Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

Even though it’s summer in Indiana, the IHSAA has a lot of work to do, and the end of June is the deadline to get it done.

That’s because they need the month of July to get the word to member schools from Evansville to Fremont on what the changes are and what schools need to do to implement them.

In my opinion, the top line of their checklist of projects should be reviewing and redoing the transfer rules they put in place last summer.

Those rules say that any athlete at any school gets one “free” transfer to another school between the time they start high school and the start of their senior year.

It also allows an athlete who transfers to another school 365 days to have a change of heart and go back to their original school without any penalty or investigation.

We talked about it at the time the IHSAA passed this legislation, and I predicted that this would be more prevalent in the bigger cities at first and then would eventually trickle down to athletes at smaller schools.

We’ve seen some athletes in our area move, but not nearly at the rate they have in Indy, Fort Wayne and other larger areas.

What was slipped into the IHSAA’s transfer rules was the amendment that an athlete who transfers to another school is eligible to participate in contests 30 days after they officially sign the transfer paperwork with their new school.

Let me repeat that: those athletes are eligible to compete 30 days after they transfer no matter when that transfer happens.

Here is where this jumps the tracks: a girls basketball player, for example, who is playing on a team not having a very good season can transfer at Christmas Break and be eligible to play for her new team in her new school’s sectional.

Before you blame the folks at the IHSAA headquarters on North Meridian for opening the door for this kind of mess to happen, you need to start farther down the street.

No, this directive came from the Indiana Statehouse, where lawmakers again stuck their noses into a place they have no business being in.

The message from state lawmakers in the 2025 session to the IHSAA was, and I am paraphrasing here, “you are going to put this language into the transfer rules or we will do it or you, and if we have do it you probably won’t like what we do and how we do it.”

There was no wiggle room there, and so the IHSAA passed something to appease the General Assembly’s “school choice” mindset.

I mentioned the 30-day transfer rule to IHSAA Assistant Commissioner Jane Schott while she was in town for the boys track and field regional, and expressed my hope that she and the rest of the board would be able to rethink the “30-day” part of that policy.

I expressed to her that I would like to see that adjusted to at least 90 days, which would prevent kids from changing schools in the middle of the season and still being able to play for their new school come tournament at playoff time.

She and I have known each other for a while, so the conversation was taken as it was intended—as someone with skin in the game expressing real concern for the health of “education-based athletics in Indiana”.

She appreciated my concern and assured me that they were on the case.

I have since been told by a source I choose not to reveal that the IHSAA is working toward a solution to this issue.

The source told me that the board is thinking about applying the individual sports rule on transfers to the team sports. That rule is called the “75/25” rule, and it says that in order for an athlete to compete for their new school in the end-of-season tournament, they have to be enrolled and eligible at the new school for 75-percent of their school’s contests in that sport.

It takes into account an injury that might prevent someone from competing in the regular season and other similar scenarios.

That works for me.

I hope the IHSAA passes this and, maybe more importantly, I hope state lawmakers stay in their lane and let high school sports be run by the organization best suited to run it.

This is not preventing anyone from transferring to whatever school they want to play for. It does keep people from cheating the system and ruining the competitive integrity of high school sports by saying, “I want to play for this school this month, but I want to play for this other school in the tournament,” and win a state championship with a school they have attended for 32 days.

Remember, this is “education-based athletics”, not high school free agency.

New things usually don’t work perfectly, but I think baseball has gotten the Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS) just right.

If you aren’t following baseball closely, this is baseball’s current answer to helping get a much higher percentage of pitches called correctly.

Here’s how it works: The pitcher pitches the ball, and the umpire calls it a strike. The batter thought it was outside or low or inside or high. Or maybe the pitch was called a ball, but the catcher believes it should have been a strike. Either way, the allegedly-offended party can tap the top of their head and the home plate umpire turns around and announces to the press box that the pitch is being challenged.

Then, the fun starts.

