This post written while listening to Justin Hayward’s 1985 solo album Moving Mountains.
The song Lost and Found is on here. It is the song my dear wife, Carrie, and I danced to at our wedding reception. As usual, I picked out the tune. Carrie expects this, of course. Rediscovering vinyl has been fun for me. I first acquired Moving Mountains on cassette. Then I ordered it from Camelot Music at the Jefferson Mall in 1990 or so on CD. Oh my. Music was such a treasure then. I miss that. I miss that for me. But even more, I miss it for the kids today.
For the Glory that is hard to come by is my thought about Indiana University men’s basketball. Coach Teri Moran, from Seymour, has the women’s program sailing along.
Archie Miller and the men’s program don’t have that going on right now. It’s tough to look at it. When a football guy is feeling bad for you at Indiana, something is bad wrong.
I know plenty about my love/hate affair with Indiana. When they fired Bill Mallory on Halloween of 1996 I was done with them. It took a great deal to get me back. Ironically enough, I had a candid conversation with Coach Mal’s replacement, Cam Cameron on a hot summer day during football camp.
I told Coach Cam I was mad when they fired Coach Mallory. I also told him it was not his fault. But it all still stung. He asked me to hang in there. Cam had a step-dad who was fired as a high school coach. I told him about my Dad’s similar treatment at Brownstown many years ago and we found some common ground there that not many folks can share. Cam was let go and the Indiana athletic department in their rumbling fumbling bumbling stumbling way that is their way fumbled another hire in Gerry Dinardo. Then came Coach Terry Hoeppner. Had he lived to tell the story, I think it would have been a good one for Indiana. God rest his soul.
Bill Lynch was next. He didn’t have the support he needed. It was just a matter of time.
More rumbling fumbling bumbling and stumbling when Indiana named Kevin Wilson to be head football coach. Who gets a team not used to getting to a bowl game to be played in Yankee Stadium tell all within earshot in a press conference that he is not much of a baseball fan? I rooted for David Cutcliffe and the Duke Blue Devils in that game. I did. I got to watch a closed scrimmage in March of 2003 when Coach Cut was at Ole Miss and Eli Manning was the QB. Wide receiver Bill Flowers was rehabbing that day running steps in the stadium that still had a grass field before turf was there for the regular season.
When Indiana had the good sense to hire Tom Allen as the new head football coach I was elated. Sometimes you just know. There is a perpetual chip on Tom Allen’s shoulder that goes back to folks wondering if he was up to being an assistant at Ole Miss on Hugh Freeze’s staff. Coaching football at Indiana has plenty of chips to go around. I just knew he was the one Indiana finally hit a home run with.
I will not purport to know a great deal about basketball. Have seen a great deal of high school basketball and a few basketball coaches I count among the best friends I have ever had.
I have never attended a college basketball game in person. College football is a different story. I have seen more than 70 of the current FBS teams play in person.
When I look at Indiana University and the treatment of the basketball program since the demise of Bobby Knight, I see the same rumbling fumbling bumbling stumbling that the football program has been subject to half of forever. Bad hires.
Replacing a legend is never easy.
Indiana University is a good place. I believe that. Academically, it holds up. Athletically it has been suspect for some time when it comes to the biggest money making sports on campus.
Archie Miller, I don’t wish an ounce of bad will on him at all. I also believe he may privately hope that someone out there will pony up on that buyout his owed if IU terminates him without cause. I’d say he has earned a great deal of it. And he can probably go elsewhere and find a place where the old specters are not the most important aspects of a basketball floor like they are at Assembly Hall.
What coaches are paid in college athletics, it is not a good look. But, that is where we are when deep pocketed donors rule the landscape and pave the roads along with fat TV contracts by the networks. I don’t blame the coaches.
Look, I too look back to my favorite Indiana Basketball eras. Playing in the basement with a friend and he was Scott May and I was Kent Benson. Absolutely GLUED to the local broadcasts I miss so much with Chuck Marlowe and John Laskowski when Ted Kitchel was firing up long range shots from the corner. Watching Steve Alford and Keith Smart win it in New Orleans in 1987. Waiting for Clarksville’s Chuck Franz to be put in the game. Randy Wittman. Ray Tolbert. Don’t get me started. We’d be here for hours!
Sure. I love Indiana Football. But I also know my little southern third of the Hoosier state is a mighty cool place to be when Indiana Basketball is the one holding the handle of the mop when the cleaning of the floor is going on. I miss that.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson