James M. Redwine

Mark Cuban

Coach Cignetti, The Philosopher King

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Curt Cignetti was hired to be Indiana University’s football coach beginning with the 2024 college football season. In 2022 IU’s record was four wins and eight losses. For 2023 it was three wins and nine losses. In 2024 IU lost two games, one in the College Football Playoffs, and won eleven. IU just won the College Football National Championship for 2025-26 by being the only undefeated college team and posting sixteen wins and zero losses. IU started 2025 as history’s losingest college football program based on over 700 losses. A couple of basic questions are: How did IU go from the whale dung of college football to Marathon type victors (490 BC) and who wrought this miracle?

Those are important issues to ponder. However, America is currently dealing with other much more important matters than sports. Perhaps we can learn something as a country by examining how Indiana University went in two years from football fodder to pundits accusing my alma mater of cheating to win games. That has been the ultimate unintended compliment from the envious. We are now so good we must have called upon the gods or stolen signs or somehow bought a championship with NIL money. Surely no mere educational ivory tower could turn southern Indiana limestone into football lemonade in only two years.

Dunn Meadow and the Little Jordan River must have been co-opted by trolls or John Mellencamp and Mark Cuban. Only magic and money could explain the college that lost its first game in 1887, then followed it with over 700 losses, to winning the National Championship on January 19, 2026. But, what if instead of just assuming this Hoosier triumph is but a logical lacuna, we try to learn something from IU and its miraculous turnaround that can be applied to help America out of its miasma.

Is it possible that Curt Cignetti and his staff are the Philosopher Kings of football whose methods should be applied to our democracy? As Plato recommended in his Republic, instead of us choosing our leaders on the basis of popularity created by promising to give stuff away or to conquer other countries because we want their stuff, maybe we should elect our leaders based on their character, ability and hard work as proven by their past performance. Maybe we need portals which incorruptible leaders could pass through to be rewarded for their proven public-spirited expertise; Name, Image and Likeness indeed, but most importantly, proven character!

Instead of our political leaders being voted into office based on the drivel of cackling TV panelists who hate or love whomever they are promoting or opposing, what if we citizens evaluate our future leaders as Coach Curt Cignetti and his staff did for our Indiana University football champions? Quality of past performance, not feckless promises of future nirvanas are the lodestone we voters can learn to follow based on the example of these 2026 Hoosiers. Too often five-star potential from our politicians metamorphosizes into a sense of entitlement without the sweat required for production. Maybe what America needs from its leaders is evidence of proven positive results based on performance. What if we stop mouthing MAGA and adopt for our motto: “Hoo, Hoo, Hoo, Hoosiers!”?

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Name, Image, Likeness

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As of July 02, 2021 the NIL of collegiate athletes are no longer the property of their school and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Each student athlete, depending upon many factors such as the laws of the state where their school is located, may sell his or her fame to the highest third-party bidder. Colleges may provide stipends designed to “enhance education” but may not pay athletes to play. However, third parties such as wealthy boosters as well as corporations may.

Until six months ago it was an unpardonable sin for amateur athletes to be caught acting as though they owned their own financial souls. In the land of the free and the home of individual liberty, beginning in 1906 when the NCAA was founded, Big Brother was in charge of amateur athletics, especially at the collegiate level. Of course, Americans being Americans, countless ways were found to transgress the rules without paying any price. The unpunished sins of many were paid for by the examples made out of a few, the greatest amateur athlete in the world for one.

Jim Thorpe was a Native American born on the Sac Fox Nation in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1887. Thorpe was taken from his family when he was ten years old and sent to Haskell Indian Institute in Kansas then at age sixteen to Carlisle Indian Institute in Pennsylvania. During parts of the summers of 1909 and 1910 Thorpe was paid $2.00 per game to play semi-professional baseball. In the Olympics of 1912, where baseball was not an event, Thorpe won gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon. The 1912 Olympics were held in Stockholm, Sweden. Sweden’s King Gustav V in awarding the medals to Thorpe said to him, “Sir you are the greatest athlete in the world.” In 1913 the Olympic Committee took Thorpe’s medals away from him and expunged his records because of his semi-pro baseball participation. The medals were returned to Thorpe’s family in 1983, thirty years after Thorpe’s death. I guess it is true, “Timing is everything”. Had Thorpe won his medals after July 01, 2021 no sin would have been assessed. In fact, under the new NIL rules Thorpe would have probably made millions, legally, while still an “amateur”.

The management of NIL and amateur athletics in schools now falls under the same entities that have been charged with addressing COVID. The federal government, each state, counties, cities and schools have a say and a role. What could go wrong?

