of Iowa. They have a big metro area (Indy) and border other big metro areas like Chicago, Louisville, and Cincinnati. For players who want to stay in the region close to family Indiana would seem to be a good option. They have to compete instate with Purdue and ND but now that shouldn't be a problem for them.
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I was thinking the same thing, Cuban definitely poured a lot of money in when Cig got hired.
good points, i agree.
indiana though demonstrated that a legit approach to beat teams loaded with 4-5* talent is to deploy much older matured proven veterans and use them to turn games into slugfests of men versus relatively immature boys.
so regarding point #3 -- it would appear we will have to be patient. if these guys develop AND stay (will they?), it could pay off a couple years down the road not necessarily 2026 (which i was hoping for in this era of buying players off the shelf).
It is true we do not know how the various players will pan out. Also true of high school recruits and portal players from a P4 that haven’t been playing.
That also means you don’t know whether my statement about overachieving is true or not, at this point.
What I do know, is that I would rather project whether a player will be successful as a Big Ten Football player based off of actual play/tape at the FCS level. Than to do so based off of HS tape.
And when these FCS players are excelling early in their careers, that would give me even more confidence.
I suppose we could have spent our money on a handful of highly sought after players. I don’t think leaving holes at other positions on the team would have been a wise decision though.
Indiana beats teams by flawless execution, not making mistakes. The age thing is overblown and an excuse by sec pukes. A lot of teams have coved grad transfer old guys.
There’s probably a correlation though. I would think that older, more mature players probably tend to make fewer mistakes.
I think I heard that Indiana didn’t have a lost fumble in its last, like, 1,000 snaps. Something like no fumbles in their last 15 games or something crazy like that.
Again, probably very attributable to their overall avg age.
You don't see how extra years in the weight room and on the practice field increase the strength to keep hold of the ball and increase the technique required to maintain possession?
Correct least penalized team. Won turnover margin. Execution. Discipline. Physical. Focused.
There is a direct correlation with age and discipline, with obviously some outliers involved.
And then yes, as someone else mentioned, the physical strength aspect.
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