Doyel: Tiny crowd for IU-Syracuse basketball? Purdue loss to Valparaiso? Here's what it all means.
The first week of the college basketball season brought two eye-popping results locally, one at Purdue and other at Indiana . Purdue lost Nov. 6 to Valparaiso, the Boilermakers ’ first loss to a mid-major opponent at Mackey Arena since 2014. The Hoosiers beat Syracuse in front of 5,047 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Monday, the smallest crowd to see an IU basketball game in Indiana since the global pandemic. Go ahead, if it makes you feel better, and consider those results unrelated. One team won, one lost. One played a mid-major, another a historically elite program from a powerhouse conference. One large crowd. One small. What’s the connection here? What’s the problem ? The NIL-and-transfer portal era of college basketball is the connection. The future is the problem. What happened to the crowd for an Indiana basketball game in Downtown Indianapolis – and what will happen to the Purdue roster, going forward – are related to the upheaval of college sports, an upheaval that hasn’t been good for anyone but the athletes. No snark there. No shade. Before the landscape changed in the last five years – before lawsuits forced the NCAA to go from indifferent to impotent – college