While it is the right thing to finally put the ownership of an athlete’s Name, Image and Likeness where it belongs, with the athlete, there will undoubtedly be much to consider. Some will be good. For example, my alma mater, Indiana University, has labored in the football vineyards unsuccessfully for years. But one of IU’s alumni is billionaire Mark Cuban who is a rabid IU fan. I say “Go, Mark!” And Harvard, not known for football for a hundred years, has celebrated drop-outs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Do you think the honorary doctorate committee may take note? Then there is Princeton alum, Jeff Bezos, America’s wealthiest possible booster. What Jeff did for Amazon perhaps he can do for Princeton athletics. After all, Princeton played in the first college football game against Rutgers in 1869. Renewed glory may await if NIL swag can be offered and the transfer portal can be properly greased.

And please let me say I am fully in favor of everyone being the sole owner of their own NIL. If athletes can market themselves, my only objection is that my high school sports career was of no value to anyone. I believe capitalism and individual liberty is a good system. And if chaos at the top of college sports caused by NIL is good for college sports and if money in the hands of alumni is the mother’s milk of NIL, the future of college sports looks exciting.

My position is athletes should have control over their own images. And call me cynical, but I believe imaginative schools and boosters can find ways to categorize practically anything from books to private jets as “educationally enhancing”.

As for regulating NIL and putting that regulation in the hands of the same people who for the past two years have attempted to address COVID, I say, “Please leave it alone, let the free-market system work it out”. However, I am a little concerned with the effect collegiate NIL laissez-faire competition might have on amateur sports below the college level. When Tee Ballers start threatening to enter the Little League Transfer Portal unless their parent coach provides a new bicycle, we may need some way to reign things in.

Bowled Over

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Photo by Peg Redwine

Much as the Summer Solstice ushers in the ennui of torturously less daylight each day, as each of the forty-four college football bowl games is completed the dark pall of life without football forces us to put down our beer, get off the couch and go back to work. I accept that COVID is a significant issue but so is mental health. And one of America’s best palliatives for depression in the gray days of winter is watching other people risk their well-being on the football field.

The first college football game was played on November 06, 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton in New Jersey; one hundred people attended the game that Rutgers won 06-04. The first college bowl game was the Tournament of Roses’ East-West game (The Rose Bowl) played on January 01, 1902 between the University of Michigan Wolverines and the Stanford University Cardinal; there were eight thousand-five hundred spectators. Michigan won 49-0 and Stanford quit with eight minutes left to play. That first bowl game was initiated to increase interest in Pasadena, California as a tourist destination and to market the surrounding area and its products. All bowl games since that first one have had similar goals. The outcome of the games is not of paramount concern to most.

The attendance at such highly hyped events as the Tailgreeter Cure Bowl between Coastal Carolina University and Northern Illinois University on December 17, 2021 is indicative of the lack of fanaticism at most bowl games; 9,784, about the same number of fans who showed up for that first Rose Bowl. The bodies in the stadiums at bowl games are not the targets, eyeballs on TV advertising and promotion of each venue are.

As for the schools and players involved, they may have analogous goals. The colleges want to showcase their products and make some money and some players have hopes of enhancing their football futures either as players, coaches or announcers. In other words, the first bowl game was for exhibition purposes and, except for the payout by major sponsors to each school, that is still the overriding rational.

With that in mind I have a few suggestions on how we can incorporate the goals of all involved, or watching, with the ever-expanding number of college bowl games. As I mentioned earlier, we already have 44 bowls. It would require an addition of only 8 more to be able to have one bowl game every week of the year. Surely such eager potential sponsors as Bitcoin or China would pony-up for a chance to showcase their greatness. Maybe a bidding war could be encouraged between Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban or Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Israel and Iran could promise to dismantle their nuclear ambitions and sell their peaceful intentions via commercials. Surely Facebook and TikToc would want to play.

One might wonder how one extra, exhibition-type game could be woven into a school’s regular football schedule. From the quality of play of most bowl games and with countless players opting to sit out, it is apparent that just showing up for one more Saturday should not be a problem. When my friends and I played Friday night football it was not unusual for some of us to show up the following Saturday morning for an impromptu, unorganized sandlot game just because. A lot of bowl games have a similar feel.

This system would expand college football perpetually and solve the ego problem for such “sponsors” as Jimmy Kimmel who endowed the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl. America could probably easily come up with underwriters such as Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Heck, I humbly suggest the Jim Redwine Armadillo Bowl might draw a nod or two and Peg and I will kick in fifty bucks apiece if that would suffice. We could host it in a pasture at JPeg Osage Ranch if the resident varmints do not too strongly object and if fans do not mind sitting on the ground. TV rights could be negotiated.