Indiana
Love alternate jerseys, hate them. To one of biggest apparel lines, IU basketball still matters.
BLOOMINGTON – IU basketball’s season reached a familiar mile marker at the end of this week. A moment that passes as surely as the Purdue doubleheader.
I am, of course, talking about the annual return of The Uniform Discourse.
This time, it came via an announcement from Adidas the company would introduce bespoke black jerseys with red numerals from its Fear of God brand line for Indiana’s upcoming games this week.
You can guess what ensued.
Even beyond the arguments for tradition or familiarity, there were understandable questions why IU might wear black jerseys against Iowa, for example, an opponent with black in its regular color wheel, on a night when the women’s program planned a white-out of Assembly Hall.
Arguments for the defense (uniforms) were equally familiar. Players love them. The younger generation digs them. They’re typically one-off arrangements that help justify multimillion-dollar relationships between apparel companies and athletic departments.
Each misses a fundamental point, perhaps the most compelling argument in favor: Adidas isn’t doing this for everyone.
Indiana fans cling tightly to their traditions. Why shouldn’t they? When a program is struggling for solid ground, those constants provide balance.
Uniforms don’t win games, but they do help cement perceptions. When IU put five stars on the back of its shorts, it spoke a message into existence. When — under the current staff and administration, it should be noted — the Hoosiers returned to trim and piping more consistent with their historical look, they did so for good reasons.
Conversely, anyone who points to the cultural-appeal aspect of this has a fair point as well. The athletes themselves tend to favor alternate jerseys. Younger fans, less anchored to long-standing traditions, like fresher looks, not just in the arena but when they take their money to fan stores where this stuff eventually shows up in the form of product.
And, to borrow from Don Draper, that’s what the money is for. Years ago, the soccer club I follow, Liverpool, added an Expedia logo to its shirt sleeves. Fans complained until it got around the logo was worth more than $10 million per season. It didn’t seem so intrusive then.
The actual financial impact of apparel deals is beginning to wane. The days of arms races over who can siphon the most money annually out of Adidas or Nike or Under Armour are probably behind us for most schools. But these are still seven-figure line items on annual budgets. There has to be more mutual benefit in these relationships than simply “give us what we want, period.”
Everybody’s got a point. Nobody’s really wrong.
And that’s not why it matters to Indiana, right now.
In its late-week confirmation of these admittedly rather … unorthodox designs, Adidas announced the Fear of God threads would go to IU and Miami. Fear of God is a high-end, exclusive arm of Adidas’ apparel arm.
This is driven by cultural and aesthetic motivations. Everybody wants this in the discourse. It’s the reason for attaching this stuff to Adidas’ bigger brands.
And for Indiana, that’s what matters. Adidas isn’t doing this with Kansas, or Louisville. Nor is it consigning it to secondary brands like Georgia Tech, North Carolina State or Texas A&M.
In the buildup to both of IU’s games against Purdue this season (as well as the Kansas game, to an extent), there was discussion of the Hoosiers’ current relevance. Where does Indiana stand in modern college basketball, relative to programs with much more recent success, when the Hoosiers can’t seem to recapture their best?
When IU’s trip to Purdue made Fox’s main channel, in primetime, it suggested that relevance remains strong, even if results aren’t consistent. Like it or not, so does stuff like this.
When Adidas announces exclusive NIL deals for four men’s basketball players, and two of them are Hoosiers, it says the company still sees real cultural agency in IU basketball. And when the company makes Indiana a target for this kind of exclusive-line apparel partnership — on, it should be said, a weekend when the eyes of an entire sport are trained on the state, because of the NBA All-Star Game — that suggests the same.
Like the jerseys. Love the jerseys. Hate the jerseys. Be jersey agnostic. Pray nobody has to play wearing a mask (they won’t).
Just remember what it says loudest when IU takes the floor in these Sunday and Thursday: To one of the world’s biggest apparel lines, Indiana basketball still matters. Fear the day such companies decide that’s no longer the case.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
Indiana
DoorDash driver accused of pepper-spraying customer’s Arby’s order, resulting in wife falling ill
Caught red (pepper) handed.
A DoorDash driver has been banned from the app after being accused of dousing an order with pepper spray and causing an unsuspecting customer to fall ill after eating the tainted food.
The sick act was caught on a doorbell camera outside an Evansville, Indiana, home just after midnight on Sunday.
The driver, who hasn’t been charged with any crime, was dropping off an Arby’s delivery to Mark Cardin and his wife, Mandy, when she snapped a confirmation photo before suddenly producing an object from her pocket and spraying the order.
The blue-haired worker placed the spray back into her jacket pocket before walking away, all in front of the camera.
The couple brought the order inside, unaware that something was wrong with it and began chowing down.
Moments later, Mandy began struggling to breathe.
“I noticed my wife had starting eating and she started choking and gasping, and after she had a couple bites of her food she actually threw up,” he told WFIE.
