The following is a text exchange I had with a cousin in Mississippi as I was watching, intently, a high school football game. It was a beautiful September evening. Both teams were on the field. The field was synthetic. Fake grass. Anyway, our text messaging went like this:

Me: Sent a picture of players

Cousin: Future Big 10 players

Me: I don’t think so. Every egg in the state of Mississippi would be safe on the field with this bunch (playing).

Cousin: (Laughing emoji)

Me: Seriously. The best pop I heard all night was when a punter kicked a line drive and hit the right guard in the back.

Cousin: Better run some Oklahoma or bull in the ring.

My cousin and I may be more than 600 miles away from each other. We may not remember the last time we saw each other (probably do). Still, we’ve got football to enjoy and the memories and jocularity that can only be produced by guys who were intimately around the game at the same time. My cousin and I share a sense of football “tradition, legacy, and history” as spelled out so eloquently by Keith Jackson as he waxed poetic about what The Rose Bowl means. Imagine what Keith Jackson would have said introducing The Rose Bowl we just had between Alabama and the Indiana Hoosiers.

“We’ve got the Alabama Crimson Tide taking on the favored Hoosiers from INdiana. That just seems to come out kinda funny. But it’s the SEC vs. the Big Ten here in The Rose Bowl. It should be a good one.”

I digress. We started this fun time talking about blocking and shoving, pushing. At the risk of sounding like Joe Namath calling a game on Monday Night Football saying, “Well, back when I used to play…” well, back when I used to play, the offensive line came off the ball popping pads. We couldn’t push. We couldn’t shove. Our arms could not be extended. We looked more like submarines firing off the ball than a modern-day offensive line.

Say in 1984 a high school center, the guy who snaps the ball to the quarterback, has a nose guard head up on him (that means right in front of him). That nose guard has been eating wild onions and his breath stinks. The center yells “Over!” to let the right guard, the chap lined up to the immediate right of the center. The center yelled “Over!” to tell the guard to hit the onion eating nose guard high (above the waist) while I aim for his knees and effectively we both take him out of the play that is being run off tackle to the right in a “Power I” formation. All this truly reads like poetry if you have been there. Not one of us on the offensive line put our arms out to push someone during the play. Hands stayed in. Elbows stayed out. Contact, for better or worse, would be made.

Understand this: The defensive nose guard, the onion eater, was allowed to use his hands to evade the block. He could push. That was legal. It was not legal for onion eater to grab a handful of a different colored jersey and pull or use that kind of leverage to throw an offensive lineman down which happened and was uncalled by refs often compared to an offensive lineman even thinking about trying to pull that knowing it would cost the team fifteen yards in the wrong direction. That football crime also meant that the lineman would be spending extra time the next week with a coach, not of his choosing, counting off the number of hills the player had to run to better himself for next Friday night. At least, uh, my high school had a “Hill”. We also had a walnut tree next to the tennis courts. It is still there. When a player screwed up during practice, it was not uncommon for the coach administering that particular drill or scrimmage to tell the player to “Go kiss the tree”. You ran there and back hoping you did so fast enough to not hear the coach say, “That tree misses you. Go give it some more sugar.”

Last fall, as I sat there in the stands watching that high school game and witnessed at least seven plays in a row where no more than one or two players hit the ground, I started to remember games of two-hand touch that were rougher than what I was watching played out in pads before me. Like the time “Jimmy” tugged on his bottom lip after a play and asked that dreaded question that rarely ends well, “How bad is it?” Four of us looked at each other wondering which one of us was going to tell Jimmy he had just bitten a hole below his lip. I’m saying you could see daylight on the other side. The rest of us kept playing. It wasn’t dark yet.

Oh well. I sound like Joe Willie. Maybe worse. As much as I love the game of football, and I do, know that I am delighted that I played before offensive linemen were allowed to push and shove…by one year. The juniors on that team started pushing and shoving on the line the next year. We old submarines are just a thing left to football lore.

When it was time to swing a leg, I was not a submarine. Not a punt was blocked that year thanks to the line play. I got to watch the ball go, as I followed the guys down the field.

Every now and again, I look at the January 2, 2026 edition of the Los Angeles Times and just sit and smile. I didn’t just smile today when I thought about The Rose Bowl, I chuckled. You think Bill Curry knows that the current coach at Alabama got a raise and a contract extension today after his Tide team’s last game was a beat down handed to them by the Indiana Hoosiers? Context, my friends, context. Times change. Indiana proved that.

Tomorrow we will have even more tangible proof. Roger Godell is going to call out the name of Heisman Trophy winning IU QB Fernando Mendoza as the first player taken in the 2026 NFL Draft by the Las Vegas Raiders. More Hoosiers will follow. IU receiver Omar Cooper Jr. might be called in the first. D’Angelo Ponds, the packer of the most punch in a little frame since Bob Sanders will have his name called out too. Who knows how many Hoosiers will be drafted?

