Indiana Goes to a 12th Bowl: So What?
It's a big deal for a few die hard, stalwart fans. The 12th bowl in over a hundred seasons. To go to a football bowl game during the holidays. It has been hard on us I.U. fans over the years. How many followers are there? (I will try to make a real estimate later).
I don't know how many we are. I am one. I live over 650 miles away from the campus, and I know of at least one other big supporter at my children's local elementary school. We do not have as big a following and tradition as many others, college football fans that watch the century old winners, like Michigan, Notre Dame, Alabama, or closer by Virginia Tech:
Nebraska, the heralded historically strong team we beat last Saturday in Lincoln, has had a sell out at its stadium every game since 1962. Before my parents met! And they are old! (One passed away five years ago at age 73, the other is 82 as of this fall.) This venue in the plains, the middle of our great nation, seats about 89,000 fans. They play there even in late November. Have you been outside in Nebraska in late November? Didn't think so. Yet they attend, snow, wind, and, agony, and crowded parking lots.
Do you know of a place in the world that does an event 6 to 7 times per year and gathers 89,000 people, every time? Since nineteen sixty-two?
Yeah, that's love, or devotion, or insanity.
And it is still not the SEC. The vaunted Southeastern Conference, that has expanded in number to 14 teams and wins most of the championships in the 21st century. They attend their games wholeheartedly and with gusto, from Florida to Texas and Missouri, of course Alabama and Louisiana, across the width and breadth of the south. They tend to be the most elite championship programs. They think it means more there. Maybe it does.
But the Big Ten is important to us. We have schools close by like Notre Dame.
While the SEC is very dominant in championships the last few decades, except for a couple of exceptions there is recent Clemson U. in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), that has been good enough to beat Alabama and other great SEC teams lately.
And, I did not mention yet the formidable and majestic PAC-12 conference, or the rest of the Big-10, which is really 14 teams. Which has its elite in Ohio State, and behind them the U. of Michigan. And Wisconsin, and Penn St. ...
Between those four conferences, there are a lot of devoted fans. Four conferences with its 54 teams, most of whom go to bowls every year. Oh, and there is another 10 big teams in the Big 12. Where Nebraska used to be... Among the storied perennial bowl winners, decade in and decade out. Texas, Oklahoma, and on down the row. But not Indiana. We go a decade or so without so much reward, justification for watching these helmeted chess pieces march across the grassy gridirons under sun and rains, snow flurries and howling winds. They say, when we normally lose in perfidy "At least I.U. has basketball". I'm sorry, but December hard court contests do not make the heart warm like a nice sunny bowl around New Year's. Such a bowl treat provides a reason to think about visiting Miami or Dallas, Pasadena or even Hawai'i... Why would you go to such tropic climes in the heart of the winter? The football team earned it!
Indiana has a few long suffering fans, but not as much as the others due to reasons of lack of historical presence and pride. A bit more like Kansas, not far from Nebraska, or Vanderbilt, not too far from Indiana. We, the fewer than Purdue and their faithful, mostly likely, are truly long suffering. We have awful paucity of success, we are relegated to the failures of seasons past.
IU went to the Rose Bowl once, their first bowl game ever in the days when there were so few bowl games, the year my parents moved to Bloomington, 1967. The Indiana football squad has not returned to Pasadena since, which usually means winning the conference crown. That one time IU made it they lost in a defensive battle to the fabulous, illustrious, USC Trojans and none other than O.J. Simpson. Yeah, that guy. And of course, in stately southern California, down the road from where my wife enjoyed the Parade of the Roses.
12 years later, in 1979, the Hurry'n plucky Hoosiers made it to the Holiday Bowl against the newcomer power in the West, the Brigham Young Coungars under Lavell Edwards. I.U. Coach Lee Corso got the win on a few fluke plays; he would go on to bigger fame as a personality on ESPN, nore renown as a talking head than a coach of the sidelines. Which is precisely where he is now, 2019. Meanwhile, Edwards would go on to greater football glory, becoming one of the best college football coaches of all time. He retired in the year 2000 and passed away about two years ago (2017).
That win of the Hoosiers in the late 1970s over my other future alma mater BYU whetted my appetite for more gridiron success in southern Indiana, but instead I.U. saturated me in futility. We beat Purdue in Bloomington one freezing Saturday in late November a couple years later, when I was maybe 11; we finished 3-8. We celebrated the victory, and Hoosier nutty fans tore down the goal posts, but the bitter hateful Boilermaker fans yelled in their wrath: "So what? You guys are 3-8, you are still going to the toilet bowl!!!"
