Seven years ago I was a freshman at IU Southeast (a story for another day) sitting in the school’s food court between classes doing my usual routine:
Food court, Papa John’s pizza and Indiana Hoosiers football highlights from 2018. The pizza? Well. Football? Also normal. My heart? Taken.
Advertisement
Of all the athletic teams at Indiana University, the university I had dreamed of attending since the days of crawling around my house with a pitchfork-wielding monkey, the football team captured my love like no other. The men’s basketball program got all the attention and the women’s was on the rise with Teri Moren, but football was… different.
I didn’t grow up in a rich home. I had never attended a sporting event of more than a few hundred, maybe a thousand people, and every instance was at a march or pep band at my high school. My family didn’t have the time or money to attend, but we had the love. Some of my best memories of watching football are with my grandmother. His son, Christopher, had been the star running back at his local Detroit-area high school and I had grown up hearing the stories of how he would bring the entire student body to their feet with his speed with the ball in his hands.
He is no longer with us. I never got to meet him. The “C” in LC is for him. Football is close to my heart. Sure, I had the Peyton Manning Colts that I grew up with, that’s awesome. but they didn’t grab my attention like the Hoosiers did.
So there I was, looking forward to being in Bloomington and making the best impression watching the Hoosiers go 5-7 a hundred miles south of Memorial Stadium.
Advertisement
When I entered IU Bloomington, my thoughts immediately turned to the journalism career I coveted (of course), but the second thought I had was, “I’ll be able to afford season tickets to a sport for the first time in my life.” Buying those 2019 Indiana football student tickets was priority #2 after registering for the actual classes.
And I went. Every one of those home games in 2019. I got up early and got to the front of the student section as quickly as I could, staying from kickoff to final play. Some of those games turned out well! Others didn’t, including my first exposure to Ohio State in person, a 56-10 home loss.
But I stayed. Loud and proud. I’m 19 years old and I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else than front and center for the Hoosiers. When the pandemic hit and the magic of 2020 happened, I did the same thing, from a distance. I was working the cash register at the Indiana Memorial Union gift shop with my phone leaning against the counter when Michael Penix Jr. lunged for the pole, resulting in the most interesting customer service interaction of my career.
Eventually, that passion manifested itself in writing (believe it or not), and I set out to cover the team at the Indiana Daily Student, the award-winning college newspaper that, by the way, you really should subscribe to. After a few stops as sports editor and editor-in-chief, I finally landed the job as one of two football writers after submitting what is surely the longest and most overly detailed application in the paper’s history. And I was able to do it with two of my good friends.
Advertisement
I now count those two among my best friends and I am very lucky to be able to call them that. Indiana was set for a big season after 2020. We all piled into my friend’s car after waking up before dawn to make the trip to Iowa City and…
Oh.
Oh no.
You know what happened. 2-10. Writing more or less the same “they lost, it was bad, everything is bad” story after every game. Sure, good.
My friends and I finished that season together, but we continued afterward. They’ve taken on bigger things as writers, while I continue to write about Indiana Hoosiers football. Although for a different (sillier) output.
Advertisement
That brought me here. Seven years later.
I traded the cafeteria in the IU Southeast student center for the press room at Lucas Oil Stadium, right next to the tunnel, where I’m writing this. I went from watching highlights to sitting down to watch them in person in the press boxes of stadiums across the Midwest.
Indiana has gone from 5-7 and 8-5 to 13-0 and Big Ten champions. From 56-10 to 13-10.
In general, everything is better. I’m living a dream and so are the Hoosiers.
But I still have this medium pizza.