In the modern era the most Indiana Hoosiers to be NFL draft picks is 7 in 1976. I saw that team play Michigan and Ohio State on the first two Saturdays of October that year. #1 Michigan beat Indiana 35-0 in front of less than 31,000 fans. The next week Ohio State beat the Hoosiers 47-7 in front less than 40,000. One wonders how many yards Pete Johnson must have ran for that day for the Buckeyes. Yep, the 5-6 1976 Indiana Hoosiers had seven players drafted that year. The first one to be drafted was offensive tackle Greg McGuire in the 6th round. News flash: In 1976 there were 17 ROUNDS in the NFL Draft. Since 1994, the NFL draft has been 7 rounds culminating with the last pick affectionately known a Mr. Irrelevant.

I don’t know how many Hoosiers will end up being drafted. My guess is 8. Not just because I want them to set another high-water mark in the realm of the rutabaga. I truly think they have that many NFL talent level players.

I was on campus last month in Bloomington. I looked around, took some pictures, tried to remind myself what really happened here last year. The last two years, actually. The Hoosiers are 15-0 at home under Coach Cig so far (and 18-0 in the crimson jersey). And I am glad Cig is in charge and you and I are not. We know too much about IU Football.

Still, I have to tell you. Even though I have been to stadiums far and wide that hold more than 100,000 fans when those places were busting at the seams, I felt something different this time looking at Memorial Stadium. Man, that trip to Neyland Stadium to watch Alabama play Tennessee in 2016 was an amazing experience.

Incredible.

But on this day in March 2026, I thought long and hard at everything that was last season for Indiana Football. The chasm between what was last year and what we always knew before will no doubt stay with me for a long time. Why wouldn’t it? But on this day in March 2026, as I walked around Memorial Stadium, for the first time the place seemed small and more intimate than it ever did before. I felt like I was looking at the place through the eyes of someone from Iowa or Penn State, even though I know the place like the back of my hand.

Tomorrow night we are going to hear the names of Indiana Hoosiers players’ names being called out at the NFL Draft. Consequently, on the big scoreboard inside Memorial Stadium, as Indiana is holding their Spring Game, those names and those faces will be on prominent display to celebrate and to remind any prospective Hoosier that may be in attendance of what was and what could be again. That’s why the stadium will be packed on that first Saturday in September. We’re all believers now.

Are you ready for some Spring Football?

I remember waiting for the March 1983 debut of the old USFL. I was fifteen. That spring league lasted three years and died because one of the team owners wanted to weasel his way into the NFL and sold the league’s soul in the process. I was so upset when the old USFL folded. I was a Breakers fan. Boston Breakers. Portland Breakers. New Orleans Breakers. Johnnie Walton playing QB. Marcus Marek playing linebacker. Dan Ross, my all-time favorite tight end, left the Cincinnati Bengals for the Breakers in 1984. He played for the Breakers for two springs. He returned to the Bengals in the fall of 1985.

There was nothing about the USFL not to like. The huge crowds the Denver Gold drew were most impressive in the early going. I remember late nights of listening to AM radio and tuning in to any team I could. I remember listening to the San Antonio Gunslingers with Rick Neuheisel at quarterback. The Oklahoma Outlaws with Doug Williams playing in Skelly Stadium for one season before they moved on to Arizona to become the Wranglers. Every team pilfered someone from an NFL team. Brian Sipe going to Jacksonville. Jim Kelly proving himself to be a cannon while playing for the Houston Gamblers leading him the Buffalo Bills. For a football guy, this was fun.

Fast forward to 2026. This spring we have the third season of the UFL. Change is a constant feature when it comes to these spring leagues. This year the UFL sports new teams in Orlando, Columbus, and Louisville. Gone are the Michigan Panthers, Memphis Showboats, and the San Antonio Brahmas.

The 2026 UFL:

The Birmingham Stallions. The Stallions will be coached this year by first time coach and former UFL standout quarterback A.J. McCarron. A.J. led the Alabama Crimson Tide to National Championship wins in 2012 and 2013. He then spent ten years playing in the NFL and the UFL. Ole Miss Football fans like me will be glad to watch Matt Corral back under center for the Stallions.

The Columbus Aviators. The Aviators are coached by former Ohio State legend Ted Ginn Jr.

The Dallas Renegades. My sentimental favorite. Their coach is Rick Neuheisel. The former head coach at UCLA, Washington, and Colorado, Neuheisel brings back those memories that go back more than 40 years, when I was listening to USFL games late into the night and enjoying every snap.

The D.C. Defenders. Their QB is a former Ole Miss Rebel. Jordan Ta’amu will be taking snaps for D.C.

The Houston Gamblers. Their head coach is former University of Houston Cougars coach Kevin Sumlin. The Gamblers, like the Stallions, are the only two teams that still hold onto the 1980s USFL names and locations.

