Purdue Football Games, the last 40 or so Years: An Indiana Thing

We lost it due to the global pandemic! They postponed the game last Saturday December 12, re-scheduled it, and now it has been cancelled tonight, December 18. Fooey!

 2020: the year of Cancel Culture. Ha, football gods' irony!

Check. Cancelled. 100 years of mostly bitter rivalry, ended for the cold season.

This is a great and terrible year for IU football fans. Must be mostly terrible for Purdue.

Ha! Ha! Ha. Poor babies.

So, after 100 years of continual play, we will wait for the end of 2021. Another 11 or more months to go.

To pulverize the Boilermakers

Despite the pandemic and many hand wringing and heart aches about the college football season, Indiana in seven short games has beaten: Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, and ... another formidable team. We lost to Ohio State, supreme Big Ten champs, but we also handled Rutgers, and Maryland. As we should. In the last 5-6 years Indiana beating those two new add-ons are huge to being a relevant team, making it to a bowl.

Right now Indiana is looking elite. Even without our first string starter QB Michael Penix. The back up is enough. Oh, yeah! Wisconsin! We held the Badgers to 6 points with back up starting QB.

Yes. The Hoosiers were looking good. We got lucky with Penn State, admittedly, but the rest have been for real. OSU ran too much on us, otherwise, we may have upset them. And we could not run on them. Buckeyes. They are good.

But the Hoosiers are top 10 good, too.

Thus the missed game with Purdue is tough. PU has over 70 all-time instate wins, while IU is only in the 40s... We have ground to catch up. Next year.

Some great games of the past:

1981: It was freezing and I went to the game in Bloomington with Paul Lowengrub and his dad. I played on the grass hill a lot, and I was so cold! We beat the Boilers barely; I watched crazed Hoosiers tear down the goal posts. I also watched a policeman beat some dudes with batons, I think. Great times.

After streaming out into the wintry parking lot with the knot hole (end zone) crowd, where I saw the identical twin of the student teacher in 4th grade that I had a crush on, a bitter Purdue guy was eating his sour grapes, and yelling to the world: "You still suck, Hoosiers! You are 3 and 8! IU is still only going to the toilet bowl!"

We finished  3-8 that year (only 3 wins), but one of those three was that day, over the arch rival nemesis, for the Old Oaken Bucket. Final score: 20-17. The Crimson and Cream over the Pur- who? Boilers!

I love me some bitter Boilers. It was worth the freezing fingers and limbs.

Vince Lombardi famously said that winning wasn't everything: it was the only thing.

Growing up in B-town we know that winning is not always the Lombardi way. There has to be losses to really enjoy the victories. We know there is beauty in the losses, too. But sometimes Vince shines his winning ways on the Indiana Hoosiers.

1986: 

The Rod Woodson Show. Ugh. The Boilermakers beat us because of one guy. The Hoosiers had gotten pretty good under third year coach Bill Mallory, and we had beaten some good teams. 

1987 and 1988  Back to back high scoring blow outs by the Hoosiers, now with Coach Bill Mallory groomed recruits and super star Heisman  contender running back Anthony Thompson was a nice way to celebrate my middle years of high school. The IU Coach's son, Curt, played for my high school and he was a solid guy. Hoosiers beat Michigan and Ohio State, and putting a lot of points on the board, 35 followed by an impressive 52, was music to a Hoosier fan's ears. I would work concessions at a few of these home games, too.

1991 Newly returned from my South American mission, my dad had purchased tickets to three games for IU football, accidentally two of them away at Iowa and Ohio State. We went anyway and had a good time, even though we lost. Purdue, on the other hand, when I invited young friend Michael Ho to go to this home game across campus. We held on to win a close one and Mallory was still a keeper. Good season, much better than two years before when Anthony Thompson lost a close Heisman as a senior we lost to Purdue by one point...

1993 I had moved away from the Hoosier State to be closer to another football love (BYU), but the Hoosiers were ranked and beat Purdue by a  touchdown. Little did we know the bowls would start locking down for IU after upsurging Virginia Tech would lock down the Hoosiers a short month later. Worse than the bowl game that was not competitive to an up and rising program in the Appalachian Mountains of the central East Coast... But we did not know that it would be many years that IU would return to a bowl... Mallory lost his mojo, or at least on paper and the admin, supporters, and fans fell out of love. Things got bad after this for a while, with only occasional Purdue wins, and the seasons did not mean as much since the overall team was down.

2001 Despite the losing seasons that followed Mallory, Coach Cam Cameron (a former basketball player who was chosen in part to appeal to IU's stalwart hard court fans, which were legion in the days of Bobby Knight, we had Antwaun Randle El at quarterback, who was incredibly entertaining to watch. While never making it to a bowl and getting over the hump in his four seasons, we did manage to beat Purdue his senior year in 2001. The previous Boilermaker teams were ranked with the legendary Drew Brees and the formidable coach Joe Tiller. It was a low scoring affair, IU 13, PU 7.

2007 A magical season in the wake of the death of the inspirational Coach Terry Hoeppner. They finally made it back to a bowl after more than an anguishing decade and years into the new century, but at the cost of losing a beloved mentor to brain cancer. "Win seven for Coach Hep" was the mantra, and spoken loudly by his widow and many others. A memorable and poignant last second field goal was true, and the seventh win brought them some solace and glory, that the spirit of Terry lived on. The Hoosiers defended the Rock that he established on the end zone of the field: IU wins with smiles and tears, 27-24.

2013-2016 Things started getting interesting by the time Kevin Wilson came along. The offense was looking to move the ball quickly and dynamically. Indiana beat Purdue four years in a row, and Tiller was history after a good run there in West Lafayette. IU looked to win these games, and a few times the last game would send them or keep them from a bowl season match up, the modern definition of winning or losing.

2019 After a two year slip that cost IU post season chances, the Fighting Hoosiers made it back with this over time win. Fighting off capable Purdue QBs and formidable foes like the amazing Rondale Moore and the juggernaut Nick Horvath, Indiana secured a respectable bowl game with a tantalizing and impressive 8 win season. They lost to Tennessee in Jacksonville last January, but this last season and Old Bucket so affected by the world wide pandemic meant that Indiana keeps the trophy another year, and Indiana is sitting on a sweet record while Purdue will end up in the toilet bowl, as that fan remarked almost four decades ago.

There have been other slights hurled at me personally and towards Indiana loyalists by Purdue fans over the years, but now we seem to have the upper hand, and maybe we can catch up to their victories all time within the century.

Hope bounds eternal in the Bucket games.

See you next year, Boilers.

Win or lose, we pray that time will get back to normal.