Around Indiana.

The Hoosier Scoop reported this on July 10, but on July 19 the Indianapolis Star decided that it was news and then the wire services picked it up: Chad Hawley, who was going to leave a position at the Big Ten office to become IU's director of compliance, changed his mind and is staying in Chicago. On June 3, a few days before IU's NCAA hearing, IU announced that compliance director Jennifer Brinegar would be assigned to a new position overseeing on-campus recruiting. It's probably irresponsible to speculate, because Hawley might have had personal or professional reasons unrelated to IU that led to his change of mind. But I'll speculate anyway. There has been some speculation concerning whether Rick Greenspan's resignation, announced on June 26 effective at the end of 2008, was long-planned or was a direct response to the NCAA's addition of the failure to monitor charge. The timing of Hawley's decision when compared to the NCAA timeline suggests that he expected to be working for Rick Greenspan for the forseeable future and changed his mind after Greenspan's sudden resignation. Again, that's one of dozens of possible explanations for Hawley's decision, and I have no information other than the circumstantial evidence above, but certainly it's another event that tends to suggest that IU and its counsel were blindsided by the FTM charge.

IU will use FieldTurf to replace the five year-old Astroplay surface that was ruined by the early summer floods in southern Indiana. Although the press release promises only that the field will be ready for IU's August 30 opener, all indications here are that the field will be ready for the Drum Corps International championships, which begin on August 7, less than three weeks from today. As I have mentioned before, conducting this event as Memorial Stadium is itself a contingency plan: DCI and Indianapolis entered a multi-year deal to host the championships at the new Lucas Oil Stadium with the understanding that the 2008 event would be in Bloomington if LOS wouldn't be ready by early August.

Football recruiting continues. Be sure to follow the Hoosier Scoop for recruiting news, including this post noting that IU now has 14 commitments for its 2009 freshman class. As far as the recruiting services are concerned, most of these players are in the two star range (and committing to IU won't help their rankings no matter how they play as high school seniors) but newcomer Hugh from the Hoosier Scoop makes a good observation:

The hidden benefit of receiving so many verbals so early is that you can now focus on the big fish, the four and five-star recruits that are game-changers. Instead of spending the fall and winter trying to slam together a class, Lynch can focus on a few players and give them more time than might have been available in years past.

Recruiting isn't an exact science, but that certainly sounds like a decent plan.