The last thing David Hodskins emailed to me was “Don’t become a Hoosiers fan.”
It was David who made me a Duke Blue Devils Basketball fan. David was an Iron Duke—an alumnus who contributed to the program and bought season tickets. He made me a fan by bringing me often to fill the other of his two seats in Cameron Indoor Stadium. This was between 1977 and 1984. At the beginning of that stretch, Duke had been in a long slump following the Vic Bubas era and only got good near the end of the Bill Foster years, peaking in ’77-’78, when they had what the late great John Feinstein called Forever’s Team. While that team may have been the best in the country, it lost in the championship game to Kentucky when Goose Givens went nuts and scored a zillion points.
But the Duke Dynasty started much later. Mike Krzyzewski replaced Bill Foster in 1980, when Duke was good but not great. The greats of that time were, among others, Louisville, NC State, North Carolina, Georgetown, and—most hated of all—Indiana under Bob (then still Bobby) Knight. It’s easy to forget that Coach K’s early years were kinda blah. His teams didn’t make the final four until ’86, and his first (of five) championships didn’t come until ’91.
My point here is that I got into Duke basketball when they were far from the much-hated overdog they’ve been for close to four decades. That’s my excuse. Anyway, David Hodskins didn’t want me to become a Hoosiers fan.
But I’m a Hoosier. Indiana is where I work (as a visiting scholar at IU), and Bloomington is where I live. (Yes, I also live in Santa Barbara, but that only complicates things other than sports.) Bloomington is also where The Greatest Story in College Sports is happening right now, with Indiana Football.
One thing making this story the Greatest Ever (yes, perhaps, and we’ll see) is that it’s hard to overstate how lame Indiana Football has been. Not for years, or decades. For generations. For example, until this year (when Northwestern exceeded it), Indiana University held the record for the total number of losses in college football: 715.
It was at that number at the start of this season. And there it remains, because this year’s team is undefeated, #1 in the country, and about to play for the championship, against the Miami Hurricanes.
I won’t cite other stats, but will instead repeat what Hoosier lifers told me last night after a bunch of us watched our team drown the Oregon Ducks. (This was after doing the same a week before in the Rose Bowl to the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Hoosiers will probably do the same to Miami in the championship game a week from Monday.)
“We were the doormat of the Big 10,” they said.
Whether IU wins the championship or not, it’s hard not to be invested in the story. Because it’s happening now, and there has never been another story like it. The movie is being performed right now by real characters.
Consider this for a cast: the largest population of alumni in the country: 805,000. No wonder they filled the Rose and Fiesta bowls. Betcha most of the spectators in the stands at the championship game will also be Hoosiers, even though it will be played at the Miami Hurricanes’ home field: Hard Rock Stadium. Indiana’s (yes) perfect quarterback, Fernando Mendoza (who has had more touchdown passes than incompletions in recent games), grew up in the same Miami neighborhood, making the game local all around.
The inevitable movie about the Hoosiers’ football turnaround won’t be brilliant fiction, like Hoosiers (a truly great sports movie, written by Bloomington native Angelo Pizzo and directed by fellow Hoosier David Anspaugh). It will be a documentary. And I already have a title.
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