Not just a basketball school: Hoosiers revel in overnight football success

When the game clock ticked down to zero and the giddy Memorial Stadium crowd stormed the field, a friend and I enthusiastically joined the mob, fully intending to tear down a goal post.

Indiana University’s football team had just walloped Ohio State, 41-7, and beating the mighty Buckeyes was a Big Deal.

Of course, we couldn’t foresee just how big it was: The Hoosiers wouldn’t beat Ohio State again for 37 years. And the team that finally snapped that 31-game winless streak this year is now being heralded as one of the greatest turnarounds in sports, transforming from the biggest losers in college football history to the #1 team in the nation seemingly overnight.

For alumni like myself, Monday’s championship game, pitting IU against Miami, isn’t just surreal — it’s unfathomable.

For decades, IU football games were just an excuse to tailgate. Knowing the team would never win big games, you rooted for Anthony Thompson to rush for a hundred yards. Or maybe you cheered for the Kansas City Chiefs a little because quarterback Trent Green was an IU guy.

But this was Indiana; we were a basketballschool.

When I moved to Bloomington my eighth grade year, Isiah Thomas had just helped IU win its fourth basketball championship. And a few years later — my freshman year at IU — my friends piled on each other in a frenzied bro-celebration after Keith Smart dramatically hit “The Shot” to help defeat Syracuse for a fifth title.

Minutes later, we high-fived strangers on Kirkwood Avenue as the jubilant crowd swelled at the edge of campus. And when I saw star center Dean Garrett lugging a backpack in a lecture hall a few days later, it was akin to a celebrity sighting.

If any student wore an IU football shirt in those days, it was probably meant to be ironic. Or contrary.

IU’s storied basketball reputation extended beyond borders. After moving to California in 1999, whenever I told someone I had graduated from IU, they typically said something like “You like Bob Knight?”

As in The General — IU’s wildly successful, often controversial, basketball coach.

That’s another story. My point is, no one ever asked me about IU football.

Even when the football team had past “successes,” those came with an asterisk. When I helped tear down that field goal post in 1988, it was an off-year for Ohio State, which finished the season with a dismal 4-6-1 record.

Both Michigan and Michigan State clobbered us that year.

There were a few bowl game appearances here and there, but they were the less impressive ones (how about that Pinstripe Bowl!). And even then, until this year, IU hadn’t actually wona bowl game since the 1991 Copper Bowl — later known as the Insight Bowl, the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, Cheez-It Bowl and the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

When IU hired Curt Cignetti as their head coach two years ago, it seemed like yet another uneventful coaching change. No one had heard of Cignetti, who, at 63, had never even led a “power conference” team.

Yeah, Yeah, the Hoosier faithful reacted. How’s the basketball team looking?

The first hint of something different actually occurred during a basketball game – when they introduced Cignetti to the crowd at Assembly Hall. After previously talking about changing the culture at IU football (Sure thing, Boss.), he yelled into a mic: “I’ve never taken a back seat to anybody and don’t plan on starting now!” Then, he added, “PURDUE SUCKS!” prompting the 17,000 fans to roar in approval. And when he added, “So does Michigan and Ohio State!” the crowd erupted again, but . . .

That seemed a bit much.

Maybe even silly.

Yet the confidence continued. When a reporter asked how he planned to turn around this Charlie Brown of a program, Cignetti calmly uttered his now-famous catch phrase: “I win . . . Google me.”

OK. Well, that was great for marketing (It hasappeared on T-shirts.), but it’s one thing to win at James Madison, his previous school, where the toughest competition included programs like Georgia Southern and the Marshall Thundering Herd. But beating giants, like Ohio State?

Good luck, buddy. Google ya later.

Typically, hopeful programs like IU hire a young upstart from a mid-major school because they have promise — and are willing to take less money before they move on to a winner. But for whatever reason, Indiana hired Cignetti, who looked more like a guy you might see on commercials for retirement plans or memory pills.

And yet he did win.

Immediately.

The team that had gone 3-24 in Big Ten games the previous three seasons finished 8-1 in conference play during Cignetti’s first season. And then they did the unimaginable:

They got better.

Not only did they beat Ohio State — they beat everyone. They put a whuppin’ on football royalty Alabama, winning the Rose Bowl for the first time. And while they had beaten Oregon in a tight game during the season, in the playoffs, they mercilessly pounded the Ducks, as if they were somehow just now getting really dialed in.

It’s almost as if Cignetti had joined bluesman Robert Johnson at the crossroads for that deal with the devil. And if Hollywood isn’t already working up a screenplay (I’m casting Steve Carrell as Ciggy), it should — this is the best sports movie to come out of Bloomington since “Breaking Away.”

Bloomington resident John Mellencamp can provide the soundtrack. IU alum Mark Cuban can bankroll it.

Blindsided by the football team’s success, IU fans are wondering on message boards if it’s possible for Cignetti to also coach the basketball program, which has fallen from grace in recent years.

Think it sounds crazy?

Google him.