The Orlando Storm. Former St. Louis Battlehawks head coach Anthony Becht, he had a 22-8 record in StL, is the leading the Storm.

The St. Louis Battlehawks.

Seeing wide receiver Hakeem Butler play in person was worth heading over in Interstate 64 to see the Battlehawks a couple years ago. A.J. McCarron was playing QB. Butler is still on the squad at press time. Watch him bring those passes in. He can do it. Their head coach this year will be Ricky Proehl. He was a WR on the 1999 St. Louis Rams team that won the Super Bowl that season. You might remember that Rams team as “The Greatest Show on Turf”.

The Louisville Kings. Finally. A team close to home. The Kings’ head coach is no stranger to Louisville Football lore. Chris Redman, the U of L Cardinal great will be leading the Kings this season. In the backfield, we expect to see former Kentucky Wildcat and Pittsburg Steeler Benny Snell toting the mail. This will be fun. Fun. That is one of the elements that make a spring football league special. We don’t have some lifetime investment in these teams. We just want to root for our local team and have a good time doing it, as we don’t have to pay NFL prices to see a game. This is affordable family fun compared to a day in an NFL stadium. Let’s enjoy it. The season opens this Friday Night at Louisville’s Lynn Family Stadium.

Yes, another football season will start the last weekend of this month. This is good news for some of us. From March 27, 2026, until Super Bowl Sunday on February 14, 2027, there will be football to look at. UFL in March, CFL in May, NCAA in August, NFL in September. The stars line up again. For many of us, this is a very good thing. Look, I enjoy watching a basketball game now and again. I keep up with the Indiana Hoosiers. During basketball season, I usually know when and where and against whom the Hoosiers are playing. Much like college football, I ceased trying to keep up with the players closely. They come and go like a sunrise and the coming sunset. In between there are times of clarity and there are times of rain. Either way, I don’t enjoy following players like I used to. What’s to follow?

I don’t enjoy watching college basketball like I used to. That has the potential to sound like a comment from a grouchy old man. Not so. Just a sign of the times. When I can’t keep up with a roster of players from lunch to dinner, thanks to the cracked landscape that college sports currently offer, much of my fun has been removed. Many of us, some much younger than myself, miss the old recruitment process when we took guys out of high school and hoped that they would pan out. You know, you rooted for them before they got on the court or the field. There was an emotional investment that meant more than the game itself. He’s a Hoosier now and will be for the next four or five years, depending on a red shirt status. You remember those days. The days when we could not fathom seeing our quarterback line up against us the next year in a conference uniform that was not cream and crimson.

So. I get it. You don’t have to tell me. The model, the old model I pine for, probably would have never attracted the likes of Curt Cignetti to Bloomington. That old model would have seen the Hoosiers clamoring gleefully over a 7-5 season and delighted to be heading to Nashville for The Music City Bowl. My dream was to one day, in my lifetime, see the Indiana Hoosiers play in The Rose Bowl. Some dreams do come true. I can tell you all about it. Was it worth it? Yes, it was. Even an old rear-view mirror purveyor like me can appreciate what is in the here and now, though it comes at the cost of a one and done Heisman Trophy winner we just started to get to know. I will root incessantly for Josh Hoover, if he is indeed the man under center for the Indiana Hoosiers come September in the first game of the season against North Texas. Ironically, the expected North Texas starting quarterback figures to by Tayven Jackson. The same Tayven Jackson who started games for the Indiana Hoosiers in 2023. Jackson is now wearing his fourth college football uniform. How much fun can that really be? Whatever he is being paid by the Mean Green, an appropriate nickname, I hope it is worth it for Tayven. My regrets will probably be larger than his will.

That’s the kind of investment that I deal with missing. You know, the loyalty thing. Anthony Thompson graduated from high school the same year I did in 1986. He played four years for the Indiana Hoosiers. The first three of those years the Hoosiers played in bowl games. Indiana’s previous bowl history included 2 before Bill Mallory, AT, and his teammates showed up. The ’68 Rose Bowl and ’79 Holiday Bowl. In 1989, the Hoosiers finished 5-6. Anthony Thompson was the runner-up for The Heisman Trophy on a team with a losing record. He was that great. And we got to watch it for four seasons. Four great falls. All of this for a school that, at the time, was all too ready to shut the lights off on Memorial Stadium so they could fire up the popcorn machine inside Assembly Hall for Bob Knight’s Hoosier Basketball team.

So, I’m hearing the same refrain from a talented player these days, “Where’s my sugar?”

In the hours leading up to the kickoff of Indiana’s 2025 primetime debut against a top ten ranked Illinois team after a three-game preseason against lower teams that would have never been allowed to play on Indiana’s or any other Big Ten team’s field in the 1980s, there was something in the air in Bloomington. The crowd. The vibe. Something was cooking. You could feel it. Never once, even in the worst of times, did I cease to feel something special passing through the turnstiles at Memorial Stadium. That’s my love of the game coming out. But before the Illinois game, a game the Hoosiers would dominate 63-10, the sense that something special was happening was tangible. I wrote about it after the game. This 63-10 shellacking of Illinois was the game that allowed me to retire the 1988 41-7 win over Ohio State as the greatest moment for me in Memorial Stadium. Old fans, true football people, I guess there may be a few, felt the same weight lifted, the same exhale, the same sense of “FINALLY”.

