Ben Meyer

Happily married to Susie, proud parents of Sam and Claire. Fan of Indiana University.

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@ronsterd89 Fanta red cream soda

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@IndySports @HoosierJen96 This is so tragic. I feel so bad for his family and all of his friends gone way too soon.

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@ggabefootball @IndySports This Greg G guy is going for the biggest idiot on X…..and winning by a landslide!

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@MattFinkes Are you acting like this hasn’t happened at OSU (boosters buying teams) for years?
THAT is hilarious.

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@ggabefootball Most agree change is needed. BAD take that Cignetti part of the problem

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

Are the @cavs players involved in a gambling ring?? # of turnovers and lack of energy/care seem obvious. Blown out at home….they are laying down!

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@TheIndianaPizza Vote for Greensburg location

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@coachjrhowell @iowaunitedprep @CoachWinegar Best of luck in this exciting new opportunity!

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@JeffRabjohns He was a one of a kind top notch All American!
#Hoosiers

[Stuck @jstuckey22]

One of the greatest basketball minds I’ve ever been around!
RIP Coach Felling
❤️🏀

[Angela Ganote @angelaganote]

NEW: Bloomington Police want your help identifying the male in the photos below.

He’s a person of interest in the Kirkwood shooting that injured several during Little 500 last weekend.

He was wearing a shark or dolphin backpack like the one in the attached photo.

Anyone with information about this person's identity or the shooting is asked to contact Detective Chris Scott at 812-339-4477 or [email protected]

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

If you pitched this as a screenplay, every studio would reject it for being too on-the-nose.

Fernando Mendoza was a 2-star recruit ranked 2,149th in his high school class. Zero FBS scholarship offers. Not one. He walked on at Cal, fought for a starting job, transferred to Indiana for his senior year, then led them to 16-0 and the first national title in school history. Heisman, Walter Camp, Maxwell, Davey O'Brien, Manning, Big Ten MVP. 41 TDs, 72% completion, 8-to-0 TD-to-INT ratio in the playoffs.

The Raiders took him #1 overall Thursday night. $54.56M fully guaranteed. Only the third player ever to win the Heisman, win a national championship, and go first overall the next spring. Burrow. Newton. Mendoza.

Then he skipped Pittsburgh.

The biggest stage in football, the moment every kid imagines from the second they pick up a ball, and Fernando watched the call from his living room in Florida because his mom Elsa is in a wheelchair and the travel is hard for her. She was diagnosed with MS when he was 4. She wrote a letter to her sons in The Players Tribune in 2015 promising the disease "won't affect us in the ways that matter."

The part nobody talks about: while every other top pick was on stage, Fernando announced the Mendoza Family Fund the same day. $500K personal donation to the National MS Society. Committed to raising $1M over three years. He hasn't taken an NFL snap and he's already given more to a cause than most players donate in a full career.

He and his brother Alberto have already raised $360K through the Mendoza Bros. Burger at BuffaLouie's in Bloomington. At Christmas, he handed four families dealing with MS $10,000 each for an Adidas shopping spree.

Both his parents are children of Cuban refugees who fled Castro. His dad rowed at Brown, won a Junior World Championship in 1987, and played high school football in Miami next to a teammate named Mario Cristobal. Fernando beat his dad's old teammate in the national championship game in January.

Every athlete talks about playing for their family. Fernando actually did it.

[Ben Meyer @bmmeyer72]

@arobmoney Kirkwood like going to the airport….at all access points
Officers on horses
National guard at all entry areas on kirkwood
HEAVY security presence essential

[Angela Ganote @angelaganote]

Waking up this morning and I am sad and angry.

9 people were injured early this morning in a shooting on Kirkwood in Bloomington during Little 500 weekend.

Bloomington Police say they were stationed in the area due to it being Little 5 weekend when they heard multiple gunshots and the crowd started running.

If you don’t know Little 500 weekend, it’s a bike race, but it’s also the biggest party weekend of the year. Kirkwood was filled with thousands of students and people visiting.

Police say they immediately found multiple wounded people.

At this point, we still don’t know how many were hit directly with bullets, bullet fragments or if anyone was injured during the chaos after.

