BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WISH) — A truly unprecedented football season is teeing up priceless opportunities for Indiana University and the Bloomington community as a whole. As IU Kelley School of Business marketing professor Ann Bastianelli puts it, “This is monumental.” Bastianelli comes to the discussion with deep knowledge of IU sports history and its overall impact. She was a captain on the volleyball team as a student and has long worked with or alongside the athletic department. Professionally, her experience with many major advertising campaigns gives her a unique understanding of the influence a successful sports program can have. “There are people who are discovering Bloomington and discovering IU football for the first time in their lifetimes, and the students are just bananas about it,” Bastianelli said. “Absolutely electric!” I asked Bastianelli about the practical effects of the team’s time in the spotlight. A key example: the October home win over Washington, which saw the IU campus host, for only the second time ever, ESPN’s College GameDay. “The earned media impact is in the millions and millions of dollars. You can’t buy that kind of stuff and you can’t buy that kind of sign-on to be part of Hoosier nation,” she explained. Bastianelli also points out that football in particular brings to the school benefits that even IU’s vaunted basketball teams cannot match. “There’s lots more seats in a football stadium there than there are in a basketball (arena),” she said. “So if you can be successful in football, that is several times bigger in terms of how that stuff can build.” She feels the impact is so direct that you’ll almost certain can see it in prospective student applications. “The football season will conclude at about the time that students are deciding whether they’re not going to do an early decision (admission), whether they’re going to come to Indiana, whether they’re going to go out of state. You often hear that sports is the ‘front door’ of a university – its curb appeal. So this sort of electric kind of experience, beyond the fact that we have great academic programs, is really attractive, not just to kids, but also to their parents.” The Hoosiers can notch another achievement in a stellar season this weekend against Ohio State.