The video board at each park switches to a computerized dramatization of the pitch approaching the plate in relation to the strike zone.

The best part of it is that everyone — the umpires, the players, the managers and the fans—all find out whether the pitch was a strike or a ball at the exact same time.

Each team gets two ABS challenges per game. If you get the challenge right, you keep your challenge. If you’re wrong, you lose one.

When you lose both challenges, obviously, you can’t challenge anymore pitches.

I believe this might be the best of the new rules Rob Manfred has put forth over the last three seasons, and that’s a significant statement because I think the pitch clock, the limits on throwing to first base and the extra-inning runner starting on second base have really helped the game.

Why do I like this so much?

First, the mechanics of how we get from a challenge being made to a resolution to being ready for the next pitch is about 20 seconds.

To get pitches right, 20 seconds is worth it.

I was hopeful that this would end the arguing from the dugout and angry batters, pitchers and catchers that certainly slow the game down.

It hasn’t ended it, but it has cut it back significantly.

According to Major League Baseball’s ABS website, 54-percent of all challenges by players have been successful — meaning the umpire got the call wrong 54-percent of the time when a call is challenged.

To the surprise of no one, the catchers get their challenges right 59-percent of the time compared to 47-percent by batters. Catchers are seeing the ball and the plate in the same way the umpire does, while the batter is standing next to the plate, looking at every pitch from a very different angle.

I thought it would be, and it has been, a big step toward holding umpires accountable for their ability, or lack of ability, to accurately call pitches. There is no hiding when an umpire gets it wrong now.

What has not been expressed by anyone that I have heard or read is whether the league is charting how umpires are doing on all pitches, regardless of whether they were challenged or not.

One of the things baseball got right with this is limiting teams to two challenges each (with an additional challenge for each extra inning) and allowing teams that correctly challenge a call to keep that challenge.

A team shouldn’t be punished because their home plate umpire that night was bad. I mean, if an umpire gets 20 pitches wrong in a game — and that has happened already this season—then they should be able to get all 20 changed, right?

The whole point of using technology for replay and ABS challenges is to get calls right. And it’s doing that.

Of course, there is a strategic element to when and how to use your two challenges.

It makes no sense at all for a batter to challenge a pitch he thought was outside that made the count 1-2 with the bases empty and one out in the first inning. If he’s right, it’s fine. But if he’s wrong and you lose a challenge that you might need on a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded in the 8^th inning of a tie game … that could be game-changing.

You can’t believe the ump was wrong; you have to know they were wrong.

And the natural emotion of sports doesn’t do any favors in this process. Teams with players who can control the emotion of the moment will deal with challenges better than those who can’t. There is also a place for the pride and ego of the player to inject itself when it comes to this.

And the batter, catcher and pitcher are required to declare their challenge immediately. No one from the dugout can yell out to help them.

I was slightly skeptical about this rule change at the major league level, but my hope that it would work was based in the fact that the minor leagues have been using it.

Well, it’s working.

Good for us.

Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

The IHSAA executive board met last week, and there were two headline-making items on their agenda.

The one everyone paid the most attention to was the proposed addition of a shot clock to varsity boys and girls basketball games.

The board voted to keep the shot clock out of the high school game in Indiana this time around.

And the vote was not close, by the way. Of the 18 commissioners charged with making decisions about Indiana high school athletics, only one voted in favor of having a 35-second shot clock.

That’s a pretty resounding statement, isn’t it?

Here is the background on this.

The Indiana Basketball Coaches Association submitted a proposal in February to bring the shot clock to Indiana. Their plan would be to only use it for varsity games.

The IBCA’s polling data claimed that 68-percent of their boys and girls head coaches were in support of adding a shot clock. That’s a pretty significant number.

So where did this go wrong?

The IHSAA tours Indiana a couple of times a year to meet with principals and athletic directors with the goal of hearing concerns and sharing what is happening down in the IHSAA offices.

