Last night I went to an IU football kick off event hosted by the the IU Alumni Association. There was free food, free beer, lots of Hoosiers and special guest speakers.

Athletic Director Fred Glass was there to introduce the main speaker for the night, your coach and mine Bill Lynch.

Lynch spoke for maybe 15 minutes and took some questions from the audience about the Pistol offense, our back up quarterback situation, the new facilities and the outlook for this year’s football team.

But the conversation that I found myself involved in most often, whether it was with the ‘73 and ‘62 Alumni I sat with during the speech, or with a former Hoosier football player from the Rose Bowl Team and Coach Lynch himself, was about getting the students excited about the team, creating an atmosphere of excitement in Memorial Stadium and generally getting people involved in IU football again.

Or, as I like to think of it, the same conversation Hoosier fans have every year.

There are two ways to get people excited about your program, and we saw both of them work a few years ago. The first, and most important, way is to win.

If IU puts a fun, exciting and successful program on the field people will fill the stadium. You want proof? Go back and watch the Purdue game from 2007. That place was packed with excited fans. Hoosiers want to get excited about IU football, but they need a reason.

Give us a winning football team and watch the fans show up.

The second way, and this is only a short term fix because if the team doesn’t win eventually this won’t do much, is to hire a coach who is vibrant, exciting and a great pitch man for the program. Terry Hoeppner was all of that and more. He was excited about IU football, and he made us excited about it as well.

I’m in no position to tell you if someone is a good X’s and O’s football coach, having never played the game in my life, but I can tell you this. After watching him talk last night and then speaking to him for 15 minutes after that, Bill Lynch does not have the ability to get the fan base fired up.

He may be a great X’s and O’s guy. I can’t say, but the purpose of last night’s event was to get us excited and ready for a great IU football season.

My mood, as I left there last night, can best be described as cautiously optimistic.

I don’t make it to many football games. The drive from Chicago is a bit much to do every week, but I make it to at least one game a year. I do, however, watch every game on TV, which puts me on the high end of the Committed IU Football Fan Scale.

If you can’t make me excited, then you can’t make anyone excited.

The theme song for last night’s event is a little something I like to call Bill Lynch is excited.

It’s my computer reading the lyrics to “I”m so Excited” by the Pointer Sisters while we watch paint dry. Enjoy.

All credit to The Daily Show for putting this image on television Tuesday night. I know that they had other things to cover, but they did not give this picture it’s propers when it got home. They could, no should, have spent the entire 22 minutes on this picture.

Let me break down for you the reasons this may be the greatest photo ever taken.

1.) There was a time in our country’s history where Mr. T was such a big star that the First Lady sat on his lap while he was dressed in a Santa suit. Try to pick the biggest TV star today and put Michelle Obama on his lap. I can’t do it. I can’t come up with anyone who is even close to that famous.

2.) This photo doesn’t happen unless the political beliefs of Nancy Reagan and Mr. T are perfectly aligned. That sentence is just funny.

3.) Look at their feet. Nancy has little red puffy balls on her shoes and Mr. T’s are held together by duct tape.

4.) In a world where Mr. T is Santa, everyone, regardless of their position in the world, gets Mr. T related toys for Christmas. “Merry Christmas Foo’ Here’s a Mr. T doll.” People are giving Obama shit for giving the Queen of England an iPod. At least it wasn’t an Obama action figure with the words “Gentle Giant” written on the front.

5.) President Reagan is being held back by secret service just off camera because just prior to Nancy sitting on Mr. T’s lap, Mr. T looked at Nancy and said, “Hey, Woman. Hey, Woman! Listen here. Since your old man ain’t got no heart, maybe you like to see a real man. I bet you stay up late every night dreamin’ you had a real man, don’t ya? I’ll tell you what. Bring your pretty little self over to my apartment tonight, and I’ll show you a real man.”

6.) Right after this picture was taken, Mr. T cut down that tree behind them. And every other tree in the White House. The neighbors were pissed.

7.) And finally, Mr. T and the Reagan administration have been linked in my mind and heart for well over 20 years now. I can’t tell you the number of times I went to school on a Wednesday morning really, really pissed at Ronald Reagan for having a press conference at 8pm the night before and pre-empting the A-Team. All the while they were working together.

I found myself in a very interesting situation over the weekend. I went to the Derby Festival Classic in Knight’s Hall Friday night and Freedom Hall Saturday night where the crowd was distributed in roughly the same ratios as Steve Martin’s financial disclosure.

