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"How can you not be in college athletics and be excited about the fall? There's an energy around campus and you can feel it."

With Indiana football's first game of the season coming up this Friday against Illinois, Atheltic director Scott Dolson took some time to update the media and Hoosier nation on the state of Indiana football specifically, and the Athletic department as a whole.

Dolson had a lot to touch on with the Big Ten media rights deal and realignment recently being announced, multiple alcohol partnerships made by Indiana, and changes coming to gameday experiences across campus.

"Ticket sales have been really, really good. We really feel great about renewals, where we are. We had a terrific year last year attendance-wise, and renewals have been very strong, particularly students, and I want to take a second just to commend our students," Dolson said. "...our student ticket sales are up 10 percent, so we expect a big student turnout for this Friday night."

It looks like the interest in Indiana football hasn't dipped much in terms of the students, and Dolson went on to add that 98% of season tickets have been renewed by fans. Those tickets make up about half of Memorial Stadium's capacity (26,000 give to take).

Indiana also recently announced a partnership with Molson-Coors to be the official domestic beer of Indiana athletics, and as of today, Upland Brewing was named the exclusive craft beer of Indiana athletics.

"That doesn't mean that's the only beer that will be sold here, but we certainly are partnering with them as an official sponsor of IU athletics, and we'll be announcing later today that Upland will also be a sponsor, as well," said Dolson. "Upland handles all of our alcohol sales at the games but they'll also be a sponsor. We separate the sales from the sponsorships. So we're really excited about that and appreciative of IU Sports Properties and the great job that they do."

In addition to these partnerships being made public, Indiana recently announced that alcohol sales would be extended to Men's soccer games, possibly a precursor to these sales being further expanded.

"Data really shows from the time we implemented it the first year at Memorial Stadium that our incidents actually went down, our alcohol-related incidents, and I think controlling the environment has proved to be successful," said Dolson.

"We're currently looking at Simon Scott Assembly Hall to see if that's something we may or may not do, but I am a big proponent of making certain that we're keeping up with what our fans would like to see from a fan experience standpoint."

Dolson was ecstatic when explaining the Big Ten media rights deal, also explaining that it may take some time for fans to see the effects of this monumental deal with many of its elements being backloaded.

I'm not saying anything to minimize the deal, but what I've had to do is make certain that particularly, internally, people understand that there's going to take some time," states Dolson. "Those deals are generally backloaded. We've got a lot to sort out before we really start to alter budgets or anything like that, but again, it's a tremendous deal."

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