Ahh, Purdue fans. Possibly more on them later.
I.U. struck fortune in 1983 by hiring an up and coming coach named Sam Wyche; a short year later he took the professional position of the Cincinnati Bengals. Oh well. IU was not good enough to hold on to him. C'est la vie. This is IU football.
Then they got the famed Bill Mallory in the auspicious Orwellian year 1984, who despite losing all his games his first season, led my teenage and early twenty year-old Hoosier teams to six bowls in eight years. The glory days. They won two of those six bowl games, but one year notably (when I was a missionary in the Provo training center) went 5-6 and had their juggernaut running back Anthony Thompson come in a close second in the Heisman trophy voting. One last second run failed against Kentucky at the goal line meant the one missing victory for a bowl invitation, and very possibly the Heisman honor, and possible future recruiting success and other momentum that never materialized.
I witnessed that epic, fateful charge in person in Lexington, with my good friend Jess Hurlbut, surrounded by thousands of blue-clad Wildcat fans in the heart of Kentuckydom. Tough game. Tough season. Tough luck program. IU could mean frustration, near misses, failure and ignominy.
"At least we have basketball." But that is not enough, us football fans know. One year under Mallory we beat Michigan and Ohio State.
Mallory bottomed out in the mid-90s and was dismissed a few good and then some bad years later.
And then came more futility as the turn of the century came and went. I.U. had some entertaining NFL caliber talent, but did not win enough, all everything Antwaan Randle El came and left with no bowls, under a pretty good pro coach and former football and basketball Hoosier Cam Cameron.
Coach Terry Hoeppner was the right fit for the school and improved everything, but he contracted brain cancer and died. His immediate successor took those survivors the following year to a long sought-after bowl in 2007, to eventually lose in 2007, and then the bowl drought continued. IU seemed snake bit, one of the all time perpetual losers.
Kevin Wilson brought a prolific offense; his teams went to two losing bowls after finally solving the last game curse of Purdue, but not solving the curse of bowls ten and eleven.
And now there will be bowl number twelve under his successor, Tom Allen.
Allen has four regular season games to go in November, thus there are the two winnable Northwestern and Purdue games, and the intimidating Penn State and Michigan games.
Allen has earned respect in his fourth total year, third as head coach (he took over for the bowl game against Utah when Wilson was dismissed early in 2016). He has recruited well, and asks for fans to attend.
The last two seasons the Hoosiers would have been bowl bound as well as long as IU had gotten one more win, solved by Purdue last game losses both times, or a Maryland game I attended at College Park two years ago that escaped us on turnovers.
IU has played well over one hundred years. 130 seasons to be exact. Rutgers celebrates 150 seasons this year, and they are in much worse shape.
Indiana could realistically finish 8-4 this year, and go to a bowl, small or not, needing a chance to improve on its 3-8 record overall.
It could, it should.
Stay tuned, and get ready for more to come in the future. Bowl thirteen, you are looking pretty good.
So what, I pose to you and me? What does winning for IU, or anyone mean?
Beyond school spirit and entertainment, beyond bruises and possible broken bones, it is a chance to commemorate what we as humans want to do:
Defend the home turf, strike out against the neighbors in a fair and competitive fashion, and jump up and down for glory. And maybe, just maybe, take a trip to the Roses around the New Year.
For me, the one who watched the gridiron Hoosiers battle my future Cougars on T.V. in the basement of the Wankier's home as a eight year-old, and then attended the freezing Purdue game in the knot hole (end zone bleachers) with Paul Lowengrub, whose father was an I.U. administrator, maybe as a fifth grader, and then later games with Seth Berry and Jason Vincz and multiple games working concessions while in middle and high school, and later taking exchange student Ricardo Salvador to see IU play Navy, and even later going in at half time during a rainy afternoon and watch IU upset Michigan with Robert Calder and his dad, and then later going to see IU after my mission with my dad in Iowa and Columbus Ohio, and after that going to the Purdue game with Michael Ho, and returning five years later after Utah and seeing Randle El with Barbara Watson and others, and still later taking my nephew Mile to see the Purdue game while visiting from South America, and later watching IU come to Virginia and D.C. and Wake Forest while living on the East Coast, and at least three games in Maryland, the memories of home and friends, the radio personalities and sports journalists and parents who recall the Cardiac Kids of '67, and my open restless hopes of our Davids beating the eternal Goliaths every fall Sunday, it means I am still alive, I am still me, I am a proud but not beaten though often humbled Hoosier fan.