At those meetings, administrators were polled about their feelings about having a shot clock for basketball, and only 24-percent of them expressed support for it.

That is also a pretty significant percentage.

The administrators’ concern focuses on the costs associated with adding the shot clock to Indiana gyms.

Currently, fewer than 70 of the more than 400 IHSAA basketball member schools have infrastructure in place to operate a shot clock. That means more than 300 schools would have to spend between $5,000 and $10,000 to install them.

That’s a significant price tag.

Also, as you have read me to say in previous columns on this subject, the shot clock would require another game worker to be hired to operate it. And being the shot clock operator is hard. It’s not the same as running the game clock.

Let me give you an example: I think the crew that works the scorer's table at Grace College home basketball games is as good as anyone around. Those young men and women are pretty sharp and they are good at those jobs.

But if you go to a Grace game, you’ll see the officials come over and check or correct the shot clock three of four times a game.

It’s not because their people aren’t paying attention; it’s because there is so much for them to consider and so many decisions to make in a split second, and getting any of those wrong has a major impact on the game.

The IHSAA will undoubtedly receive another proposal on this in a year when it can be reconsidered.

The other item they voted on was a proposal to create language in the IHSAA’s bylaws that allows students to financially benefit from their participation while maintaining their amateur status.

It’s called the Personal Branding Activities (PBA) policy, and it is, essentially, a watered-down version of college sports’ Name, Image and Likeness.

The key to this, according to comments by IHSAA Commissioner Paul Neidig after the vote was complete, is to allow students to “benefit independently from their school.” In other words, if someone wants to “sponsor” an athlete, they can do that with the stipulations that athletes cannot wear any school uniforms or gear with the school's name or logo on them, that BPA is not athletic-related, and that the school cannot organize or facilitate the activity.

Right now, colleges are putting together NIL packages for their athletes. That would not be allowed under the PBA model in Indiana.

Students are banned from participating in PBA that involves alcoholic beverages, marijuana, vaping, gambling and other things prohibited by the IHSAA and Indiana law.

What they could do is get paid for tutoring other students or providing personal training and instruction.

This concept is in place in other states.

Truth is, this is pretty much the policy that has been in place—they just gave it a name.

Commissioner Neidig says the IHSAA is trying to establish the foundation of PBA in Indiana while they can do so on their own terms and before they are mandated to do so. He didn’t say it, but that mandate would have surely come from state lawmakers—who have enough problems of their own but never miss a chance to involve themselves in high school athletics.

This is one of those weeks where I could write three columns about stuff going on in sports, but I’d rather meld them all together into a single offering.

So here we go.

What has happened in the spicy-but-unsavory story of a head coach in the NFL and a member of the media who covers the league he coaches in is where we start.

Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and former ESPN reporter turned The Athletic football insider Diana Russini were caught in photographs in clearly romantic poses at a resort during an official NFL event.

They are both married.

I am sure you can guess my feelings on this, but I am not the relationship police, and I am not in charge of making sure everyone is with whom they are supposed to be.

The results of the pictures coming to light are that Russini lost her job at The Athletic, and Vrabel missed the final day of the draft in Pittsburgh while he “went to counselling” for the very thing he spent a week denying really happened.

I won’t waste any space or energy laying the whole situation out for you.

The questions that linger are these: “Why did she lose her job and why didn’t he lose his?”

Russini crossed the line in starting what we now have come to understand is a relationship with Vrabel that started five years ago. A reporter can’t have a physical relationship with a person she is responsible for reporting on. If it didn’t actually affect her coverage of him and his team, it certainly could have, and it’s not the impropriety of the situation; it’s the appearance of impropriety.

So, she lost her job for it.

The NFL came out with a statement saying that they wanted no part of the situation. League spokesman Brian McCarthy said that the league would not even investigate whether Vrabel violated the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

That policy contains language that states that players, coaches and executives must not engage in “conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in” the NFL.

They concluded this was a personal matter and rinsed their hands of it in the golden bowl.

