Todd's Take: High Time To Smell The Roses Of Indiana Football Fever

When you're up close and personal with the phenomenon that is Indiana football and it's easy to lose sight of how amazing this journey has been.

Todd Golden | Oct 27, 2024

Indiana Hoosiers running back Justice Ellison (6) celebrates scoring a touchdown during the third quarter against the Washington Huskies at Memorial Stadium. / Jacob Musselman-Imagn Images

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Indiana Hoosiers

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – We’re trained as sportswriters to not get too close to the subjects we’re covering.

The keep-your-distance ethos relates to not letting relationships affect your journalism judgment. It’s not wise to get a sort of Florence Nightingale syndrome about your subject matter. Recognize things in the moment, but not so much that you let it cloud your thinking.

Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a prudent rule to live by. However, in the pursuit of this, you can develop a little bit of myopia.

You can get lost in the weeds of the details, get too wonky about how the sausage is made and lose sight of the bigger truth in what you’re covering. You can get too close in the sense of being so close you don’t fully appreciate what the rest of the world, who isn’t in your inner circle, is seeing.

The Hoosiers On SI team has written many pieces on Indiana’s unbeaten start and how historic it is. However, when you’re around it constantly, a duty as a journalist is to get beyond that first layer of pure joy and try to explain how it’s happening. Why is it happening?

On Saturday, at least, I think I was falling into that trap. In the moment, but maybe not in the right part of it.

It was matters of football detail that were on my mind going into the Hoosiers’ home contest against Washington. Would Tayven Jackson keep the offense moving in the right direction? How would Indiana handle the first decent running back (Jonah Coleman) it had faced all season?

There’s nothing wrong with thinking about any of that, but it’s easy to lose sight of the magic that makes a moment. It’s human nature to get used to anything constant. Winning, even at the clip Indiana has been doing it, reaches a point where the novelty wears off if you’re around it all of the time.

If it’s human nature to get too close to the topic at-hand, then I have to take Indiana coach Curt Cignetti’s own advice and fight human nature. Focus on the one thing.

The one thing about Indiana football after nine weeks have passed is how remarkable this whole experience is.

Again, should I have to say that? Of course not, but I’m around it all of the time. The superlatives are becoming routine, which is the sign of a great team, but it’s not good for smelling roses.

Our job isn’t to smell the roses ourselves; it is about recognizing when roses are justified in being smelled.

Indiana's D'Angelo Ponds (5) makes an interception and returns it for a touchdown during the Indiana versus Washington football game at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 26, 2024. / Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

I’ve become kind of used to the notion that Indiana has every national-level possibility in front of them. Big Ten title? It’s attainable. College Football Playoff? The Hoosiers are in contention. I had priced those things in, processed them, gotten used to them, and moved on to the professional judgments that come with those realities.

It took my family to give me a sorely needed Lighten Up Francis moment. To get me out of my professional headspace and see the forest for the trees.

My daughter is a recent Indiana graduate and was a Marching Hundred member from 2021-23. The one year she should have had an Indiana bowl game experience was 2020, but she was off-campus due to the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic and our family was not living in Bloomington at the time.

It was bad luck for her that Indiana football went downhill while she was an active member of the band. However, she’s living in Bloomington now, and she decided to volunteer to help the Marching Hundred with social media work.

When I got home Saturday from Memorial Stadium, we were talking about the game, and I mentioned this column idea I had about how I needed to live in the moment a bit more than I had been. She relayed her own experience of watching Indiana’s success unfold and began to tear up.

She said one of the reasons she volunteered was to have the chance to be in this moment. To see Memorial Stadium packed to the gills. To dream big dreams of Big Ten championship game appearances and the College Football Playoff. To enjoy success in a way she didn’t get the chance to when she was in the band herself. She is overjoyed to be part of this ride.

When your girl gets emotional, it melts your heart as a dad, but it was a story my wife told me that really brought my own house down.

My wife is not a sports fan. It’s her accident (curse?) that she married a sports-obsessed man who found a way to be around what he loved.

On Saturday, she was not at Memorial Stadium. We moved to Bloomington barely over a year ago, and she doesn’t know many people here. Partly to help make some friends, she works part-time for a local bakery at the Bloomington Farmers Market.

She said the merchants there were worried that Indiana football was going to suck all of the oxygen out of Bloomington and take some of their sales with it. The worry was unfounded. The market was busy as it usually is.

Indiana football, she said, was on everyone’s mind. It would get mentioned there that I worked as a writer covering the Hoosiers, and that kicked off conversations further about IU football.

What novelty there is in my job faded for her years ago. However, Hoosiers Fever piqued her interest.

So after her day was done at the Farmers Market, she decided to drive by Memorial Stadium. The game had already started by then, but she found a vantage point where she could observe from afar.

She heard the roar of the crowd and she saw all of the hubbub surrounding the stadium. She had been to plenty of games to support our daughter but wasn’t really into the fate of the football team.

She said something touched her about what she saw. She was part of a shared experience where she felt Bloomington was a part of her and not just a place she moved to.

Their stories woke me up. I can quote all of the impressive historical stats. All of the last-times and the first-times in stories I’ve written that this Indiana football team has accomplished.

Numbers are nice, but they only provide the silver linings on this dream come true for long-suffering Indiana football fans. Folks who aren’t into sports are starting to take notice, too. This is a phenomenon.

I knew all of that deep down, but when you’re too close, you can be guilty of failing to recognize what’s right in front of you. It’s a journey very few Indiana football fans have ever been on.

With at least five games left, including a bowl game at minimum, I need to remind myself to put myself in the shoes of all of you. I need to live in this once-in-a-generation experience as you do.

History is being made at Indiana. And what’s the point of trying to document it if you can’t allow yourself to give in to the moment and feel it too? Indiana is 8-0 overall and 5-0 in the Big Ten. It’s high time, even for a professional like me, to appreciate the ride.

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