The horrified customer began investigating the cause of his wife’s sudden illness when he examined the order.
“I had a look at the bag and seen that there was some kind of spray or something,” Cardin said. “The bag had been tampered with. So I pulled up my doorbell camera and seen that the lady who dropped the food off had actually tampered with it on purpose for some reason.”
Cardin shared the photos and videos of the driver to Facebook asking for help in identifying the driver.
He attempted to contact her but found she already blocked him on the app.
Cardin reported the food runner’s stunt to DoorDash and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office is looking to get the driver fired and charged.
“I definitely want to see her prosecuted,” Cardin told WFIE, adding that they had never met her before and had left a tip before the incident.
The driver has been banned from the app after footage surfaced of the late-night delivery.
“We have zero tolerance for this type of appalling behavior. The Dasher in question has been permanently removed from the platform, and our team is standing by to support law enforcement with any investigation,” a DoorDash spokesperson told The Post.
Cardin doesn’t know exactly what was sprayed on the food, fearing it could’ve been worse than it was.
“It’s horrific,” Cardin said. “We assume it’s pepper spray, that’s more than likely what it is, but now in this day and age it could’ve been anything. It could’ve been rat poison, it could’ve been fentanyl. I mean, my wife could’ve been dead.”
The Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office has opened an investigation into the driver and could charge her with consumer product tampering, a level 6 felony, according to WFIE.
If the foreign spray resulted in harm the charge could be increased to a level 5 felony.
“We live in a terrible world right now,” Mark said. “Horrific. People are mean for no reason. There was no reason to do what she done,” Cardin said, encouraging other food delivery app users to be cautious with their future orders.
“I would say to anybody, if you order food on any kind of delivery service, make sure you have a doorbell,” Mark said.
“This is making me second guess ever ordering food from anywhere ever again,” he said.
Indiana
Several northeast Indiana cities, counties awarded grants for infrastructure projects
NORTHEAST INDIANA (WPTA) – The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has announced the list of cities and counties selected to receive funds through its Community Crossings Matching Grant Program.
The Community Crossings program, created in 2016, gives funding to towns, cities, and counties in the Hoosier State that are used for infrastructure improvement projects.
Projects eligible for funding through the program include road and bridge preservation projects that comply with Americans with Disabilities Act standards, along with chip sealing and crack-filling operations.
On Tuesday, the following recipients were announced:
Allen County, Bluffton, DeKalb County, and LaGrange County were among those that received the largest grants, at $1 million.
You can view the full list of recipients here.
INDOT says the next call for project submissions will open in July. For more information about the program, visit INDOT’s website.
Copyright 2025 WPTA. All rights reserved.
Indiana
Indiana, Curt Cignetti emerging in race for elite transfer QB
Curt Cignetti and the Indiana Hoosiers head into the College Football Playoff as the No. 1 seed in the field after defeating the Ohio State Buckeyes by a final score of 13-10 in the Big Ten championship game.
Knocking off Ohio State was the biggest statement that Indiana could have sent. Not only did the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes, they completely shut down the former No. 1 team in the nation offensively.
Led by star quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who many believe could be the top overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, the Hoosiers are a legitimate national championship contender. However, there are some who are looking ahead at next season with questions.
Read more: Texas, Arch Manning Dealt More Bad News After Missing CFP
Being a long-term championship contender is no easy task. Losing Mendoza to the NFL, assuming he makes that decision, will be difficult to recover from. That being said, there is an intriguing transfer portal option that Indiana could become a favorite to land.
Joe Cox of College Football HQ on SI has named the Hoosiers as potential team to watch when it comes to star Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt in the transfer portal.
“Who would have thought that Indiana would be a QB destination? But if Kurtis Rourke can lead IU to the Playoff and Fernando Mendoza can lead them to No. 1, what could Leavitt do in Bloomington?” Cox wrote. “Assuming Mendoza does go to the NFL (which seems like a foregone conclusion), the spot is open for an immediate splash.”
Leavitt made the decision to enter the transfer portal back on Monday. He has shown elite talent during his time with the Sun Devils.
During the 2025 college football season at Arizona State, Leavitt completed 60.7 percent of his passes for 1,628 yards, 10 touchdowns, and three interceptions, while also running for 306 yards and five scores. He produced those numbers in just seven games.
Read more: Alabama Named in Paul Finebaum’s Head-Turning CFP Prediction
Last year, Leavitt posted bigger numbers. He threw for 2,885 yards, 24 touchdowns, and six interceptions, while completing 61.7 percent of his passes. He chipped in with 443 yards and five touchdowns on the ground.
Adding Leavitt would undoubtedly keep Cignetti and Indiana in the national championship picture. There will be plenty of other teams with interest in adding him, but the Hoosiers would make a ton of sense.
For more on the Indiana Hoosiers and college football news, head to Newsweek Sports.
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