Manager and Agent 30-35% Kentucky Fans
Road Expenses 10-20% Louisville Fans
Development of New Material .00001% Indiana Fans

I didn’t have time to put this in the Rubber Chicken graph that Steve used, but hopefully this will suffice.

Needless to say, I was out numbered and as I walked through the concourse this one thought kept running through my head. “I wonder how many of these people know that I hate them?”

I was surrounded by blue, but rather than feeling intimidated or uncomfortable, I felt excited. A lot of that feeling goes back to my feelings about the Calipari hire, but just as much of it had to do with the excitement of getting to see three of our prize recruits in action against the maybes that make up their recruiting class.

But before I get into how Creek, Hulls and Watford looked on the court I have a couple of UK fan encounters to share.

On Friday night at the Let Us Never Speak of the Dunk Contest Again event as each player was introduced, they ran out onto the floor with a T-shirt to throw out into the crowd. Good Clean Fun.

When Stephan Van Treese, a U of L signee, three his shirt into the crowd it was caught by a UK fan in the first row who immediately threw the shirt all the way across the court and then stepped out onto the court with his arms raised parallel to the floor and his hat turned sideways claiming some sort of victory in a war only he was fighting. In less than 5 minutes I got most accurate picture of a UK fan in his natural habitat, acting in the only way that comes naturally to him, like a total douchebag. I felt the thrill of discovery that Jane Goodall must have felt upon her first encounter with the chimpanzee, of seeing a creature so nearly human in its natural environment.

The second, and equally telling encounter I had with the UK fan was in the men’s room. I was at the urinal closest to the sinks and the UK fan two urinals to my left finished his business, and after not flushing the toilet, walked behind me, toward the sinks and the door that was just past them. I saw him in the mirrors over the sinks pause, look over at the sinks, extend his left hand and wave them off as if they were a waiter offering a refill of coffee that he didn’t particularly like and wanted no part of. He then continued out the door presumably smelling of his own urine.

You stay Classy, Lexington.

More about the actual game later.

The Greatest SI cover in history

Remember this?

Not since I got this issue of Sports Illustrated in the mail on May 29, 1989 has news relating to Kentucky Basketball made me as happy as I am right now.

Kentucky hired John Calapari.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Do you love this news as much as I do?

I’d be willing to wager that whether you are an IU or a UK fan you are equally excited by this news, but for very different reasons.

Why are Kentucky fans so excited?

There’s only one answer. They care exclusively about winning. Calapari will win games. He’ll bring in big recruits. That’s enough for Joe Bluegrass.

Why am I, as an IU fan so excited?

Let me count the ways.

1.) There are probably four coaches for whom I have a vitriolic dislike. They are Kelvin Sampson, John Calapari, Bruce Weber and Bob Huggins. There is only one basketball program I actively hate. I was spending all this time hating UK and Memphis (because of Calapari). Now I can accomplish the same amount of hate in half the time. It’s like combining two high interest credit cards into one, low, monthly payment. Of Hate.

2.) As much as I dislike UK, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about them lately. When I was in high school I could name the player on UK like I could on IU. That’s probably due, in large part, to living so near so many UK fans when I was in high school and living near virtually none for the last ten years. I just don’t have anyone to argue with about it, so I haven’t paid as much attention. It’s also due to the fact that we haven’t had much to brag about recently. The addition of Calapari gives me new reason to amp up my dislike.

Which, based on the few back and forths I’ve had on facebook recently, has brought a whole new level of fun to this rivalry.

3.) I am, once again, reminded of the core difference between IU fans and UK fans. When IU hired Kelvin Sampson the reaction to that hiring was split roughly down the middle. On one side you had your Kent Benson crowd, the “I can’t believe you hired a guy who doesn’t graduate his players and is on probabation. This guy’s a scumbag and we have no interest in a guy like that running our program.” and, for lack of a famous standard bearer I’ll call this the Jeff Taylor crowd, whose reaction went something like this, “That stuff at Oklahoma doesn’t seem very good, but he’s our coach now and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s on a pretty short leash with me.”

I went slumming on a UK message board to get a feel for their reaction and (Packer Method) I’m going to put the split there 75-25 between “HELL YEAH!!! WE FINALLY GOT THE GUY WE’VE WANTED ALL ALONG!!! WE’RE GOING BACK TO THE FINAL FOUR IN THE NEXT TWO YEARS!!!!” and “Are we sure about this? Hasn’t he been involved in some shady stuff in the, oh hell, who am I kidding GO BLUE!!!!!”

