FLASHBACK: The Long, Long Drought; or, IU Football in 2019
Originally from December 2019. An examination of the Tom Allen era of Indiana Hoosiers Football from what turned out to be the peak of the period.
DECEMBER 5, 2019
Sometime within the coming weeks, Indiana will learn what bowl game it will play in. It will be the first time IU is eligible for a bowl game in three years, and it is the first time Indiana has won at least eight games since 1993. It has been a historic season for the Hoosiers, and in the spirit of historicity, as well as savoring the moment and the here-and-now, it may do well to think back to how IU football reached the place it currently inhabits.
Looking at Memorial Stadium from the intersection of 19th and Dunn on a quiet day you will see a number of things. First you’ll most likely take notice of the immensity of its limestone structure and its unique color – a blonde sort of stone hue that does not appear anywhere else in NCAA Division I football, a signifier of Bloomington’s stonecutting heritage and bedrock. Next, especially if it is a windy day (as it so often is during the late autumn and early winter in Indiana) you’ll notice the flags of the teams that comprise the Big Ten conference, the oldest conference in intercollegiate athletics that crosses state lines, with IU’s standard billowing in magisterial solitude above all of them. Then you’ll notice the less important details – the parking lot, typically filled with students’ cars, maybe some buses idling on the far side of the lot awaiting the start of their scheduled routes, students milling about from nearby apartment complexes, et cetera.
On a gameday, though, on one of those precious Midwestern Saturdays where a chill is in the air and the swirls of falling leaves paint the town red in testament of their Hoosier loyalties, you will see something entirely different. You will see tailgates reveling at full pitch, you will see an oceanic cascade of crimson, cream and white, and you’ll detect a sense of unconditional joy resonating throughout the whole of the stadium lot and tailgate fields.
What you won’t see, though, is a single banner commemorating an Indiana University Football bowl win from this millennium. The absence of such an accolade is as conspicuous as any flag, and just as jarring as the perpetually empty tracts of bleachers that plague Memorial Stadium’s interior on half of the Saturdays of each fall semester.
It isn’t that university administrators have hidden away the banners because they are too precious to fall into rambunctious undergraduate hands – as the ongoing missing-in-action status of the Showalter Fountain fish can attest – nor is it because they are on display elsewhere. It is because they simply do not exist. No. The Indiana Hoosiers, against impossible odds, have failed to qualify for and win a bowl game for 28 years – by far the longest such drought amongst Power Five conference teams.
IU has not won a bowl game since 1991, and have claimed only two Big Ten titles in their history (one in 1945 with legendary player George Taliaferro, the first African-American drafted into the NFL, and the other in 1967 as a co-champion alongside Minnesota). The decades that go into the creation of such a run of underachievement are staggering.
“I think mindset plays a huge role,” Ben Portnoy, a Mississippi State sportswriter who covered the Hoosiers for the Fort Wayne Gazette during his years as an Indiana undergraduate from 2015-19, says. “They [IU football] have over a hundred years of bad history.”
But does this explain why they’ve been to only one Rose Bowl in their history, fewer than any other team in the Big Ten or Pac-12 (the other conference traditionally associated with the “Granddaddy of them All”)? Does that explain the mind-boggling ways that postseason games have been lost in the past? Does that explain why so many Indiana games seem to be decided in the final minutes of the game, so as to maximize Hoosier heartbreak?
One alumnus sums up this phenomenon brusquely but brilliantly. “Watching IU football is akin to watching Californication in its entirety,” David, a Kelley School graduate and lifelong Hoosier football supporter, says. “There’s ups and downs, sexy moments and ugly moments, but in the back of your head you always know you’re going to get screwed.”
When asked if he was referring to any specific moments, he clarified: “Same show, different characters.”
David could very well have raised any of seemingly innumerable points from recent Hoosier history to illustrate the malaise and fatalistic futility that has seemed to enshroud Indiana football for the better part of thirty years. The last snap of the game, down by 7, in the 2015 contest versus #1 Ohio State flying over quarterback Zander Diamont’s head; winning the vicious Oaken Bucket rivalry game versus Purdue 26-24, only to lose by that same score, 24-26, in their next game in the Foster Farms Bowl; leading #2 Ohio State 14-13 at halftime in 2017, only to lose 49-21; and perhaps the worst offense since Tom Allen became coach, losing to a Purdue team in 2018 that itself lost 63-14 (and trailed 56-7 at halftime!) to Auburn in their next game.
Vince, another recent graduate of Indiana’s Kelley School, recalls the frustrations of past years, even within Memorial Stadium. He remembers a fan yelling “That ref has Michigan plates!” in response to a questionable pass interference call that overturned what would have been an IU interception (IU lost that game in overtime by one score. An interception that doesn’t get overturned? That could have been the difference in winning and losing).
