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The cause of our recent posting delays? Your 16-0 Indiana Football Hoosiers. You can read more polished people speak post their soliloquies on the Hoosiers, but I wanted to leave a note for what it meant to me…

Indiana Football meant next to nothing to the average Indiana student. It was merely an excuse to gather in a tailgate, in a yard or in a bar. Kickoff, a touchdown, a close game – and even a glimpse of football hope under Tom Allen – did nothing to change the Saturday schedule of a wily buck steering through Bloomington.

But there were the few. The bunch of lovable losers. A very small bunch. I am proud to say that I was in this batch – a batch of commonly Indiana natives who walked unencumbered into Memorial Stadium to watch sub-.500 football.

A batch that banded together to love what we had, even acknowledging the pit between the Indiana Football of that reality, bowl relevancy, cultural relevancy, lasting success… and miles away… the pinnacle of the sport.

A crew that bonded over the experience of being there, in your school’s colors, supporting student-athletes, supporting what it meant to don crimson and cream in any capacity, and a crew that if you took a straw poll of 100 faithful Hoosiers, would tell you that the turnaround of the Indiana Football program to the storied heights and accomplishment fulfilled in Miami on Monday Night would be nothing but fantasy. This was not meant to happen.

Why I write this? My defining memory of Indiana Football was October 1, 2016. An early-season bout with 17th ranked Michigan State for the Brass Spittoon. Michigan State had preseason hype solidified by a win at Notre Dame two weeks prior. After a grimy regulation, Indiana beat the ranked Big Ten team at home in overtime in what was at that time a once-in-a-tenure victory. I was part of probably 6,000 students who rushed the field that day to celebrate the win.

The kicker?

That same Michigan State team would go on to lose 8 of their last 9 games, their lone Big Ten win against a trash Rutgers team, to finish season 3-9 and wildly unranked.

Those daunted Hoosiers?

A 6-7 team whose sole win over a bowl-eligible team was against a Maryland team who also finished 6-7, coached with an offense lead by the unimpeachable, improbable, boy-genius Walt Bell.

Even in my defining moment, the program was only masquerading as competent.

And then there was Monday…

I won’t go into depth here, lest to say that I’m proud to be a Hoosier Faithful, I’m proud of our alumni base, and I’m proud to be an Indiana Hoosier. The sky is the limit, and for this program’s history we lived under with 8-foot ceilings.

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