When something seems dirty to us, we question it and decide to support our team anyway, or we get completely disgusted and turn away completely. Pay attention to how your average Wildcat fan reacts to anyone questioning the integrity of Coach Cal. I wish I knew a word that meant super-defensive.

4.) I was right. About the character of UK basketball, about the priorities of the fans, about UK in general. I was right not to speak to my cousin the entire time she was a student there.

5.) And perhaps my favorite reason of all. In one fell swoop, Kentucky has given us back the moral high ground. We hired a guy who was a liar and a cheat. He drove the program into the ground and soiled its reputation. You know what we did? We fired his ass in the middle of a season with a team that could have gone to the Final Four.

Kentucky hired a real scumbag, and you know what they did? The held their heads up high once again, becasue they were going to go back to the NCAA tournament next year.

And lest you think I’m just a UK or Calapari hater for no reason.

Read This.

or this

(Hunt missed one game for that, btw)

Also, remember all those banners he hung at UMASS? Well, your memories are all you’ve got cause they’ve come down thanks to Marcus Camby and the gifts he got from boosters.

If I were lobotomized and became a Kentucky basketball fan, I’d be pissed off that 20 years after you hired C.M. Newton and Rick Pitino to come in and clean up your wire transfer issues, that you’d hire a guy who had this bad a stink on him.

Enjoy your deathtrap, ladies.

I’ve been having some doubts recently. As I watched this Indiana basketball season pass by at roughly the same pace as an economics lecture at Shermer High School, I had less and less interest in the college basketball season. I began to wonder whether I would care about the NCAA tournament without Indiana in it.

As I sit here, less than 24 hours away from the start of the tournamnet (it’s now 3:15 in the pm on Wednesday) I am happy to report that I am excited about the tournament. It’s going to be more fun to watch than last year, when I was just ready for the season to be over, that much is certain. If you are having trouble getting into the tournament this year, let me present to you, in no particular order some reasons to care.

1.) Kentucky isn’t in it either. I find this particularly gratifying as there are no extenuating circumstances. They have at least one REALLY good player. Their conference was particularly weak this year. They aren’t made up entirely of Freshmen, Juco Transfers and walk ons. They just failed.

2.) Illinois drew Western KY and I haven’t filled out a bracket yet that has them winning that game. If I’m right, big smiles.

3.) There is no stress this year. Of course I’d rather be in it and fighting for a championship, but as we’re clearly not good enough to be in that position, I’ll just enjoy not having to stress out over our performance.

4.) No Billy Packer. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the vacuum that has been created by the absence of a complete gas bag, but if you haven’t, I bet you will over the next three weeks. I hate Billy Packer and couldn’t be happier to watch a Final Four without his asinine comments. No wild statement completed unsupported by facts. No crazy predictions about what’s going to happen in the game that never turn out to be correct. No making up statistics to prove him points (Don’t worry, the Packet Method has been employed widely by others. It’s not going anywhere). And with Packer gone that only leave Bill Raftery to deal with and since there’s just one of him I think I can guard him MAN a MAN.

5.) Louisville is the #1 overall seed. I like this for a couple of reasons. 1.) While I hate UK I’ve never really had a problem with UofL, with the exception of hating Denny Crum’s chosen style of play and finding it nearly unwatchable. So, I’ll be pulling for the Cards. and 2.) And I’ll leave on this, most overly-optimistic of notes. The last two times Louisville won the national championship, we won the next year.

Well, so much for the Packer Method. At least as it concerns IU basketball. The Indianapolis Star went live today with the adorable love child of an IU basketball fan and an actuary.

The Indianapolis Star has launched the IU Basketball Database. It’s not complete yet, as they don’t have individual box scores up yet, but that, apparently, is in the works.

I’m not usually in the business of pimping other people’s IU stuff, but this seemed worth passing on.

The following is an excerpt from a review of The Jonas Brothers: 3D Concert Experience.