The road ahead for the Hoosiers after the Illinois game was paved with gold. An undefeated regular season. Beating Ohio State for the first time since that 1988 game. This time for The Big Ten Championship. Then The Rose Bowl. Then The Peach Bowl. Then The National Championship. We can’t measure with existing technology how unglued so many SEC boosters must have been watching the Indiana Hoosiers kick the crap out of college football like they have never seen it done before. That’ll make a man grin too.

What now? Josh Hoover under center? Maybe. Will he last that long? Will he be gone before summer? I don’t know. I know nothing. Nothing but how this college football scene has turned into the soap opera is has turned into. Without the soap opera seismic shift college football has gone through, there is no Indiana University Football National Championship. Hoosier Fans will gladly take it, like sands through the hourglass…

Another NFL Hall of Fame class announced and another year of the deciders getting it bad wrong!

Over the years I have made my distain at Hall of Fames known. Baseball? Pete Rose. I don’t know what Pete did or did not do with betting slips. Fortunately, I saw Pete Rose play many games at Riverfront Stadium in Cincy. I do know what Pete Rose could do with the lumber in his hand. I do know what Pete Rose could do on the base paths. He gave everything. I do know what Pete Rose could do with a glove on in the infield. While George Foster is my all-time favorite Cincinnati Red, when Pete Rose came up to bat something was different. There was a “feeling” in Riverfront that only Pete Rose could deliver.

The last time I saw Pete play was in 1985. He was a player-manager. In an extra-inning game against the Atlanta Braves, Pete inserted himself as a pinch-hitter. He connected, the runner from 2nd, Eddie Milner maybe, scored. This game was on NBC’s Saturday Game of the Week. According to a friend of mine, Russell Harrell, my jumping up and down attracted a nearby camera man. “Damn, there’s Cheeze!” is what came out of Hurricane Harrell’s wide-open mouth.

I have driven past the exit to the Baseball Hall of Fame more than sixteen times in upstate New York. I have never been compelled to take the exit.

It wasn’t until 2018 did I make a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. FINALLY… after 25 years of being eligible, The Moody Blues were enshrined in this hall in April of that year. FINALLY! This was special. At this point, I had seen the last of my Moodies shows from 1986 to 2017 more than 50 shows. The last concert they played was a benefit in a hotel ballroom with a low ceiling in California. Class to the end.

So here we are again. The question about Ken Anderson and the Hall of Fame. I have driven past the Pro Football Hall of Fame exit in Canton the same number of times I have driven by the Baseball Hall of Fame. I pass both on the way to the Berkshires in Massachusetts.

Look, I know Ken Anderson did not win the Super Bowl he played in. Down 20-0 at halftime is hard to overcome. 26-21 was the final score in Super Bowl XVI. The Bengals turned the ball over 4 times. Cris Collinsworth, after catching an Anderson pass, fumbled at the 5-yard line. Still, Ken Anderson was one of the best. He led the league in passing in 1974, 1975,1981, and 1982. The only man to do that in two decades. For YEARS he owned the record for completion percentage in a game and a season. In 1982 his 70.6 bested the record held by Sammy Baugh from 1945 at 70.3. Anderson’s record stood until 2009 when Drew Brees bested it.

Ken Anderson was one of the best football players to step foot on the field.

This year Ken Anderson was a finalist in the “senior” category for induction to Pro Football Hall of Fame. The voters got it wrong again. I will continue to drive by Canton.

Okay. This is still awkward for me. I remember when the Seattle Seahawks got here 50 years ago. Jim Zorn threw 27 interceptions that year. I remember it from his football card. Didn’t matter. He was fun to watch. Throwing the ball to Steve Largent (54 receptions if football card memory serves and I am going PURELY on that) was his task. The guy from Tulsa, Largent, was a guy that the Cowboys turned away. He is in Canton now. Give me Steve Largent on one side. Give me Isaac Curtis on one side. Give me Jerry Rice in the slot. We win.

Why awkward? I still see the Seattle Seahawks in the AFC West. From 1976 to 2001, the Seahawks were an AFC team. I know. I know. Change. Progress. Whatever. Still, my football card Seahawk heroes played in the AFC West and had great games against Dan Fouts. So there. That is how I like to remember the Seahawks.

Still, I press onward and I root for their quarterback, Sam Darnold in 2026. Sam and I are old friends.

This is Sam Darnold. Redshirt Freshman and playing quarterback for the USC Trojans. From the time I laid eyes on him playing UCLA in The Rose Bowl stadium in November 2016, I became a fan. His command of the position at that age was something to behold.