Of all these losses, two stand out as exemplifications of unsuccess: the two most recent FBS bowl game appearances, in 2015 and 2016. To even remember them, says Hoosiers fan Isaac, is to wince, cringe, and grow woebegone.
“Why do you keep doing this to me?” says Isaac, an Indiana grad, IUDM and longtime supporter of both Indiana Hoosiers football and the Minnesota Vikings. Isaac speaks this wistful melancholy in response to a reminder of the 2015 Pinstripe Bowl and 2016 Foster Farms Bowl – specifically, their endings, in which kicker Griffin Oakes missed critical field goals that would have either tied or won the game.
“”Why do you keep doing this to me?” he says, bereft. “As a Vikings fan, why have you cursed my college teams too?” (One might speculate he is speaking directly to the so-called and oft-invoked “football gods” in his second statement, demanding some explanation of his two favorite teams’ misfortunes in the kicking game).
Isaac was an integral organizer of IUDM – Indiana University Dance Marathon – during his time at IU, serving on the executive committee and later entering the workforce as a Riley Children’s Hospital employee. His love for the community service that being involved with Riley generates originates from IUDM and its widespread influence within Indiana. Coincidentally, IUDM’s inaugural year was 1991, the same year that the Hoosiers, then led by future NFL passing leader Trent Green and 1991 Heisman finalist Vaughn Dunbar, won their last bowl game, the Copper Bowl. This bowl game does not exist anymore. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, the Soviet Union fell only five days before this bowl game. And in the time since those hoary days of the early 1990’s, Isaac and countless other IUDM participants have raised over $36 million for charity, while IU has not raised one banner commemorating a bowl win.
But late-game misfortune in recent years is only part of the puzzling bowl win drought. So is the so-called “talent gap” between Indiana’s football rosters and those of other Big Ten powers such as Michigan and Ohio State. Even so, Indiana has produced 37 NFL draft picks since that bowl game – only nine players short of a gameday pro roster. There have been incredible moments that defined Indiana fans’ childhoods during these years, too.
“My earliest memory of Indiana football,” Portnoy remembers, “is of Antwaan Randle-El,” a dual-threat quarterback that went on to win Big Ten Freshman of the Year, Big Ten MVP, First Team All-American honors, and a Super Bowl ring with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Henry, a former IU student, remembers more recent glories. “2007. Old Oaken Bucket. Austin Starr hit a 47-yard field goal as the clock struck zero to win the game to send us to our first bowl game in my lifetime.” He smiles, remembering a bygone team whose bowl appearance that year – a 33-49 loss to Oklahoma State – might be best remembered for coming after what is now a notorious rant by opposing Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, who famously decried sports media for being overly critical of his players’ performance. After all, for much of this millennium, it has been the teams that Indiana plays and loses to that get the most attention. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, the Hoosiers.
Is there hope? This year, there surely is. Indiana reached a mark of 6-2 on October 26, making them bowl eligible. But it was on November 30 that they embarked on what some see as a truly inspiring journey towards snapping their bowl drought, defeating archrivals Purdue in a 44-41 shootout in West Lafayette (enemy territory for Hoosier faithful). But it was the way they won that has people taking them seriously for the first time. They almost blew the game in the first overtime – an unbelievable deflected ball that could have been intercepted to end the game but resulted in a massive gain for the Boilermakers seemed cut-and-pasted from past years defined by late-game Hoosier collapses – but they hung on, with performances from backup quarterback Peyton Ramsey, backup running back Ronnie Walker, Jr., and junior wide receiver Mister “Whop” Philyor that astounded even the most cynical and stonehearted Hoosier fans who’ve been disappointed before and are wary of raising their hopes too high. But Portnoy and Philyor have words for them.
“Depth,” says Portnoy, having been asked about what makes this team different. “There is depth to this team that didn’t exist before. You’re seeing IU get top-20, top-30-ranked recruiting classes – that didn’t happen before Tom Allen got here.” Backup running backs and relief quarterbacks winning the biggest rivalry game on the schedule away from Bloomington will make you say such things. “The running backs IU has had in the past few years – Tevin Coleman, Jordan Howard, Devine Redding, Stevie Scott – those are NFL names.”
Mister “Whop” Philyor, an NFL prospect in his own right, sees an even more fundamental edge to this team that has been lacking in years past. “Everyone that is involved with the program including our fans are supportive when it comes to showing up in the rain or cold,” Philyor says. Indeed, it was hard to miss the vast swathes of Purdue’s Ross-Ade stadium that were emblazoned with cream and crimson colors and not the comparatively dull black and gold, difficult to descry in the West Lafayette sleet, signifying Purdue supporters. “We’re a talent team, but support helps – a lot!”
The Hoosiers sit at 8-4. They are guaranteed a berth in a bowl game. They’ve already won more games than any Hoosiers team this side of Y2K. But perhaps David sums it up the best.
“We’re due.”