Go I.U.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
How many IU football fans are there? At least a million. Maybe you could be a million and one.
Hoosiers, going to a bowl near you. Happy fall and early winter. May it grow and continue.
So that's what.
Do you know of a place in the world that does an event 6 to 7 times per year and gathers 89,000 people, every time? Since nineteen sixty-two?
Yeah, that's love, or devotion, or insanity.
And it is still not the SEC. The vaunted Southeastern Conference, that has expanded in number to 14 teams and wins most of the championships in the 21st century. They attend their games wholeheartedly and with gusto, from Florida to Texas and Missouri, of course Alabama and Louisiana, across the width and breadth of the south. They tend to be the most elite championship programs. They think it means more there. Maybe it does.
But the Big Ten is important to us. We have schools close by like Notre Dame.
While the SEC is very dominant in championships the last few decades, except for a couple of exceptions there is recent Clemson U. in the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), that has been good enough to beat Alabama and other great SEC teams lately.
And, I did not mention yet the formidable and majestic PAC-12 conference, or the rest of the Big-10, which is really 14 teams. Which has its elite in Ohio State, and behind them the U. of Michigan. And Wisconsin, and Penn St. ...
Between those four conferences, there are a lot of devoted fans. Four conferences with its 54 teams, most of whom go to bowls every year. Oh, and there is another 10 big teams in the Big 12. Where Nebraska used to be... Among the storied perennial bowl winners, decade in and decade out. Texas, Oklahoma, and on down the row. But not Indiana. We go a decade or so without so much reward, justification for watching these helmeted chess pieces march across the grassy gridirons under sun and rains, snow flurries and howling winds. They say, when we normally lose in perfidy "At least I.U. has basketball". I'm sorry, but December hard court contests do not make the heart warm like a nice sunny bowl around New Year's. Such a bowl treat provides a reason to think about visiting Miami or Dallas, Pasadena or even Hawai'i... Why would you go to such tropic climes in the heart of the winter? The football team earned it!
Indiana has a few long suffering fans, but not as much as the others due to reasons of lack of historical presence and pride. A bit more like Kansas, not far from Nebraska, or Vanderbilt, not too far from Indiana. We, the fewer than Purdue and their faithful, mostly likely, are truly long suffering. We have awful paucity of success, we are relegated to the failures of seasons past.
IU went to the Rose Bowl once, their first bowl game ever in the days when there were so few bowl games, the year my parents moved to Bloomington, 1967. The Indiana football squad has not returned to Pasadena since, which usually means winning the conference crown. That one time IU made it they lost in a defensive battle to the fabulous, illustrious, USC Trojans and none other than O.J. Simpson. Yeah, that guy. And of course, in stately southern California, down the road from where my wife enjoyed the Parade of the Roses.
12 years later, in 1979, the Hurry'n plucky Hoosiers made it to the Holiday Bowl against the newcomer power in the West, the Brigham Young Coungars under Lavell Edwards. I.U. Coach Lee Corso got the win on a few fluke plays; he would go on to bigger fame as a personality on ESPN, nore renown as a talking head than a coach of the sidelines. Which is precisely where he is now, 2019. Meanwhile, Edwards would go on to greater football glory, becoming one of the best college football coaches of all time. He retired in the year 2000 and passed away about two years ago (2017).
That win of the Hoosiers in the late 1970s over my other future alma mater BYU whetted my appetite for more gridiron success in southern Indiana, but instead I.U. saturated me in futility. We beat Purdue in Bloomington one freezing Saturday in late November a couple years later, when I was maybe 11; we finished 3-8. We celebrated the victory, and Hoosier nutty fans tore down the goal posts, but the bitter hateful Boilermaker fans yelled in their wrath: "So what? You guys are 3-8, you are still going to the toilet bowl!!!"
Ahh, Purdue fans. Possibly more on them later.
I.U. struck fortune in 1983 by hiring an up and coming coach named Sam Wyche; a short year later he took the professional position of the Cincinnati Bengals. Oh well. IU was not good enough to hold on to him. C'est la vie. This is IU football.