The heart of the problem is not what these people did, which we know is wrong, but his ability to make decisions.

If I am the owner of a franchise and my coach is so dumb to be caught cheating on his wife at an event while representing my team and me, it would make me wonder what else he was hiding from me.

The Cubs of 2026 are proving that you can never have enough pitching.

The Cubs currently have 10 pitchers on the injured list. That’s almost a whole roster of pitchers.

That list does not include Matthew Boyd, who pitched on Sunday after coming back last week from being injured and Daniel Palencia, who is back with the big club after two weeks on the shelf.

The Cubs were criticized during the winter, and understandably so, for choosing to add more pitchers instead of going after a better solution for right field.

I was among those voices of dissent.

But that was assuming that Justin Steele would come back in May and join the rotation, which would have grown to seven starting pitchers at that point.

Then, Cubs pitchers started dropping like flies.

The duo of Seiya Suzuki and Matt Shaw is doing just fine in right field, and most of the pitchers from AAA Iowa have seen at least some action this season.

And they are still winning.

Kudos to the Cubs front office for holding the boys together to this point.

Sometimes you get on me for the number of columns I write that include hockey in them, but this is the time of year when hockey is at its best.

What makes hockey better this time of year is how far guys prove they are willing to go to pay the price required for their team to win that game, that series, and that conference for the right to hoist that prize in the air.

But what makes it great is what happens after the first 60 minutes of play end.

Overtime hockey games are the best because they could literally end at any second.

Football can be that way, to a point. But in hockey, the changing of possession of the puck happens so frequently that it makes a scoring play more difficult to predict.

Baseball can’t end until the home team gets at least one batter to the plate, and the NBA overtime is like a mini version of a regular-season game—the first four minutes are to set up the drama of the final 60 seconds, which could take 15 minutes to play.

Next week, we will try to recap what the IHSAA decided on the basketball coaches’ proposal to have a shot clock.

The hardest season of the high school sports calendar is the spring season and it’s not even close.

Yes, the winters in Northern Indiana bring their own challenges, but the spring sports season is unique and that makes it especially difficult.

The weather makes it so.

Even the mildest winter here is still winter, and that means the ground is frozen and the default breeze that we get during the springtime is a cold one. We really don’t get relief from that until May, when the ground warms up.

The April rains that fall also do not mix with the spring sports menu.

In the fall, you can play soccer in the rain. You can run cross country in the rain. You can play football in the rain.

In the spring, baseball, softball, girls tennis and often boys golf get shut down in the face of the rain and storms that we are accustomed to in April and May.

And because the fall season starts in August, it gets a head start on its competitions that the spring season just can’t.

That means the fall has part of August, September and the first part of October as being pretty solid when it comes to weather conditions. Girls golf starts the earliest in the fall so it can finish before the winds turn from south to north and the weather starts to deteriorate.

The spring teams might be able to get outside and practice in mid-March, but the grass on the baseball fields and softball diamonds isn’t ready yet, most generally. Then toss in Spring Break in there, where most schools no longer require their spring athletes to stay in town and practice, and it puts players and their teams that much further behind.

So you are looking at a school like Warsaw, which has a later spring break than most, not really cranking up your spring sports contest schedule until almost the middle of April.

Conference meets and tournaments have to be finished before the postseasons begin, and that’s either the week before or the week of Memorial Day.

Athletic departments are then faced with cramming their teams’ entire spring schedule into a five or six-week window.

A rainy week, a rash of injuries, an athletic code violation — next thing you know, spring coaches have a mess on their hands.

And I would love to say that I have an easy and glorious solution to all of this, but there just isn’t one.

Not every school can have field turf on their baseball and softball diamonds, and even if they did it doesn’t fix the issues of trying to hit a ball with a bat that isn’t designed to be used below certain temperatures.

So what do you do?

You do the best you can with what you have, and you learn to be flexible.

