I’ll trust Coach Cignetti. As much as I don’t like the process, I will trust Coach Cig. The traditionalist that I am wanted Alberto Mendoza to take the Indiana QB mantle from his big brother. You know, like we used to. A guy can dream, or at least wistfully look back now and again. Needless to say, I now have a reason to keep up with the “Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech” this season. Go Alberto Go! Glad we don’t play y’all.

Back to the here and now, as we say in the counseling business. I trust Coach Cig. Why wouldn’t I? Did you see last season and the season before that in Bloomington? Productivity over potential. Well, Indiana Football is about to lean into some serious productivity when Josh Hoover takes the field as the starting quarterback of the 2026 Indiana Hoosiers.

Josh Hoover originally signed with Indiana University coming out of high school. Nick Sheridan was the OC of the Hoosiers in 2021 and these two were on the same page. Indiana was coming of a disaster of a season in 2021. In a matter of hours in December that year, Michael Penix, Jr left Indiana via the transfer portal, Coach Nick Sheridan was fired and replaced with Walt Bell, and Josh Hoover announced that he flipped from Indiana to TCU when Sonny Dykes was named the head coach there. Dykes had recruited Hoover as the head coach of SMU. And please know that Josh Hoover played high school in Heath, Texas. Hoover had teammates on his high school team that signed to play college football with the likes of Minnesota, Auburn, Eastern Illinois, Stephen F. Austin, Baylor, Navy, and South Carolina. There was some talent there. It’s Texas.

Here’s where the productivity shows up. Josh Hoover comes to Indiana with 9629 passing yards and 71 touchdowns with him. Yes, there are 33 interceptions coming too. Well, not really. I can look at TCU and squarely say those 33 interceptions were thrown in YOUR system. You didn’t have Coach Mike Shanahan calling plays for you. Indiana does have Coach Shanahan. And Coach Shanahan took Kurtis Rourke and elevated him on a bad leg in 2024. He was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers. Coach Shanahan took Fernando Mendoza and elevated him in 2025. We all know what happened there. That was fun. Now it is Josh Hoover’s time and Josh is going to be delighted he finally found his way to Bloomington. Better late than never.

The look on Coach Cig’s face is indicative of my feelings toward some folks in Birmingham, Alabama. Like so many others, I look forward to the college football season; I look forward to reading the season preview magazines. Athlon, Lindy’s, Phil Steele, The Sporting News, I enjoy them all. We can always depend on our friends from Birmingham, Alabama to not let us down. They don’t like the Indiana Hoosiers. After Indiana dismantled the Alabama Crimson Tide in The Rose Bowl on January 1st, it was more than the folks at Lindy’s in Birmingham, Alabama could take. In layman’s terms when Indiana beat Alabama 38-3 in The Rose Bowl, the folks at Lindy’s swallowed their snuff.

Last year, when the Hoosiers came off a season when they made the College Football Playoff and had a 11-2 record, that did not impress the folks at Lindy’s.

They said last year’s Indiana team would be the 31st most impressive team in the land. They also picked Indiana to be the 9th best team in the Big Ten last year. So, you can imagine how chapped their backside was after Indiana beat their beloved Alabama Crimson Tide 38-3 in The Rose Bowl.

This year, Lindy’s gave Indiana a little due in the preview magazine.

This year’s cover is on the right. Lindy’s picked Indiana #5 in this year’s preview issue. Of course, they still have their ongoing love affair with the Texas Longhorns. They picked Texas 1st last year and 2nd this year.

You notice my Lindy’s preview issue this year features USC and UCLA. I like those guys. Well, this is where Lindy’s tried to exact their revenge on Indiana University and their 38-3 shellacking of the Alabama Crimson Tide in The Rose Bowl.

There are 16 covers to choose from, if you are ordering your Lindy’s Sports College Football National 2026 Preview from Birmingham, Alabama.