Then they got the famed Bill Mallory in the auspicious Orwellian year 1984, who despite losing all his games his first season, led my teenage and early twenty year-old Hoosier teams to six bowls in eight years. The glory days. They won two of those six bowl games, but one year notably (when I was a missionary in the Provo training center) went 5-6 and had their juggernaut running back Anthony Thompson come in a close second in the Heisman trophy voting. One last second run failed against Kentucky at the goal line meant the one missing victory for a bowl invitation, and very possibly the Heisman honor, and possible future recruiting success and other momentum that never materialized.
I witnessed that epic, fateful charge in person in Lexington, with my good friend Jess Hurlbut, surrounded by thousands of blue-clad Wildcat fans in the heart of Kentuckydom. Tough game. Tough season. Tough luck program. IU could mean frustration, near misses, failure and ignominy.
"At least we have basketball." But that is not enough, us football fans know. One year under Mallory we beat Michigan and Ohio State.
Mallory bottomed out in the mid-90s and was dismissed a few good and then some bad years later.
And then came more futility as the turn of the century came and went. I.U. had some entertaining NFL caliber talent, but did not win enough, all everything Antwaan Randle El came and left with no bowls, under a pretty good pro coach and former football and basketball Hoosier Cam Cameron.
Coach Terry Hoeppner was the right fit for the school and improved everything, but he contracted brain cancer and died. His immediate successor took those survivors the following year to a long sought-after bowl in 2007, to eventually lose in 2007, and then the bowl drought continued. IU seemed snake bit, one of the all time perpetual losers.
Kevin Wilson brought a prolific offense; his teams went to two losing bowls after finally solving the last game curse of Purdue, but not solving the curse of bowls ten and eleven.
And now there will be bowl number twelve under his successor, Tom Allen.
Allen has four regular season games to go in November, thus there are the two winnable Northwestern and Purdue games, and the intimidating Penn State and Michigan games.
Allen has earned respect in his fourth total year, third as head coach (he took over for the bowl game against Utah when Wilson was dismissed early in 2016). He has recruited well, and asks for fans to attend.
The last two seasons the Hoosiers would have been bowl bound as well as long as IU had gotten one more win, solved by Purdue last game losses both times, or a Maryland game I attended at College Park two years ago that escaped us on turnovers.
IU has played well over one hundred years. 130 seasons to be exact. Rutgers celebrates 150 seasons this year, and they are in much worse shape.
Indiana could realistically finish 8-4 this year, and go to a bowl, small or not, needing a chance to improve on its 3-8 record overall.
It could, it should.
Stay tuned, and get ready for more to come in the future. Bowl thirteen, you are looking pretty good.
So what, I pose to you and me? What does winning for IU, or anyone mean?
Beyond school spirit and entertainment, beyond bruises and possible broken bones, it is a chance to commemorate what we as humans want to do:
Defend the home turf, strike out against the neighbors in a fair and competitive fashion, and jump up and down for glory. And maybe, just maybe, take a trip to the Roses around the New Year.
For me, the one who watched the gridiron Hoosiers battle my future Cougars on T.V. in the basement of the Wankier's home as a eight year-old, and then attended the freezing Purdue game in the knot hole (end zone bleachers) with Paul Lowengrub, whose father was an I.U. administrator, maybe as a fifth grader, and then later games with Seth Berry and Jason Vincz and multiple games working concessions while in middle and high school, and later taking exchange student Ricardo Salvador to see IU play Navy, and even later going in at half time during a rainy afternoon and watch IU upset Michigan with Robert Calder and his dad, and then later going to see IU after my mission with my dad in Iowa and Columbus Ohio, and after that going to the Purdue game with Michael Ho, and returning five years later after Utah and seeing Randle El with Barbara Watson and others, and still later taking my nephew Mile to see the Purdue game while visiting from South America, and later watching IU come to Virginia and D.C. and Wake Forest while living on the East Coast, and at least three games in Maryland, the memories of home and friends, the radio personalities and sports journalists and parents who recall the Cardiac Kids of '67, and my open restless hopes of our Davids beating the eternal Goliaths every fall Sunday, it means I am still alive, I am still me, I am a proud but not beaten though often humbled Hoosier fan.
Go I.U.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
How many IU football fans are there? At least a million. Maybe you could be a million and one.
Hoosiers, going to a bowl near you. Happy fall and early winter. May it grow and continue.
So that's what.
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