And that applies to athletic department staff members, coaches, players and their families, umpires and their families…everyone with a vested interest in spring sports in Indiana.

It’s also wise not to make plans in the afternoons and evenings this time of year if you fall into one of those groups I just mentioned. Making plans that have a moderate chance of getting changed is very frustrating for all involved.

You have a schedule to start the year—write it on the calendar on the countertop at home with a pencil that has a really thick eraser.

My other piece of advice is that you make the most of the days when the weather is good.

Golfers, don’t tee it up on a sunny, windless day and double-bogey the first two holes.

Baseball and softball batters come out swinging when the wind is blowing out.

Runners, use that 20 mile per hour tail wind heading down the home stretch to boost you in your kick to the finish line.

Of course, guys, you could always solve your spring sports weather dilemma by playing boys volleyball—an indoor spring sport. It’s catching on, ya know!

Regardless, warm weather is coming soon. We’ll all enjoy it when it gets here.

But until then, have the hoodies cleaned and ready, make sure the rain jacket is handy, and keep repeating to yourself, “I love spring sports and I am brave for playing and watching spring sports.”

College sports have run amok.

What is currently happening with the level of organized athletics in between high school and the pros is exactly what those of us who truly care about college athletics have been fearing for several years.

Be clear, the path that college sports is on is straight downhill, and at the bottom of it is a fiery pit.

And everyone on the chartered bus careening down the path is laughing and counting their money with no regard for the danger that is ahead.

No one is in the driver’s seat, and no one seems to notice…or care.

Why do I say this?

Well, let’s start with the transfer portal, shall we?

While Michigan men’s basketball players were still walking around the game floor of Lucas Oil Stadium after winning the national championship, the men’s basketball transfer portal opened for players to plug their names into. That would make them available to any school that wanted them and anywhere they’d want to go.

Hundreds of players had already made public what their plans were, and by the time the dust settled two days later, almost 6-thousand college basketball players from Division I rosters had put their names into the portal.

For those of you asking the question, the answer is “that’s over half the players in Division I college basketball.”

The same thing happened the night of the women’s national championship game. The confetti was still wafting from the rafters in Phoenix and the transfer portal was filling up. About 20-percent of them went into the portal.

Think about it — the two basketball coaching staffs that just achieved their greatest accomplishment had to choose between celebrating with their players and families the highest point of their careers or beginning to rebuild their roster to do it again next year.

What kind of choice is that?

Who are the kids who enter the transfer portal?

I don’t think you can lump them all into a single category. You could, but it would be patently unfair.

Yes, there are kids who are unhappy with their role or playing time and they are looking to move somewhere that they will get more time, more involvement and the potential to be a bigger contributor than they are currently.

There are also kids, like Markus Burton of Notre Dame and Penn High School fame, who look around and say, “I’m on a team that has a record of 28-36 over my two seasons, my teammates all entered the portal, why should I stay in South Bend?”

Others transfer to change levels of play.

For example, a player at an NAIA school may be doing really well and is looking for a chance to move up to an NCAA school. Elijah Malone of Grace College, moving to Colorado University, is a great example of this.

You can understand all of those mindsets, right?

But there are also kids who are leaving for the money.

No, we aren’t talking about scholarship money. This is cold, hard cash we are talking about—millions of dollars for some of them.

It’s money that’s called “Name, Image and Likeness” money, but that is most certainly not what it really is.

The concept of “NIL” was that players would be allowed to make extra money during their college years by doing endorsements and similar things and getting paid for doing them. Under the old rules, that was a massive no-no and would get you suspended by the NCAA for a while.

The purpose of that restriction was to prevent fraudulent “deals” from being put in place, which would give athletes cash and other benefits that were not permissible.

Heck, college kids are signing contracts with colleges now for the money.

And they are leaving their first school after one year to go to another school simply because the “NIL” deal at the second school is sweeter than the first.