Ambulances took the injured, a Bloomington Police officer took someone in their own squad car, and two were driven by personal
vehicles for treatment of injuries.

Police have no suspects and nobody in custody.

I was on Kirkwood with with my daughter and her friends on Friday afternoon. We literally played Yahtzee in Kilroy’s. I was gone before before 6PM.

My son went to visit his sister, an IU student, Saturday during the day and I knew there would be a shooting, and I told him “I don’t want you shot” so he came home before 6PM.

I am praying for the 9 injured and their families. We don’t want to live this way. We shouldn’t have to tell our kids you can’t be somewhere because you might be shot.

Please don’t remain silent.

Anyone with information about the shooting, or who may have video of the shooting, is asked to contact Detective Chris Scott at 812-339-4477.

[Mike Hoffmann @MikeHoffmann]

Luke Falk shared a Mike Leach story that stopped me cold:

Two kids. One rich. One poor.

Every training camp, Coach Leach told his team about these 2 kids.

The rich kid has two choices.

Get soft. Get entitled. Expect everything handed to him because he was handed more.

Or take the resources, the coaching, the opportunities, and compound them into something greater.

The poor kid has two choices too.

Say nobody gave him anything. Blame the world. Make his circumstances the reason he never became what he could have been.

Or outwork everyone in the room.

Luke said the locker room had both. Kids from wealth. Kids from nothing. Kids with every advantage. Kids who scraped for every inch.

Same choice for all of them.

Ownership or victimhood.
Fuel or excuse.

The rich kid can waste the head start or build on it.

The poor kid can drown in the deficit or weaponize it.

Greatness doesn't come from where you start.

It comes from which kid you choose to feed.

Credit to @coachlukefalk for continuing to share golden nuggets about Coach’s legacy

[The Players’ Tribune @PlayersTribune]

“My gentle giant. My darling son. My buddy. My teammate. I believe in you with every part of me.”

Last year, Fernando Mendoza received a heartfelt letter from his first teammate — his mom. ❤️ https://t.co/aDKpXpJ4TO

@fernandomendoza | @IndianaFootball | @Raiders | #NFLDraft

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“Discipline looks boring until you see what it builds.”

[learie @astrogeanie]

I honestly cannot stress this enough but please start living and enjoying your life. Your life is passing by daily and all you’re doing is working, paying bills, and overthinking stuff you can't change. Start taking trips and treating yourself. Have fun with this life. You only get one.

[The Knowledge Archivist @KnowledgeArchiv]

“The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking we have time”

―Kobe Bryant

[Big Brain Investing @BigBrainInvestt]

Warren Buffett: "It is a different game that requires a different type of person to enjoy it."

At 94 years old, Warren Buffett has a clear preference when it comes to investing, and it's not real estate.

When asked about real estate versus stocks, Buffett argues the stock market wins on almost every practical dimension.

"There is simply much more opportunity in the United States security market than in real estate."

His reasoning comes down to three things: speed, simplicity, and certainty of completion.

In stocks, you can execute billions of dollars worth of business anonymously in five minutes, and once the trade is done, it's done.

The completion rate is essentially 100% once buyer and seller agree on price.

Real estate is the opposite.

You're dealing with a single owner or family that may have held a property for a long time, possibly borrowed too much against it, or is facing negative trends. Every transaction becomes an enormous, drawn-out decision.

"In real estate, signing the deal is just the start of another phase where people negotiate more and more things."

Buffett contrasts this with the stock market:

"If someone needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire and the price is right, it is done in five seconds and closes every time."

His late partner Charlie Munger took a different view. Munger enjoyed real estate deals and continued doing them even in the last five years of his life. But Buffett says that if Munger had to choose exclusively between the two at age 21, even he would have chosen stocks.

For Buffett, the conclusion is simple:

"We find it much better when people are ready to pick up the phone and you can do hundreds of millions of dollars of business in a day. I have been spoiled by this efficiency, and I like being spoiled, so we will keep it that way."

Real estate can produce great returns, but the friction involved in negotiations, multiple parties, and drawn-out timelines makes it a fundamentally different game.

For most investors, the stock market offers far more opportunity with far less complexity.