A few weeks later, in that same stadium, THE ROSE BOWL, Sam Darnold led the USC Trojans to a 52-49 victory in what was, until Indiana kicked Alabama all over THE ROSE BOWL turf, the Rose Bowl I have enjoyed watching the most since. I have that game on my DVR. I have the UCLA-USC game he played in on the DVR too. Truth be told, I upgraded our DirecTV a week before my dad and I went to Pasadena to see that game because I wanted to hang on to it. I did. And I still watch it now and again. Memories.

Will I hang on to Sam Darnold’s Super Bowl win over the Patriots for ten years on my DVR? I doubt it. I love college football more than I do the NFL. But I will hang onto it for a while. Go Seahawks!

Each January 24th I think about it all over again. I still don’t like it. The hurt is still there.

Much like we just witnessed the greatest college football story in history when the Indiana Hoosiers went 16-0 and ended a season that will be talked about for a long time, the 1981 NFL season too had gridiron renaissance qualities. The Cincinnati Bengals played the San Francisco 49ers in Pontiac, Michigan in an indoor stadium called The Silverdome in Super Bowl XVI. The last time I saw The Silverdome the massive parking lot was working as a drive-in theater.

In 1980, both the Bengals and the 49ers finished the regular season with 6-10 records. The teams turned things around in 1981 like nothing we have seen since. The Bengals were 12-4 and the Niners were 13-3. It was a case of which Cinderella do you root for?

In 1981, Coach Bill Walsh gave the 49ers keys to the offense to a young quarterback a couple of years removed from Notre Dame named Joe Montana. The Niners had the whole package. Offensively they worked magic with their passing game. Their run game was less than stellar. Ricky Patton led their ground attack with less than 600 yards. Earl Cooper and Paul Hofer and a couple other guys carried the ball too. Where the Niners were really stout was on defense. Ronnie Lott, Dwight Hicks, Carlton Williamson, and Eric Wright were a defensive backfield to behold. Fred Dean and Jim Stuckey were on the D-Line. Keena Turn and Hacksaw Reynolds playing linebackers were not guys you wanted meeting you while you were running the ball. I know Joe Montana had the goods for the duration of his career. He shined much brighter in years to come. For the game Montana was 14 of 22 for 157 yards in Super Bowl XVI. Sounds like Mendoza numbers from Monday night. The defense won it this time for San Francisco.

The Bengals didn’t help themselves in Super Bowl XVI. Ken Anderson threw two interceptions, and two fumbles were lost also. One by Archie Griffin and the other by Cris Collinsworth.

While Joe Montana was the young hotshot, Ken Anderson was working on his 11th NFL season when success finally came around. The AFC Central was a brutal division in the 1970s and early 80s. Getting past the Pittsburgh Steelers just didn’t happen in those days.

For me, the game turned to the 49ers when Ken Anderson suffered a shot to the head that would be more than illegal today when, on the Bengals’ first drive, Jim Stuckey rocked Anderson’s world, and Anderson came up a bit wobbly. He stayed in the game. On the next play, the most accurate QB in the league threw an interception. Dwight Hicks looked like the intended receiver, and he returned the oskie 27 yards the other way. The Bengals went into the locker room at halftime down 20-0.

The final score was 26-21. The Bengals just couldn’t put up enough points in a valiant comeback. Ken Anderson was 25-34 300 yards and 2 TDs. I still pull this game up on YouTube now and again. There never a pro football team that I enjoyed watching more. I still feel that way, all these years on.

In the Indiana School Fight Song, Indiana, Our Indiana, the words “Never Daunted” show up. After Monday night, the Indiana Hoosiers Football Team finally caught up with its fans. Fans that I know by name. Fans I know by geography. Give me an Indiana map, the one that is shaped just like that wonderful outline with a big “I” on it hanging in Assembly Hall. The one that used to be at center court of that hallowed hall. I will show you places on that map where Indiana fans, Never Daunted, are located. Fans that have been Never Daunted for decades.

Did you see the crowd at The Big Ten Championship Game? I did. Count me as being there. Beating Ohio State used to be the end all be all. This time, more work was to be done.

Did you see the crowd at The Rose Bowl? I did. Count me as being there too. My senses were on such overload that day, all I could think was, and I told our son, Jarrett, “I don’t want this to end.” The most emotion I felt all day was when Indiana’s Marching Hundred played Indiana, Our Indiana. Those words “Never Daunted” were sung loudly and proudly. For me, the best moment of that song was when the last note of the song ended and the Indiana faithful sounded like thunder through the Canyon at Arroyo Seco when the faithful yelled, at the end of the song, “IU!” Those two syllables rolled like thunder. That hit me hard, in a good way. In earnest, I was shocked that I did not shed a single tear all day. Sensory overload was both bane and glory.