Add to that the disgraceful campaign the NCAA ran during March Madness, informing us that they are monitoring social media threats against college athletes based on gambling.

Gamblers are getting upset when little Johnny goes 3-15 from the field in a big game they put big money on and lose it. They are getting aggressive on social media about it.

I feel terrible about that, but this has been the logical outcome from the start. I warned you all that students who are now getting paid to play were going to feel more pressure for their performance than ever before, and that gamblers were not going to sit quietly while their cash flies out of their pockets because a quarterback keeps throwing the ball to the wrong team.

Then, on the scorer’s tables at the game venues, you see messages like “98-percent of student athletes will go pro in something other than sports.”

That’s not true!

Everyone you are watching is getting paid something for playing — by definition, that makes them professional athletes.

The only real student athletes on college campuses are the ones who go all four years and become teachers, pharmacists and nurses.

Everyone else is just riding the bus down that hill into the pit.

Roger Grossman
News Now Warsaw

Last week, Jaden Ivey was released by the Bulls for what the team described as conduct “detrimental to the team.”

It was the result of Ivey posting a video on social media criticizing the NBA and his own team for their “Pride Night” and “Pride Month” promotions.

Here’s what he said: "The world proclaims LGBTQ, right? They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA does, too. They show it to the world. They say, 'Come join us for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.' They proclaim it on the billboards. They proclaim it on the streets. Unrighteousness."

For that, the Bulls deemed that he could no longer be on their team.

There are several different angles that I want to take in discussing this issue.

First, a series of questions.

Did he threaten a teammate who is known as gay? No.

Did he “out” a teammate who was not publicly known as gay? No.

Did he physically assault anyone because they are known as gay? No.

What did he do wrong then? He spoke his mind. He has an opinion on a subject that most people have an opinion on, and he shared it.

In a world where everyone seems to have an opinion on everything, and they have plenty of places to share it, Jaden Ivey did that and it cost him his job with the Bulls.

This is the NBA — the same league that had an accusation of domestic violence against a player on the LA Lakers in 2021 and that player missed no games for it.

As a matter of fact, an ESPN article on the matter claims no one from the NBA Legal Department even talked to the victim before clearing the player to continue playing.

The player’s name is Jaxson Hayes, and he pleaded “no contest” to misdemeanor charges of false imprisonment and resisting law enforcement.

He was not fined or suspended by either the league or his team at the time, the New Orleans Pelicans.

So, it’s ok to beat your wife or girlfriend, but it’s unthinkable to share your opinion?

Noooo … it’s ok to beat your wife or girlfriend, but it’s unthinkable to share your opinion if it doesn’t agree with the corporation’s social agenda.

See the difference?

Another angle to this story is that Jaden Ivey was just traded to the Bulls from Detroit, and he really was not doing very well in Chicago.

Overall, he’s been a pretty big disappointment since joining the NBA after a terrific run at Purdue.

Which, with a record of 29-47 and roughly half a dozen games to go, meant Ivey was expendable. He wasn’t coming back to the Bulls next season anyway, and so the front office just looked at the video as an easy way to jettison him from their roster now.

In other words, Ivey opened the door of the airplane for the Bulls and they pushed him out.

All of those people in the front office who spoke after his banishment said they hoped that Ivey “would get the help he needs” and they were “worried about him.”

Obviously, they weren’t worried about him enough to actually help him while he was part of them. They kicked him out and told him to go get help from someone else.

Of course, another angle here is that the current climate of freedom of speech in America is this: “You have freedom to say whatever you want, as long as I/we agree with it.”

For those of you scoring at home, that’s not really freedom of speech, but those are the ground rules we are playing by in 2026.

The better rule of thumb for free speech today is “know your audience.”

And the final angle to consider here is that the NBA is a private organization and the Bulls are a privately owned franchise, and they can pretty much do whatever they want in this situation. Remembering that I am not a lawyer (but have watched enough Law & Order episodes to pass the New York State Bar Association exam), I think that if the Bulls really believe he was harming them and their employees, it would be hard to make a lawsuit stick that says otherwise.

