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I’m sure these people exist, but I have not found one yet: the Indiana fan who cares more about Indiana football than Indiana men’s basketball. Outside of former Indiana football players, we might be talking about a counterculture numbering in the dozens.
Sam Story would guess there are around 12,000 to 15,000 in the exclusive group to which he belongs: the Indiana fan who cares about both equally. And that is, to be clear, as of before Curt Cignetti came in and turned a punching bag into 1986 Mike Tyson. This dizzying two-year transformation counts among our best modern sports stories and culminates with Monday’s national championship game against Miami.
“This is almost a refund for all the headaches in my life,” says Story, a 2006 Indiana grad whose loyalty to the football program traces back to his grandmother’s faithful attendance at Memorial Stadium as an undergrad in the 1940s. “I’ve seen the bottom of the barrel. It was under about 10,000 feet of salt, where nothing could grow.”
Now, Indiana football is a half barrel pumping out an endless stream of crimson-and-cream joy, and the line for keg stands stretches back for miles. If only a few thousand people can claim to have been there through the bad moments (also known as all the moments), is there even a thousand of the country’s largest living alumni base of 805,000 by now who aren’t gaga about this team?
As Will Leitch wrote this week: “(Indiana’s) fan base’s sudden, overwhelming ubiquity is the Greek chorus that surrounds it, and thus us all.”
Which brings to mind the notion of “bandwagon fans.” That’s a term I imagine Purdue fans — the ones who haven’t cut off all contact with the outside world, waking up each day hoping to find this has all been a vivid nightmare and “Cignetti” is just a new detective drama on Bravo — are using quite liberally these days.
However, the whole concept is overrated. Every gigantic sports fan base has “bandwagon” swells and exoduses based on the product’s quality. Let’s say this is the ketchup industry. Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and their ilk would represent Heinz. Penn State, Texas, Miami? Hunt’s. Indiana? Expired sauerkraut.
Elizabeth and Sam Story have attended both of Indiana’s College Football Playoff games and will be on hand in Miami on Monday night. (Courtesy of Sam Story)
The people who faithfully kept slathering it on their burgers are the story. Story is the story. He was born into it, yes — his family still has basically the exact season tickets that were first purchased in the 1970s, and his parents named him after Sam Wyche. Yes, Sam Wyche, who coached Indiana for one season in 1983, went 3-8.
“They told me they liked the name,” Story says. “I said, ‘I hope you didn’t like the results.’ But for us back then, 3-8 was actually kind of OK.”
Tagging along with the family is one thing. Finding your own passion is another. That happened for Story in eighth grade, watching quarterback Antwaan Randle El debut with three touchdown passes and three touchdown runs against Western Michigan in the 1998 season opener.
“Sadly, I fell for it,” Story says. “Hard. It’s like a virus.”
The thrill and greatness of one player hooked him. The hour-plus drives from the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel to Bloomington, always more fun for likely basketball wins, stopped feeling like an obligation on football Saturdays. These were still losing seasons under Cam Cameron, but with so many close, entertaining games that could have gone either way.
The “lovable losers” Chicago Cubs come to mind, except even in that franchise’s 108-year title drought, it had teams good enough to win it all. Indiana football didn’t have the blown 2-0 series against the San Diego Padres in 1984, the inability to get Will Clark out in 1989 or the Steve Bartman moment of 2003. Indiana football didn’t have a chance.
The closest thing I can come up with in terms of unthinkable sports turnarounds would be Northwestern football — which recently reverse-hopped Indiana as the losingest program of all time — ending a streak of 23 straight losing seasons by winning the Big Ten and getting to the Rose Bowl in 1995. Back then, voters decided national champions and the Rose Bowl was about as good as it got. The following 30 Northwestern years were much better than the 30 that preceded them, too.
But this is not that. Story just watched in person as his team beat Ohio State for the Big Ten title, destroyed Alabama in the Rose Bowl and humiliated Oregon in the Peach Bowl. He and his wife, Indiana grad Elizabeth, and their two young sons will be in Miami with sweet seats, the perks of loyalty and of donating to Indiana’s NIL efforts. The boys’ first game? Last season’s 56-7 thrashing of former college football power Nebraska.
“I caught the bug, and it was a very expensive bug; I’ve lost almost all my hair and money,” says Story, who is now in real estate in suburban Chicago. “But what a great feeling right now.”
His estimate of 12,000 to 15,000 diehards comes from a particularly awful home loss to Joe Tiller’s Purdue Boilermakers when he was a kid. That’s how many people he figures stayed in their seats through the entire thing. Maybe the number of loyalists got closer to 20,000 by the time Cignetti was hired, thanks to some success in the Tom Allen and Kevin Wilson eras.
However, now Indiana fans are taking over entire stadiums and are expected to significantly outnumber Miami fans in the Hurricanes’ home stadium on Monday. One of the Hoosiers on hand will be my friend Buck Reising, a Nashville sports radio host who graduated in 2015.
He was at the semifinal game in Atlanta, too. It was the first Indiana football game he had seen in person.
Basketball? If you go back and watch Christian Watford’s buzzer-beater to beat Kentucky in 2011, he’s the overserved student in a banana suit, paralyzed by joy for a moment when the ball pops through the net. Football? Reising and his buddies tailgated for home games, wearing shirts that read, “Game time is nap time,” then backed up those words.
Bandwagon fandom truthers may find this especially galling. But remember, the football renaissance is paying back Indiana basketball fans who create a championship environment for a program that has had only one Final Four appearance in the past 33 years. To quote Leitch again: “Indiana football has made Indiana basketball fans feel like they once did, like they have always felt they are supposed to.”
Which brings me to a hypothetical I wish I could pose to the 804,000 or so alums who are on this ride, plus however many million more who are Indiana fans but not alums: If one of these programs, football or men’s basketball, could be relevant for the next 20 years, constantly knocking on the door, winning multiple titles, while the other is relegated to irrelevance, which one are you choosing?
Predictably, latecomer Reising went with hoops, answering: “Less interesting nationally, but way more important to me.”
Story is the test.
“Oh my God,” he says, trailing off. “If you report this, please just let everyone know I had a very long pause … but growing up in Indiana, basketball is just so much in our blood.”
Stay on the case, Cignetti. Your work is not yet done.