Never Daunted. That explains the Indiana fans. Look, Indiana fans have always been there. Some, like me, got mad when a coach was fired and we had to take a little time. Some have been so exhausted by the endless losing that they had to take a break from climbing the ramps and the stairs of Memorial Stadium. For years it felt more like a death march than a celebration. Never Daunted, so many marched on. And on and on. I never stopped rooting Indiana on, except for one game a long time ago; we won’t talk about that. The son of a football coach, I take coaches more seriously than I probably should.

The photo above was taken before Coach Curt Cignetti’s Indiana University Head coaching debut, as The Marching Hundred played Indiana, Our Indiana. The Florida International Panthers were defeated by the Indiana Hoosiers 31-7. We were all relieved and a bit surprised with such a positive outcome. The Never Daunted crowd at Memorial Stadium that day walked away with a little more pep in their step. That pep has not been lost on them. Under Coach Cig, the Hoosiers are 15-0 at home. In their Crimson jerseys, the Hoosiers are 18-0, having played their three CFP games as the designated home team. We all know what happened. The Hoosiers are the 2025 National Champions and I will never tire of saying that. Coach Cig used my word for it all when he said “surreal”. Exactly.

As much I enjoy listening to The Indiana University Marching Hundred play Indiana, Our Indiana, the song the band plays a little later in pregame is my favorite. The song has been my wish for each and every Indiana University Football Team that took the field. INDIANA FIGHT is the name of that song. The message is as realistic as the name of the song suggests. After climbing these ramps, after climbing these stairs, after paying more money for one ticket than a season ticket cost when Anthony Thompson was hauling the mail, after watching so much despair, INDIANA FIGHT! Even on the gloomiest of nights, INDIANA FIGHT!

So don’t wonder why more people than can fit in Memorial Stadium showed up in Pasadena and Atlanta. Don’t wonder why there were more Hoosier fans in Hard Rock Stadium than that of the real home team playing that game. These folks are Never Daunted. Watching the Hoosiers play football has not always been easy. That’s why INDIANA FIGHT resonates the way it does. It’s a punchy tune by nature and has helped so many fans stay strong. And this year, finally, a 16-0 Indiana University Football Team has lived up to so many fans, through thick and thin, who are Never Daunted.

Look for “The Rock” to be packed, rocking and rolling when toe meets leather on September 5th, 2026, when The Mean Green from North Texas visit Memorial Stadium in week one of the season. I for one, will hear Indiana, Our Indiana and INDIANA FIGHT collide like we have never heard them before. That may be the moment I shed a tear.

REALITY FINDS THE HOOSIERS. That was my first post-game headline after the Old Dominion opener. The photo above was taken with twelve and a half minutes until kickoff. The stadium will be full twelve minutes before kickoff for the 2026 opener.

In the first game of the season, there was a sense of the “pucker factor” playing out when the much-anticipated season finally kicked off for the 2025 edition of Indiana University Football. On the first snap of the game, Old Dominion QB Colton Joseph ran 75 yards for six. When IU got the ball in the early going, it seemed we saw more dropped passes in that first half out of the Hoosiers than we saw all of 2024. IU QB Fernando Mendoza was a pedestrian 18 of 31 for 193 yards and 0 touchdowns. Indiana won 27-14. Turning one’s head sideways after a victory in Bloomington was a new phenomenon for me. Things have to get better, I thought. Things did get better in week two.

In game two, the Kennesaw State University Owls made their first trip to Memorial Stadium. As Tim Brando and Devin Gardner called this one on FS1, Indiana put on a show. Indiana 56 Kennesaw State 9. The Hoosiers pass game improved. 21 of 28 for 280 yards and 5 TDs. Big brother Fernando threw 4 of them. Little brother Alberto Mendoza threw one too. The Hoosiers gained 313 yards on the ground in this one. Lee Beebe Jr. led the way with 90 yards on 11 carries. Beebe would go down with a noncontact injury the next week and be lost for the season. Kaelon Black and Roman Hemby have adequately shared the main rushing chores with 2020 yards between the two of them heading into the CFP Championship game. Defensively, the Hoosiers held KSU to 89 yards rushing on 32 carries while creating two turnovers and stymying the Owls to only converting 2 of 13 3rd down conversions.

For all the accolades the Indiana offense has rightly received with the Heisman Trophy winner under center, the IU defense has been just as spectacular only giving up 11.1 points per game through 15 games heading into the National Championship Game against the Miami Hurricanes on Monday night.

After a 73-0 practice game against Indiana State, the #9 ranked Illinois team came calling to Bloomington’s Memorial Stadium for a rare primetime matchup on NBC. Todd Blackledge sounded stupefied a few times during his 2nd half analysis. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was just saying what the rest of us were thinking.

And so, it was on. Game after game. Win after win. Hoosier fans losing their voices and apologizing the next day for sounding like gravel. I was there. Even when I wasn’t at the game, I was there in voice. When Omar Cooper Jr, came down on his inside foot, somehow, against Penn State, you know the play, I thought I had ruptured a vocal cord.

