With ESPN's GameDay in the house, the Hoosiers continue to roll with a victory over Washington
It wasn't an epic blowout like the previous seven victories, but it was a gutty win that required defense, a special-teams flourish and a running attack that took over in the second half.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The campus was ready for its closeup. One of the most beautiful college towns in America was in its autumnal glory, the fall colors popping from Dunn Meadow to 17th Street and beyond. Saturday, the Hoosier Nation, which is usually focused on IU hoops this time of year, was reveling in its undefeated football team, the school hosting ESPN’s GameDay broadcast on the south lawn of Memorial Stadium.
“He (Curt Cignetti) flipped the culture,” said ESPN/GameDay football analyst “Stanford” Steve Coughlin, speaking to reporters Friday afternoon at the stadium. “You can’t fake the excitement of a college campus. It’s sky high here.”
Already on Friday, there were students camped out, poised to join the Saturday-morning maelstrom in front of the GameDay set. It’s this way everywhere the traveling road show goes, but there’s something special and unique about seeing a long-suffering program like IU enjoy the fruits of its labor in front of a national TV audience. It used to be that IU was a basketball school with a football problem. No Division I team has lost more games in its history. Back when my daughter went to IU, they used to wear tee shirts that read, “IU Football: We’ve Never Lost a Tailgate.”
And that’s the beauty of this revelatory run the Hoosiers are on since Cignetti arrived. It’s not like going to Michigan or Ohio State; oh, you GameDay guys are back, huh? This is new and fresh for IU, which hosted GameDay in 2017, although that was a Thursday night game and everything was done at a desk on the Memorial Stadium field. This time, it was a giant party on the south lawn, a football mosh pit, replete with flags and signs and spirit..
Best yet, Lee Corso, one of IU’s more beloved coaches, got to come back to the place where he led the Hoosiers to their first-ever bowl victory, a 1979 Holiday Bowl win over BYU. In fact, the school celebrated that Holiday Bowl team this weekend. (So sad to learn that Tim Clifford, the quarterback of that team, passed away this week from a heart attack.)
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