It was clear from the outset that “A Hard Day’s Night” “The Jonas Brothers: 3D Concert Experience” was in a different category from the rock musicals that had starred Elvis and his imitators. It was smart, it was irreverent, it didn’t take itself seriously, and it was shot and edited by Richard Lester Bruce Hendricks in an electrifying black-and-white 3D, semi-documentary style that seemed to follow the boys during a day in their lives. And it was charged with the personalities of the Beatles Jonas Brothers, whose one-liners dismissed the very process of stardom they were undergoing. “Are you a mod or a rocker?” Ringo The cute Jonas Brother is asked at a press conference. “I’m a mocker,” he says.

I have spent much of this season trying to put a Beatles spin on a Jonas Brothers movie. That’s not very helpful. If you’re going to watch the Jonas Brothers movie, you should be prepared for it. It doesn’t help all that much, just like it doesn’t make it hurt less if you are told in advance about the groin shot you’re about to take, but it’s only right that you know what you’re in for.

But sitting back and saying, “This is pretty much the worst video ever made” doesn’t help either because as Kip points out, “like anyone can even know that.”

So, with a level head I will procede with the actual good. The actual bad is far too easy to point out, so I’m ignoring it for today.

It may not need to be said, but Verdell Jones III has made huge strides this season. A month ago I wouldn’t have given him much chance of serious playing time next year, but he has clearly gotten stronger and has a much better sense of what he needs to do with the ball. Shiney bright spot number one.

Nick Williams has had a quietly good season. He hasn’t made the visible strides that VJIII has made, but he’s definitely improved. I’m basing this off nothing more than my memory of the beginning of the year, but I don’t think he had as far to come. He wasn’t making the kind of mistakes VJIII was making and wasn’t getting tossed around quite as much. He is and will be a great asset to this team when he pulls up for mid range jump shots. 12-15 and he’s golden. Inside or outside of that and I’m not thrilled with his shot selection, but if we can get him the ball around the free throw line in the heart of a 2-3 he can really carve it up.

Tom Crean has done a remarkable job game planning this year. It seems like every move he’s made this year, from a strategic stand-point has been the right one. The switching defenses, the decision to go box and one or triangle and two have been hard to prepare for and have kept us in a lot of games. This kids didn’t know how to win at this level. They still don’t, but to have them in so many games against some very good teams, speaks volumes to Crean’s preparation and game planning. We played Michigan State down to the wire and they’re a very possible Final Four team this year.

Tom Crean has also done a tremendous job keeping the spirits of this team up, but even more amazing than that, he’s been able to put on a brave face in front of the cameras. He has never let it slip how hard this has been for him in public where the team could see it. This is killing him inside. How could it not? But he has sounded the right note to keep his team from hanging its collective head all season.

I’m not ready to start talking about next year yet. Give me a week and that’s all I’ll be thinking about, but for right now we’ve got Penn State on Thursday in a winnable game. If we can play MSU tight like that, there’s no reason we can’t beat Penn State. I don’t think we’re going to need anymore Inspire Indiana trivia questions than the ones that have already been written, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see us playing on Friday.

I assure I’ve never once listened to this song. Tell me how bad it is.

This on the other hand is great. I’ve been to Marlybone Station where this was filmed and as an aside, if you run down the street they ran down at the beginning and turn left as they did you will actually be running away from the station, not across the street towards it.

Something important happened in the Big Ten Tournament game against Minnesota last year. When Hoffarber hit that shot at the buzzer it meant something. It wasn’t as important as a mountain sculpted out of a mashed potatoes, but it meant something none-the-less.

A part of me went to sleep. It was the part of me that expects us to win basketball games and I didn’t realize it was asleep until sometime this weekend when it woke up.

I read a story recently, or maybe it was a blog post, I looked but I can’t seem to find it, about how the students on campus have been really supportive of the players. Telling them how much the appreciate their effort and that they know the team is working really hard. The article said that Nick Williams had gotten to the point where he hated hearing that. He appreciated the support but was so sick of losing, the ata-boys for the effort kind of stung after a while.

I have gone through this season feeling, not exactly good about our losses, but understanding of them and trying to see progress and improvement. It has left me feeling, for lack of a better word, grey. I don’t have the fire and passion for IU basketball this year. I haven’t missed a game, but going into pretty every game ready for a loss has definitely dampened my fire.

I’ve been sleepwalking through this season to protect myself from how bad this should hurt, and to keep myself from being disproportionally harsh on these guys.

I think I’ve done us all a disservice.

I’m done being OK with incremental progress and close losses. We should have won some of these games. We have lost five games by fewer than five points. I want half of those to be wins. It’s not OK that we lost all of them.

It’s not OK that we keep turning the ball over 15+ times a game.