Ask yourself this, with all these cover options, when was the last time Lindy’s offered up a cover that DID NOT include the previous National Champion? That only happens when you are Indiana and you beat Alabama 38-3 in The Rose Bowl and your magazine is from Birmingham, Alabama. You a Rutgers fan? Got a cover for you! Wisconsin fans? The folks in Birmingham wouldn’t leave you out! In fact, there are ELEVEN Big Ten Teams featured on one of these 16 unique covers. The National Champs are not found. That is what happens to the Indiana Hoosiers when they beat down the Alabama Crimson Tide 38-3 in The Rose Bowl.

I dedicate this photo to our friends at Lindy’s. I took this photo at…well, you know.

Now we know why Days of Our Lives was cast off from its former network treatment on NBC to something called “Peacock”. Can you believe we say that. “I have to watch this game on Peacock.” You can’t make this stuff up.

What’s the best soap opera on TV now? Now more than ever. Now more than ever. Is that John Mellencamp I hear? Nope. Now more than ever in the SEC, IT JUST MEANS MORE… SOAP OPERA. If you can’t win on the field, win off the field. Tune into The Paul Finebaum Show. The SEC is kicking the Big Ten’s arse in football drama.

I wrote a feature on Paul Finebaum a couple years ago. One of the paragraphs went like this:

The 2024 College Football scene was made for Paul Finebaum.  These days one doesn’t have to dig the dirt anymore.  The dirt is everywhere.  On The Paul Finebaum Show the topic of the day is whichever dirt pile we care to talk about.  NIL?  Coaches?  Transfer Portal?  Conference Woes?  Toomer’s Corner?

What a time of SEC Football Drama we have had recently. Don’t you think there is an Emmy Award category coming down the pike soon? And the Emmy for the SEC Coach being the biggest horse’s butt courtesy of the SEC Network is…

As time goes by, the photo above “Just Means More”. Bama was playing in Knoxville on this day in 2016. I was there to enjoy the game, as I was sporting a neutral Ole Miss shirt with a Tide fan to my right and a Vol fan to my left. Call me Switzerland.

Recently, I nearly swallowed my snuff. Blake Toppmeyer, an SEC print pundit and USA Today columnist, wrote syllables no Big Ten Football fan would believe they would ever see. I was reading the Jackson Clarion Ledger online. Toppmeyer wrote about how The Big Ten has supplanted The SEC as the premiere football conference in the land. Indiana is to blame. Calling the Indiana Hoosiers, with their quaint little stadium, the National Champs is most difficult for many I am sure. Forget Paul Finebaum’s mea culpa. How genuine those words were is just more soap opera fodder. Thankfully, Toppmeyer’s cleverness actually shown through when he suggested that had Indiana would still be scoring touchdowns had they played Arkansas or Mississippi State.

No matter how you slice. Regardless of who you root for, the comments of late from Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian thrown in the direction of Ole Miss to put the place down are abhorrent.

Would somebody tell Lane and Sark they look completely stupid, scared, common, and leaderless when they are putting down Ole Miss. I’ve been to Oxford. The place is wonderful. Maybe coaches like Kiffin and Sark are jealous of the place. They don’t have The Grove where they are. I have a painting of The Grove in my office at home here in Indiana. I pause, look at it each day, and wish I was walking through the middle of it. The place helps me.

My wife said it best. “Whiny coaches like them are just ruining the game. They sound more like 8th grade girls in the hallway than they do college football coaches.” She’s right, as usual.

In the meantime, as the SEC plays a soap opera, The Big Ten goes about its business. Maybe that should be the model to aspire to. Go about your business. After all, there are the last three consecutive National Championship trophies to consider. They are in three different Big Ten Football complexes. And one of them is Indiana. That alone has turned college football coaching expectations into dumpster fires in waiting.

LSU didn’t make the CFP last year. Texas didn’t make the CFP last year. Ole Miss played Miami in a semi-final. They pooped out on D at the end. Otherwise, they would have played Indiana and I didn’t want any part of that (wink). Texas and LSU are playing catch up. Their coaches are whining. If it’s so bad, go do something else. I promise football will go on without you. You need college football more than college football needs you. Act like it.

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.