Did he, in fact, get ‘fired’ by the Bulls for his religious beliefs? Yes…yes he did. Which would be illegal. But the Bulls' legal team would counter that claim with the previously mentioned angles and say they were going to let him go in a few weeks anyway.

Jaden Ivey lost his job for speaking truth.

Those of us with similar convictions will be forced to choose one of two paths: to keep quiet and keep working or speak up and take on the risk.

Time to ask yourself, “What would my boss do if I said something like that?”

Then ask yourself, “Should I do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do?”'

Purdue’s basketball season ended with a West Regional Final loss to top-seeded Arizona Saturday night.

As I watched the final seconds fade from the clock, I fully understood the ramifications of what was happening.

I was watching the end of an era, not just in Purdue Basketball, but in college basketball in general.

Here were college seniors — players who had been at the same school for four years—trudging off the court for the final time as representatives of their school and their program.

Bradon Smith, Fletcher Loyer, and Trey Kaufman-Renn had just accomplished something that we aren’t likely to see much of ever again. They had completed four years of college basketball at the same school.

And they were not just the guys who sit at the end of the bench, either. These guys were integral parts of Purdue teams that had experienced both playing in the National Championship game and losing in the first round as a number-1 seed.

We can learn a lot from these three guys.

Today I would like to examine some of those things.

1. Experience matters.

Playing under the same coach in the same system for four years means they knew what was coming more times than not. They knew what Coach Matt Painter was thinking as he was thinking it. They knew what the other was thinking. They knew what their other teammates were thinking.

How? Because they had been through it before, and they had been through it together.

And they clearly pay attention. Not everyone does that.

There certainly are more talented teams than the Boilermakers in the field of 68 teams, but there are none that have the depth of knowledge that they have.

They knew how to use that knowledge to their benefit, and they did it well.

2. Coaching matters.

Matt Painter has become one of the most respected coaches in America because each and every season, he puts a team on the floor that competes with anyone they run into.

And let’s be 100-percent ‘real’ about it—he’s recruiting kids to come to West Lafayette, Indiana. Not the beaches of Florida, not the southern Atlantic coastline…Northern Indiana. There is nothing sexy or cool to a 17-or 18-year-old kid about West Lafayette. It’s cold there in the winter, in case you didn’t know. It’s also not a hub of high society.

Painter knows that. Remember, he was once recruited to Purdue, and he accepted that invitation.

So, he’s not wasting his time standing in long lines for five-star recruits who will play there a year and move on.

No, he’s looking for the best of the rest. He’s willing to take guys who are less talented but willing to do what it takes to get better and to do whatever the team needs to do to win.

He’s also getting the best of Indiana, too.

One Indiana Mr. Basketball will graduate in Smith, and he’s getting the presumptive 2026 Mr. Basketball in Mt. Vernon’s Luke Ertel. Ertel scored 26 in leading Mt. Vernon to the 4A state championship on Saturday night.

3. Good stories don’t have to have happy endings.

Everyone associated with Purdue basketball, including their fans, is disappointed that they aren’t still playing this weekend. Of course they are!

But no one should think that this season was a failure because they didn’t win Saturday night.

They started the year as number-1 in the polls, tripped and fell down a few times in February, and was staring at being a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament heading to Chicago for the Big 10 Tournament.

They won three straight games and that tournament title and looked like they had locked back into being who we all thought they were.

They ended up a 2-seed, and the team that knocked them out was the top seed in the West Region.

And they led Arizona for about 30 minutes of the game before the inside presence of the Wildcats was joined by a series of 3-pointers in key moments.

Arizona is a better team, and they deserved to win. Purdue played well, they fought valiantly, and they proved to be worthy of being in the Elite 8.

In the end, that’s all anyone can ask for.

It was a noble ending for a group of guys who have given the university and the program a lot.