Winning the rebounding battle in almost every game while losing 17 out of 18 games is not good enough.

I’m not giving up on these guys, or piling on. I’m expecting them to start playing like Hoosiers. I know it’s what Coach Crean expects of them. I know it’s what they expect of themselves. We aren’t helping them by expecting less from them.

I haven’t yelled at any of these guys half as much as I yelled at Todd Lindeman, Jordan Crawford or Robert Vaden and they’ve certainly earned a few “Damn it, Verdell!”’s.

I had seats in the family section a few years ago at the Big Ten Tournament. I’m pretty sure this was 2001 as it was the year that Haston blocked that shot at the end of the Illinois game to put us in the finals. At one point Kyle Hornsby (my memory is fuzzy here, but I’m pretty sure it was Kyle) threw a bad pass for a turnover. I yelled something about it being a really dumb pass. Someone leaned over to me and said, “That’s his mom two rows in front of you.”

To which I replied, “I don’t care. She knows it was a dumb pass.”

That’s the kind of IU fan I am. I expect a certain level of play and when they aren’t giving it, I get annoyed and vocal.

“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!’”

Demanding more of them will likely lead to greater upset when we do lose, but again, I don’t care. I can’t live this button down life anymore. I want it all. The terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles.

I already feel better. Just changing my mindset from passive fatalist back to Indiana fan has awakened that part of me that Hoffarber put to sleep last March.

I haven’t written much about basketball lately.

I’ve written about the fans, elbows, Buffy, Stripes, expectations, but very little about actual basketball.

I’m not sure my mom ever told me, “if you can’t find anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” But enough mom’s on TV have said it, so I think that counts. But it’s not really that I don’t have anything nice to say, because there are definitely some if not good, then less-bad aspects to our play recently, it’s more that it takes a lot longer to find those nice things to say than it does to find the flaws in our play and to this point I’ve been reticent to criticize this team too severely.

I’ve held back because I didn’t really think it was productive to kick them when they were down, but as George Wallace once said,

“segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever?”

Not THAT George Wallace. George Wallace, the comedian. As he once said, “Can you tell me a better time to kick a man? Your foot is just that much closer to their head.”

I also held back because, despite my belief prior to the season that we could be a team that was fighting to be close to .500, I had come to realize just how far this team had to come to get back to where we would like them to be and we weren’t going to get there this year. So, in effect, why bother taking a shit on this team.

But after they quit against Northwestern, I’m kind of done holding back.

I have been a glass half full type of IU fan this season. Giving credit for effort and trying very hard to mark our improvement on a separate sheet from the one I use for our wins and losses. And, as I view this entire season as part one of a much longer season, I’m still pretty optimistic, but I’m just tired.

I can’t take any more basketball like this. I thought we had a very good chance to beat Northwestern. I thought we had a decent chance of beating Wisconsin. But since we beat Iowa we’ve averaged 54 points per game while giving up 71 points per game. Our second halves have been terrible. And we still turn the ball over with roughly the same frequency that the Dude and Walter drop F-bombs.

We have five games left in this season and I, for one, will be happy to see it go. I am anxious to begin looking forward to next season with a fresh group of guys. I haven’t gone to watch IU recruits play since I was a little kid, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to do that this summer. I need to see that there is hope for us, because right now, for these last five games, hope is in short supply.

This is my theme song right now for IU basketball because

And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Well, it’s been a year. Happy Anniversary everyone! I hope you can forgive the lateness of my card, coming as it does, two after our actual anniversary.

It was on February 22nd 2008 that Kelvin Sampson was finally no longer a going concern as IU basketball coach.

So, since it is our anniversary, it seems like a good time to take stock of where we are now, to look back over the last year and inch the door just that much closer to closed.

I’d rather not rehash everything that has happened over the last year. If you’re reading this, I’m working under the assumption that you know all of it. What I’d like to do is ask a question.

Are we where you thought we’d be? After one year of rebuilding, are we where you thought we’d be at this point in the season? Now’s a good time to be honest. If you are disappointed, pissed, hopeful, comforted, pleased shout it out. There are no wrong answers.

I’ll tell you what I think in a later post. I’d hate to skew the results one way or another. I do have an opinion, though I don’t guess that’s hard for you to imagine.

But, I’m curious about yours.

Are we where you thought we’d be? Why or why not? What did you expect? Better? Worse? More Kip Schutz?