After a 56-3 win over Purdue, it was on to The Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis.

Having been in attendance the last time Indiana beat Ohio State in 1988, the win over Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game felt as much like an exorcism as it did what it was which meant the Hoosiers were finally Big Ten Champs in my lifetime. I missed the last Rose Bowl in 1968 by two and half months. I wasn’t going to miss this one.

When the confetti flew after the Hoosiers beat Ohio State, there was a sense of elation over Hoosier Football Nation. None of us knew how good that was going to feel. It really happened. Finally.

On to The Rose Bowl. Indiana dismantled Alabama to the point where, had she been alive to see it, Aunt Barbara, a staunch Ole Miss fan, would have said, “Bless their hearts. Alabam-er was terrible. Indi-an-er didn’t even feel sorry for them.” Indiana won 38-3.

The Hoosiers were not finished after Pasadena. They moved on to The Peach Bowl.

The Peach Bowl was much of the same. Indiana won it on the first play of the game when DeAngelo Ponds intercepted Oregon QB Dante Moore’s first pass and returned it for an Indiana score. The route was on. 35-7 at halftime. In six quarters of Playoff Football, Indiana had outscored Alabama and Oregon 73-10. Incredible. Through two CFP games Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza has completed 31 of 36 passes with 8 TDs and 0 INTs. Three more touchdowns than incompletions. Amazing. We’ve never seen the likes. No one has. I know. I know what Joe Burrow did with LSU in 2019. I saw it. I can read. That was impressive too.

This past week the football “Mouth of the South”, our friend Paul Finebaum, called himself a “football snob”. That just didn’t sound right. Me calling Paul Finebaum a football snob is sensible. Paul calling himself that is nonsensical. Much like the statement he made this week, and I paraphrase, that if Indiana wins the National Championship, the Hoosiers will be remembered similarly to the 1984 BYU team that finished #1 after defeating a 6-5 Michigan team in The Holiday Bowl. Now that’s more like it! That’s a football snob talking! We know what he has to say for the SEC Shield. It’ll be ‘fine’.

Back to what is important. The most satisfying piece of writing I have ever put down was a paper I wrote in college about the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team. You know. The Miracle on Ice. I tracked down Coach Herb Brooks in Utica, New York. During this telephone interview with Coach Brooks my writing hand was trembling as I took notes. Even if the Indiana Hoosiers beat the Miami Hurricanes in the National Championship Game by a score of 50-0 on Monday, that win won’t impress me as much as The Miracle on Ice.

At the end of the 2004 movie Miracle portraying the story of The Miracle on Ice, Kurt Russell, playing the part of Herb Brooks, said his (Brooks’) favorite moment from that time was when his team was being awarded their Gold Medals standing on top as The Star-Spangled Banner was played in honor of his team. If you know what he said later in the scene, you know why I bit my lip a bit watching what college football has become these days. She ain’t what she used to be. I don’t want to know what Keith Jackson would say. I have played this out in my head and written about it here. Keith said it already. When he was quizzed about the state of college football at the 2017 Rose Bowl between USC and Penn State by Chris Fowler with Kirk Herbstreit watching on, Keith Jackson said one problem was television. He said, “Oversaturation. “Too much coverage.” Chris and Kirk danced around a bit, and they were glad to be heading into commercial. Keith saw it coming. Keith saw TV dollars doing their part to cause the situation college football finds itself in here and now. Have dollars, quarterback will travel. Ask the Duke Blue Devils.

For me, if the Indiana Hoosiers beat the Miami Hurricanes 50-0 in the National Championship Game on Monday, that victory won’t mean as much as The Rose Bowl. Being that Midwest kid who follows college football and lived for that matchup at the end of the year that played out in The Rose Bowl between The Big Ten and The PAC 10, seeing Indiana play in the Canyon at Arroyo Seco was a life’s dream come true. Do I wish it would have been USC from the old days instead of Alabam-er? Of course. But beating the crap out of the Crimson Tide was as good a substitute as one could ask for.

If you would ask me what my favorite moment of The Rose Bowl was, I would say just looking out seeing the Hoosiers on the field. I didn’t want it to end. When Jarrett and I got back to our hotel in LA, we watched the second half of Georgia-Ole Miss. The Rebs won! When that was over, a replay of The Rose Bowl was next. I sat there and watched every play again.

When I got home, I sat on the couch and watched it again with the ability to rewind or fast forward anything I wanted to. Something caught my attention. Kaelon Black’s 25-yard TD run to make the score 30-3. I know the play well.

