Indiana Football closes out Spring Practice with Spring Football Saturday
Indiana football fans can get their first look at coach Tom Allen’s 2023 Hoosiers and participate in a number of fan-focused events on Saturday. The free event takes place from 11am to 1pm at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Ind. Fans were to register for the event at www. iuhoosiers.com and here’s the full schedule for Spring Football Saturday.
11 a.m. – Indoor tailgate party at the Tobias Nutrition Center, located at the south end of Memorial Stadium.
11 a.m. – Hoosier Carnival with games, giveaways, access to the IU team store and more at the Sample Terrace, located at the south end of Memorial Stadium. 11 a.m. – Practice begins. The team will offer fans an in-person look at a series of practice sessions, ranging from individual positional work to situational team drills, per IU release.
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Scrimmage.
12:30 p.m. – Tom Allen remarks following practice.
12:40 p.m. – On-field meet and greet with Indiana football players and coaches.
Allen and the Hoosiers are looking to bounce back from a 4-8 season in 2022, and it’s been an offseason with major roster changes due to graduation and the transfer portal. Jaylin Lucas returns for his sophomore season after earning first-team All-American honors as a kick returner in 2022, and Tayven Jackson, the brother of Indiana basketball star Trayce Jackson-Davis, is competing with Brendan Sorsby for the starting quarterback job.
Indiana University Women’s Tennis gets a forfeit win over Minnesota
The Indiana women’s tennis match against Minnesota has been canceled due to injuries within the Golden Gophers’ program. The match originally scheduled for Sunday, April 23 in Minneapolis, Minn., will be recorded as a victory by forfeit. Indiana (13-8, 4-5 B1G) will travel to West Lafayette, Ind., for a match against in-state rival Purdue on Saturday at noon and close out the regular season Next Friday evening at Wisconsin at 6pm.
#24 Indiana University Softball drops midweek game at Notre Dame
No. 24 Indiana (31-12, 9-2 B1G) dropped their midweek matchup against Notre Dame (25-11-1, 7-7-1 ACC), 9-1, on Wednesday evening at Melissa Cook Stadium. Indiana scored the first run in the top of the second after sophomore Kinsey Mitchell slapped one into left field to score Brianna Copeland. Copeland would close out the 1-2-3 inning with a swing and a miss from Notre Dame’s batter. The Fighting Irish fought back in the third as they fanned through three Indiana batters before taking a 2-1 lead. ND continued with the momentum as they pushed the lead out, 5-1, to close out the fourth. Junior Brooke Benson recorded a hit for the Hoosiers in the top of the fifth with a beautiful bunt but couldn’t find any offensive rhythm before the Irish extended the lead with three more runs to end the inning. Sophomore Sarah Stone hit a leadoff double down the left field line to open the sixth, but Notre Dame would tack on another run with an RBI single for the run-rule. The Hoosiers welcome Nebraska to Andy Mohr Field this weekend for another Big Ten series. Game one against the Huskers will be broadcasted this evening on B1G+ at 6pm.
Big Ten Conference names Tony Petitti as Next Commissioner
The Big Ten has announced the hiring of former MLB and television executive Tony Petitti as the conference’s next commissioner. He’ll begin his tenure May 15. Petitti emerged from a group of finalists who interviewed in the past 48 hours and was selected Tuesday after a vote of the league’s presidents and chancellors. Petitti brings a diverse background in sports and media. He is the former COO of Major League Baseball, where he succeeded current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in that role in 2015. His media experience comes from working for ABC Sports, CBS and the MLB Network. His work with college sports includes helping create the Bowl Championship Series back when he was with ABC and working with the NCAA tournament while at CBS. He also worked extensively with the NFL while at CBS.
Petitti also oversaw the day-to-day operations of CSTV, the network that would eventually become CBS Sports Network, for a four-month stint in 2008. He left soon after to become the head of the MLB Network, charting his path to become one of MLB’s top executives. Petitti’s hiring continues the trend of nontraditional hires from outside the college sports space in the collegiate commissioner set, including in the Pac-12 (George Kliavkoff), Big Ten (Kevin Warren) and Big 12 (Brett Yormark). Only the ACC’s hire of Jim Phillips in December 2020 from his job as the athletic director at Northwestern would be considered a conventional recent hire of a high-profile commissioner. Petitti is currently the co-CEO of the 33rd Team, a football think tank and nascent media organization founded by former NFL executive and current ESPN analyst Mike Tannenbaum. He has worked for the 33rd Team for the past year.
Petitti takes over the Big Ten at a time when the league is seeking stability and a consensus builder. Warren’s tenure was uneven, as he had difficulty with the setup of college athletics as a clunky and nonlinear business where commissioners mostly lack the unilateral power of professional commissioners. Warren left suddenly in January with multiple years left on his contract to become the president of the Chicago Bears. His tenure ends Friday, and he’ll start with the Bears on Monday. Petitti, a Haverford College (1983) and Harvard Law School (1986) graduate, rises immediately into one of the most powerful roles in college sports during a tenuous time in college athletics, as the Big Ten and SEC have television deals that are expected to outpace the other prominent leagues by $30 million annually once those deals come into place in the coming seasons.
Notre Dame and South Carolina Women’s Basketball to open the 2023-2024 season in Paris
The South Carolina and Notre Dame women’s basketball teams will open next season in Paris on Nov. 6, the schools announced Wednesday. It’s the first time an NCAA regular-season basketball game has been played in the French capital, which will host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The Gamecocks (2017, 2022) and Irish (2001, 2018) are both two-time national champion programs.
South Carolina made its third consecutive women’s Final Four this year before losing its only game of the season in the national semifinals to Iowa. Notre Dame advanced to the Sweet 16. Both teams won the regular-season championship in their conferences. South Carolina is No. 7 and Notre Dame No. 10 in ESPN’s Way-Too-Early Top 25 list for the 2023-2024 season. The Gamecocks had five players taken in Monday’s WNBA draft, including No. 1 overall pick Aliyah Boston.
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