Hoosier A 7-foot-5 prospect ranked land as commitment from Kentucky to Indiana……
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announced a date for Hoosier Hysteria, and a schedule of events that will mean the event bears scant resemblance to what it has become over the past 20 years. What’s more, the change could prove permanent.
It’s a fresh reminder of the ways in which college athletics is adjusting to its changing landscape.
Once again, Indiana will hold Hoosier Hysteria on the Friday night of homecoming weekend, Oct. 18, to maximize alumni exposure with so many fans in town. Attendees are encouraged to bring canned goods for Hoosier Hills Food Bank, like always.
Unlike in past years, however, the frills are mostly gone. IU will introduce its players and hold a short scrimmage, first featuring its women’s team, and then it’s men’s team.
And that will be it.
For years, Hoosier Hysteria — and events like it — followed a similar script. Light shows, loud music, maybe some pyro, all in the name of hype.
It was a pep rally on anabolic steroids, and as the event evolved, it became an important date on both the basketball calendar (the season is near!) and the recruiting calendar (look who’s in town!).
But times have, like they often do, changed.
Hoosier Hysteria is still an important recruiting event, but not for the same reasons. The portal has bled some of the emphasis out of high school recruiting. Most programs don’t bring their top targets to their midnight madness events, if they still have them, because they want those recruits to get a whole visit’s worth of attention to themselves.
Instead, Hysteria has become a way to bring large numbers of younger players — freshmen and sophomores — to campus. Perhaps for the first time, perhaps on a repeat visit, in either case in a much more getting-to-know-you environment. The days of walking Beejay Anya across the court have largely gone.
Still, the event has agency. In the past two years, Indiana has brought prominent recording artists G Herbo (2022) and Gucci Mane (2023) to play at its conclusion.
Both acts came with six-figure price tags, ratcheting up the cost of an event that approaches a quarter of a million dollars annually.
At a time when athletic departments are working to carve eight-figure holes in their budgets to accommodate oncoming revenue-sharing demands, those kinds of expenses become harder to swallow.
Think about it this way: Big Ten departments like Indiana’s will have the money (thanks to media rights revenues) to max out their revenue-sharing options and perhaps even go beyond them with greater investment in scholarships. Would you, as a fan, rather have a bells-and-whistles Hoosier Hysteria, or a department fully funding rev share for men’s basketball?
If you’d like an uglier alternative, would Hoosier Hysteria be worth three jobs inside the department being eliminated?