When I watched this touchdown run over and over and over again, something even more special revealed itself. You see, Kaelon Black is one of those 13 James Madison Dukes who followed Coach Curt Cignetti to Indiana. We can’t quantify the significance of having these guys in the Indiana locker room and the Indiana weight room and on the Indiana practice field to show the rest of the guys the way. The Curt Cignetti way. Without those 13, including Aiden Fisher and Elijah Sarratt, I’m not here typing this. I don’t make it The Rose Bowl to see the Indiana Hoosiers play instead of the USC-UCLA game that I hope to get back to see again someday (providing it is played in The Rose Bowl Stadium). Without the 13 from James Madison, my dream of seeing the Indiana Hoosiers in The Rose Bowl doesn’t come true. I’m not the only one that gets that. After Kaelon Black’s TD, Coach Cig found #8 on the sideline and shook his hand. Coach took off his headset, stepped back, found his old JMU back and shook his hand. You can see some around them looking on like I was. This was special. This was the essence of why I sit here and wind this up and say again, Go Hoosiers!

We’re almost there. Keep working. Every play a life of its own.

By Danny Johnson

Hard to imagine the word regret coming within seven miles of the words Indiana University Football right now. There was some regret found today for me. Regret. Anger. Betrayal. Longing. No, were weren’t studying Shakespeare. That would be where the freshman English classes are right now. My sophomores have been studying Guy de Maupassant’s short story The Necklace for the last few days. In the story, a lady loses a necklace that was loaned to her. She doesn’t do the smart thing and admit she lost it from the upscale lady she borrowed it from. She decides to replace it. For the next ten years, after the lady and her husband take out exorbitant loans, the couple work like dogs to pay back the money they procured to buy a diamond necklace replacement. The original necklace, we painfully find out, was paste. Faux diamonds. Worth a pittance of what the tired couple paid and toiled over for ten years. Guy de Maupassant was famous for short stories that ended with twists and turns. As I was thinking about asking my students if they had ever lost anything, something I lost a long time ago came back to haunt me once again.

On the smartboard today was a picture from 1925. This was a picture from the first designated Oaken Bucket Football Game between the Indiana Hoosiers and the Purdue Boilermakers. A hundred years later, Indiana University Football is on the precipice of winning the school’s first National Championship. Today I told the students about the treasure I lost in 1981. A treasure that was first presented at the first Oaken Bucket Game on November 21, 1925.

Miss Maude. That is what we called her. She was my nextdoor neighbor. She was the town librarian. She was a historian. She turned me on to Paper Lion by George Plimpton when I was ten. Writing started to just mean more to me at a young age. Miss Maude was my friend. Miss Maude was a student at Indiana University in 1925.

I could have very well been wearing this shirt the day Maude called our house and asked me to walk across Cross Street, our houses were on adjacent corners of Cross and Jackson. Miss Maude said she had something for me. I ran. If Miss Maude was calling, it had to be good. It was.

Sitting at Maude’s kitchen table, I waited and squirmed I am sure. Keeping still was not my forte when I was young. My grandfather often said I reminded him of a “worm in hot ashes”. Somehow I was okay with the worm part. The hot ashes were what offended me. Anyway, here comes Maude from her bedroom back to the kitchen with a case of some sort.

Maude sat down next to me. She opened up the case. “I have a few things I want you to have.” She then proceeded to hand me three different items. These things had been given to her on November 21, 1925 at the first Indiana-Purdue Oaken Bucket Game. She was there.

There was a metal football that could fit in the palm of your hand. It was more oblong and shaped like a rugby ball.

There was a red button about 3 and half inches in diameter with “INDIANA” across it at a slight diagonal from upper left to lower right.

There was a commemorative two-part ornamental metal piece that was made to pin also. This was THE ITEM. The metal had a print of the stadium and writing that indicated the date and the occasion. This was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen. I have yet to find its likeness in a search engine. I know it is rare.

In 1979, we moved from 204 Jackson Street in Brownstown to an outpost in the middle of nowhere. My Mayberry was gone. Leaving my friends behind, including Maude, was a hard thing to deal with.

On a fall day in 1981, I gathered the three treasured items that Maude had given me. They were always on my dresser in a plastic Indiana stadium cup that once teemed of Sprite at an IU Football game. I placed these three items in a paper lunch sack. They were to be props for a speech that I was making about the Old Oaken Bucket Game. When the speech was finished and the bell rang, I placed the lunch sack with my treasures in my locker. To this day, students at North Harrison don’t have locks on their lockers. We trust each other. We always have.

When lunch was over that day, I opened my locker to grab my math book for my next class. My lunch sack and the items from the first Oaken Bucket Game in 1925 were gone. This was not a good afternoon for me. These items have been but a memory ever since. Someone knew. Someone knew what I had and how valuable these things were. I never imagined someone stealing them from me. They did.

Each time I watch Purdue come into Bloomington for the Old Oaken Bucket game, like the last one in 2024 that Tim Brando and Devin Gardner called in the snow, I hurt just a little bit.

Seeing the current Indiana Hoosiers playing for the National Championship 100 years later has opened that wound all over again. An Indiana victory over the Miami Hurricanes will certainly help me cope with the pain. Go IU!