Let’s dive into all of these Billy Donovan to Indiana rumors

The Indiana basketball coaching search is in full on stupid season. Yesterday’s report, which we can safely say is false, had Steve Alford being offered a 7-year, $31-million dollar deal from Fred Glass and the Indiana administration. Today’s rumor du jour? Billy Donovan!

According to a glut of rumors — whether it be texts (which yes, we’ve gotten them, too), chain e-mails, message boards, Twitter, Billy Donovan to Indiana might be a thing. As an outlet, there are two ways to treat these rumors. One, you can press firmly ahead and do your best to ignore these until you’re able to independently confirm them yourself — or, two run every danged rumor you recieve from Someone Who Knows Someone as a “sourced report.” The former seems futile in the internet era. The latter is, well, stupid.

Here’s what we know: about nothing. No reliable source has been able to verify to CQ the truth or untruth of these wild stories about real-estate shopping in Bloomington -- though a pending announcement seems highly unlikely. It’s my opinion, after talking to a few sources today, that it seems safe to assume Indiana’s search for a basketball coach is still in an early stage. Donovan may or may not be a candidate, he may or may not be interested. But distiguishing a sourced report from a rumor is important. This blog may do plenty of jokes and gags, but our reporting record this year speaks for itself. Sources are not chain emails, or information from A Guy That Knows A Guy Who Saw Quinn Buckner At A Bar Last Week.

Reminder: things that seem too good to be true and that are foolish probably are just that. Indiana’s probably very early in this process. Fred Glass seemed to indicate this process would move slowly. In addition, Billy Donovan has an NBA season to coach out and finish. I personally can’t think of a single situation where an NBA coach has accepted another job effective at year end — but remained with the team through the final two months of the season and playoffs. That would be, um, weird. If he didn’t remain, he quickly becomes, well, Bobby Petrino.

Keep this in mind of the course of the next two weeks: lots of people care about Indiana basketball way, way, way too much. Lots of well-meaning people have an opinion on who Indiana’s basketball coach should be, and many may think they have Fred Glass’ ear in regard to the issue. That doesn’t mean they necessarily do.

Calm down, relax. This coaching search is probably going to take a little while.