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Ourladyoftheassumptionparish

Part – Newstatenabenn

As a graduate of Indiana, I still can’t process what is happening in Bloomington.
patheur

As a graduate of Indiana, I still can’t process what is happening in Bloomington.

I am an Indiana graduate but I am not a fan of Indiana football.

Let me explain to you. I want my alma mater to be successful in everything. About 8 different times during the first Saturday college football game, I got chills watching it from my couch in Orlando. At one point, I’m pretty sure I held back tears as the GameDay team explained to me how to play “Sink the Biz” at the locally famous Nick’s English Hut, where my wife (also an Indiana graduate who studied much more than I did) and I hosted our rehearsal dinner when we got married outside of Bloomington in 2016.

The 2024 version of Indiana football has brought me immense pride almost a year after I first Googled “Curt Cignetti” (before he said his signature catchphrase, I confirmed that he does indeed win).

But to be considered a fan of anything, you also have to endure suffering. A loss in Indiana football has never ruined a Saturday for me. My fall happiness doesn’t depend on what the Hoosiers do on any given fall Saturday, so it would be a robbery of fan value to compare me to those who truly bleed crimson in the fall (IU basketball is a different story).

I prefaced this “I can’t believe this is happening” column with that disclaimer because, while some might assume I can’t be objective about this personal issue, I can assure anyone reading this that I have 16 years of experience in that department. . .

Would it have been different if IU had a rich football history instead of getting constant reminders in the midst of this historic season that no Power Conference program has lost more games than the Hoosiers? Uh, yeah. Duh. But for many Indiana graduates like me, we learned long ago why years like this are almost inconceivable. Or at least, they are only conceivable if you are elite in the College Football ’25 video game.

Does that make us enemies? Or does that make us fans of good weather? I guess it depends on how you define it.

You see, some elements of Indiana football may not show up on the old Google machine, beyond the fact that IU football hasn’t won a bowl game since 1991 (the Hoosiers have only played in 6 since then) .

One is that for many of us during our college experience, going to football games is a fall tradition. Or rather, walking very close to Memorial Stadium, in one of the most underrated settings for this type of festivities, is a fall tradition. Actually, stumbling onto 17th Street and into the stadium was a freshman tradition. For the rest of us, tailgating until kickoff and then going home to sleep and/or watch bigger college football games was our tradition (there was no better accidental wake-up call than when those drums blared at 3:30 on CBS).

There was another not-so-flattering tradition for Indiana football that even the most die-hard Hoosiers might not have known about. If you ever wondered how a team that rarely filled its stadium could get full-court shots for any kind of media guide cover or weight room wall, thank Ohio State for that. When the Buckeyes came to town and fans bought their cheapest tickets of the year, they filled the stadium…and provided the perfect backdrop for that promotional aerial photo of Memorial Stadium because the red and crimson look pretty similar.

Cignetti changed that overnight.

My cousin, a senior at IU who now goes to every game, texts me weekly videos of the Memorial Stadium scene that looks like a place on a different continent compared to the place we saw at my last year when IU went 1-11. (13-35 without a bunk in the bowl was my university experience). The headline “IU has sold out the rest of its tickets for the home game” was the kind of thing that often couldn’t even have been written sarcastically before the Old Oaken Bucket game (the end of the regular season), much less after half of the match. October with 3 home games left.

It will be surreal to see a sold-out Memorial Stadium Saturday at 3:30 ET on CBS as No. 8 IU looks to improve to 10-0 as a 2-touchdown favorite against Michigan. I can’t decide which part of that sentence is more incredible. All that? IU has never won 10 games in any season, much less the first 10.

One of my most vivid sober college memories was in 2010. At the time, I was one of the Indiana Daily Student’s football reporters. That morning, I walked down Indiana Ave. from our 5-bedroom college house on N. Dunn St. I had an extra spring in my step because on that foggy day in early October, 3-0 IU was scheduled to host No. 19 Michigan (I was a little too proud of the Robinson preview section headline “Defend Denard” that I came up with months earlier, anticipating that stopping Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson would be a tall order.)

The playing fields were full and there was some kind of commotion because IU had lost 16 straight games against Michigan. But if IU could really defend Denard, maybe it would earn a spot in the AP Top 25 for the first time in 16 years. When I arrived at the press box that day and finally looked around at the crowd of 52,929 fans, I realized what people rarely feel on a fall Saturday in Bloomington.

“This is what big-time college football feels like, huh?”

Unfortunately for IU, he didn’t defend Denard. Robinson’s 5-touchdown, 494-yard performance led Michigan to a very familiar 42-35 victory, which was the first of IU’s 7 consecutive Big Ten losses that season. As it stands, the last time IU beat Michigan in front of its home fans was in 1987. “In front of its home fans” is a key distinction because, naturally, IU ended Michigan’s losing streak in 2020…when COVID prevented any fans from witnessing it.

Needless to say, that will be a different story if IU can avoid a disappointment on Saturday against the defending national champions. And of course, there would be a certain “this is why IU football can’t have nice things” if that disappointment were to occur. But the first 9-0 start in program history is a good thing that won’t be lost even if IU can’t beat Michigan in front of its home fans for the first time since the Ronald Reagan administration.

Perhaps the only “disappointment” of IU’s season is not being able to play a 60-minute game against Ohio State in Week 13. For some, that will be the only true game with the measuring stick for 12 playoff credentials. Hoosiers and I’ll ignore a 9-0 start with nothing but double-digit wins. Fair? I haven’t fully processed if that’s fair because I still haven’t fully processed these first 2 months in Bloomington.

I can’t imagine IU students like my cousin walking down Indiana Avenue and standing in line before a potential home playoff game at Memorial Stadium. I’m sure I felt that way walking to the south end of Memorial Stadium to enjoy College GameDay. For many graduates like me, there was probably a pessimistic thought that IU’s season would peak that morning. Instead, Cignetti led IU to a pair of victories by a combined score of 78-27.

This is not only historically different; It is inconceivable. Big college football in Bloomington? In November?!?

You don’t need to Google anything to process that. Just watch CBS on Saturday afternoon.