Rumors are running hot about the future ownership of the Indiana Pacers. The New York Post’s Peter Vecsey mentioned in passing in his column on Sunday that the Simons have posted a for-sale sign on the team. Who could blame…
Business is good for the Indy Racing Experience, which was founded in a Gasoline Alley shop in 1987. The company, which started allowing fans to ride around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in two-seat…
Indianapolis today is one step closer to stealing USA Basketball’s headquarters from Colorado Springs, where the national governing body for men’s and women’s basketball in the U.S. has been located since 1979. IBJ…
Indiana University this month began a television and radio advertising onslaught for its football team that seems to come at an odd time. After all, the spotlight is shining on March Madness, when…
Best-selling author Stedman Graham says professional athletes should think of themselves as “a corporation unto themselves.”
Graham–perhaps best known as television star Oprah Winfrey’s boyfriend–brought that message to the Indiana Pacers during
a three-hour private seminar in late January designed to get the players to rethink the importance of their individual images.
On the same day this month when high school boys’ basketball teams compete to advance to the state finals, another event showcasing the talents of Indiana’s youth should be just as climactic. Only this contest emphasizes academics over athletics. The three-day Boilermaker Regional at Purdue University that culminates March 15 will host roughly 40 high school robotics programs, including 26 schools from Indiana. Students will apply their engineering and computer programming skills to design and build task-performing machines. The winning…
Yes, I’m writing about the Indiana Pacers. Their struggles-and, yes, the scrapes with the law and bad judgment exercised by a few-have exposed an ugly underbelly that says as much about us as it does about them. It’s a cautionary tale for those riding-high Indianapolis Colts because (1) Peyton Manning won’t play forever, (2) Tony Dungy won’t coach forever, (3) Bill Polian won’t be the decision-maker forever, and (4) the law of legal averages eventually will catch up to any…
UPDATE (March 11): The Chicago Tribune and Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal are reporting today that officials for Comcast Cable and the Big Ten Network are closing in on an agreement to put the channel on an expanded basic tier. One…
Champ Car Wednesday filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, igniting what could potentially be a bidding war for its assets. The Indy Racing League last month agreed to acquire certain assets of Champ Car, but the bankruptcy court could open things up….
Negotiations are heating up between Formula One and Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials that could bring F1 racing back to Indianapolis in 2009. Speedway boss Tony George told an audience at yesterday’s IU Business…
Brownsburg-based Roark Custom Titanium Bicycles got a big marketing boost from a man from outer space–figuratively and literally. In its annual buyer’s guide published last month, VeloNews, one of the nation’s largest cycling…
Recently released data shows NASCAR’s Daytona 500 is still miles ahead of the Indianapolis 500 in terms of value the race delivers to sponsors. But, with the unification of the Indy Racing League…
Competition to host the 2012 Super Bowl suddenly has become a lot tougher. Last week, officials for the city of New Orleans and New Orleans Saints said they are set to bid for the big game, thrusting the hurricane-battered city…
Deadlines for a weekly publication are tricky. Sometimes when news breaks, you get lucky. Sometimes, you don’t. In this case, forgive me if I’m a little late to the parade and-following the elephants with broom and shovel-to the sorry mess involving the men’s basketball program at my alma mater, Indiana University. So, to sum up, this is what bothers me most: Everything. And who’s to blame? Everyone. It’s the culture. It’s the media. It’s gross mismanagement. It’s poor hiring. It’s…
EVERYBODY’S DOING IT SECONDHAND PROSE Volume discounts offered at library sale Inside Secondhand Prose, a CD of old-timey bluegrass music plays softly as a half-dozen volunteers quietly go about their business. They’re emptying bags and boxes, sorting through thousands and thousands of books and stocking shelves in preparation for the Indianapolis-Mar ion County Public Library’s next book sale, March 7-9 and 14-15. Six times a year, the library opens up its shop inside the Library Services Center, 2450 N. Meridian…
In the end, the catastrophic sponsorship shift from open-wheel racing to NASCAR became too much to ignore, driving the long-divided
sides of Champ Car and the Indy Racing League back into a unified series.
How do you go from fighting world hunger to polishing the tarnished image of an NBA basketball team? That’s the task at hand for Jim Morris, who said to a recent breakfast gathering, “I reached a point in my life when I realized that nothing I would do going forward would be as important as what I just did.” I suppose a number of us reach a similar place in our careers when we realize we have “hit the peak”…
Lawmakers last year approved a bill that would have given the NFL a onetime tax break on spending and revenue tied to the 2011 Super Bowl, a moot point once team owners awarded the game to Dallas. Now, similar legislation has passed both chambers of the General Assembly-this time extending the exemption to the NCAA, which has committed to hosting its Final Four basketball championships in Indianapolis regularly through 2039. If signed into law, the measure would allow the NFL…
Not surprisingly, not everyone is thrilled with former Indiana University and Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight joining ESPN’s in-studio crew for its NCAA March Madness coverage. Knight’s move to the media…
New Line Cinema today is releasing its latest feature film, giving a comedic glimpse of life in the American Basketball Association. Will Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, an ABA player-owner trying to break into…