4. It’s never wrong to do the right thing.

These guys we’re talking about are not likely to be NBA stars. It’s much more likely that they will spend a lot more time and make a lot more money in their adult lives doing something other than playing basketball. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!

By staying in school for four years, these guys don’t have to worry about playing catch up or having to circle back to finish their class work and get their degrees. That allows them to go to Las Vegas for the NBA Summer Camp or to sign in Europe without worrying about what happens if that plan doesn’t work out.

In other words, they have options. And when you have options, your life has a better chance of turning out well.

I get a lot of questions from you all during the course of a normal week, and I think some of them are ones that more people want to ask but don’t.

Without using the names of the questioner, because I wouldn’t do that to them, I’d like to share some of the more popular ones with you.

Hey Roger, do you think the NCAA should expand March Madness?

No, they should not.

The only reason anyone would want to expand from 68 to…more than 68…is to have more games, which makes more money for someone.

But it doesn’t solve any real problem that college basketball has.

It won’t make it easier to figure out who should be in the tournament and who shouldn’t. It doesn’t eliminate the bubble; it simply slides the bubble down to a worse set of teams.

Before long, you will have teams with records at-or-under .500 making it in. That would give us the same feel we get when we see the matchups for college football bowl games.

Think of it this way: How deserving is a program at a shot at the national championship when they are the eighth-best team in their own conference?

Hey Rog, do you ever see a day when Indiana goes back to single-class basketball?

Never.

Class sports, beyond more than just basketball, have done exactly what they were designed to do: give more teams from more schools in more towns a chance to celebrate.

By the way, if you want to know the impact of class sports on small schools, drive to Bourbon or North Manchester and ask them if they think their state championships matter.

Did you ever get offers to move to other cities or jobs?

Yes, and I considered them very strongly.

I won’t identify the stations or towns, but a town in Central Indiana offered me a job that would have had me arriving at 4 a.m., writing and recording local news, becoming a salesperson at 9 a.m., and doing local high school games at night.

I didn’t take it because my base pay would have included my sales time and the games I did, and it was about a thousand dollars more than what I was making here at the time. The difference would have been that I would have made money on commissions, but I would have been exhausted.

By staying here, I got married to the woman I was supposed to spend my life with, and you can’t put a value on that.

Roger, I am worried about the Cubs. Should I be?

The quick answer is, “of course you should be. It is the Cubs we are talking about.”

The longer answer includes concerns about their reworked bullpen, who is going to play right field, and do they have enough power in that lineup to win the division and challenge the Dodgers.

We will find out starting this week.

What’s the most incredible play you’ve ever seen in person?

I have a couple.

Luke Zeller’s half-court shot to beat Plymouth in the 3A State Championship basketball game in 2005 is on the short list.

I was sitting “second chair” with Rita Price when Amber Feldman hit the 3-pointer that gave Triton the 2000 girls 1A state championship at Hinkle Fieldhouse.

Warsaw won a football game against NorthWood at Fisher Field a few years back, where they covered 75 yards in under 30 seconds, including the last 60 on a pass play to Taylor Cone. Cone crossed the goal line with :00.1 left.

The Jordan Stookey 3-pointer that beat Concord in the sectional at Elkhart has to be on there, and so does the 3-point play by Kyle Mangas against Elkhart.

How much longer do you think you are going to do games?

I have no idea.

This time of year, each year, I get quiet and listen to the Lord for new marching orders, and I haven’t been given any yet.

I will say this, though: Teams watch game film, and I listen back to most of my game broadcasts. My promise to myself and to the listeners is that I will get out when I start slipping below the standard I have set for myself in what constitutes a quality broadcast.

Do you have your fishing poles ready yet?

No, but I am going to start working on the boat next week. I need to replace the battery, and I have a side light on the boat trailer that needs to be replaced.

Mentally, though, I am ready to see my bobber disappear on a regular basis.

Love these questions. Please don’t ever stop asking them.