The Hopeful Hoosier usually writes about Indiana basketball. About winter nights in Assembly Hall. About motion offense and man-to-man defense. About banners and ghosts and echoes.
But some moments are too big for one season. Too big for one sport. Too big not to speak.
Monday night, Indiana plays for a national championship in football.
I’ve been an IU football fan since 1973—the same year Lee Corso became our coach. I was eight years old. Corso was funny and relentlessly optimistic. His weekly coaching show made you want to believe in him and the Hoosiers. It was no surprise that he would later become an icon on College GameDay.
His first three seasons at IU?
2–9.
1–10.
2–8–1.
Two Big Ten wins in three years.
It was quite an introduction.
During my teenage years, I went to games with my parents, or sometimes with friends and their families. My parents sat next to the same close friends every week. The games were as much a social ritual as a sporting event. These were the same families we saw at parties and on vacations. You learned everyone’s stories, everyone’s rhythms, sitting together through all those Saturdays.
We learned how to hope—but not too much. We learned how to belong. We learned how to lose.
Especially to Ohio State. Especially to Michigan.
During my first 50 years as an IU football fan, Indiana had only eleven winning seasons. We never won more than eight games in a year. That’s a lot of losses to carry. But one thing I always treasured was that we carried them together. Even in the worst seasons, there was something meaningful about being part of the group that stayed. That didn’t leave. That didn’t disappear.
And maybe that’s why the rare moments of joy burned so brightly.
In 1979, IU upset undefeated, ninth-ranked BYU in the Holiday Bowl. A 62-yard punt return by Tim Wilbur put us ahead late. It felt like a miracle—until BYU lined up for a 27-yard field goal to win.
This is where IU football usually breaks your heart. The kick missed.
Indiana won 38–37. Our first bowl victory in school history.
I learned that day that improbable joy was possible here. Rare. Fragile. But real.
Then came 1987. Indiana beat Ohio State. Indiana beat Michigan.
I attended the Michigan game with my dad and a friend. I was a student. It was rainy and windy and cold. Memorial Stadium was electric. Loud. Unified. Indiana won 14–10, handing Bo Schembechler his first ever loss to IU. He complained during the game that the crowd noise was too much.
Good.
For a moment, Indiana stood atop the Big Ten. I’ve never forgotten what that felt like.
Still, even the good coaches taught us our limits. I loved Bill Mallory. He gave us some of the best seasons of my life. And yet—even he didn’t finish with a winning record at IU. It quietly taught us something: this is who we are. No one comes to Indiana and turns us into champions.
It was impossible.
In 2004, when Indiana native Terry Hoeppner was hired, he stood at his introductory press conference behind a vase with a single rose—symbolizing his dream of taking IU to the top of the Big Ten and to the Rose Bowl. I didn’t believe he could do it. No one could. But I loved the audacity of the dream.
When he contracted brain cancer and died just three years later, it felt more than ever like IU football was cursed.
Nobody ever expected a Curt Cignetti.
Last year, in his first season, Indiana went 11–2. As the wins piled up, Memorial Stadium filled in ways I had never seen. Full. Loud. Alive. We weren’t just winning—we were dominating. It felt unreal. Magical.
This year has gone even further. Undefeated. A fairy tale. The whole country paying attention.
Indiana beat Ohio State for its first Big Ten title. Indiana crushed Alabama in the Rose Bowl.
Indiana turned Atlanta red in the Peach Bowl and destroyed Oregon 56–22, leading 35–3 at halftime. I was there.
It felt like a celebration of every Hoosier who ever stayed. Red everywhere—on the streets, in the stadium, even on the interstate on the drive down. Ninety percent IU fans. Strangers hugging. Smiling. Saying, “Can you believe this?”
Unthinkable.
One of the greatest joys of the past two seasons has been sharing these games with my current family and friends—and with a whole full stadium of new friends. There is a joy at Memorial Stadium I have never seen before. The packed house, the noise, the collective belief—it almost brings happy tears.
I wish my parents were alive to see it. I wish their friends—the ones who sat beside them through decades of patience and disappointment—were here. This moment belongs to them. To everyone who stayed when it was easier not to.
Monday night, Indiana plays for a national championship.
The eight-year-old boy in 1973 never imagined this. The teenager in the Corso years couldn’t have dreamed it.
The student in the rain in 1987 would have laughed at the idea. But he would have done his best to believe in it.
Because Hopeful Hoosiers always do.
Leave a Reply