Why Indian fans are excited about first-ever national rugby championship

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The Indiana Hoosiers defeated the Miami Hurricanes 27-21 this week to win the school’s first NCAA Division I college football national championship. Any school would be delighted to receive this title and take home the trophy that comes with it. But I will explain in this article why it has a different impact on IU students, alumni, employees, and other supporters. Before I do that, I’ll first reveal how I know this.

The best five years of my life were spent in Bloomington. I have a master’s degree and a Ph.D. Coming from this extraordinary university, the heartbeat of this beloved community. Indiana University subsequently awarded me two Distinguished Alumni Awards. The university awarded its first Bicentennial Medal to Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb in July 2019; that same month, I became the second recipient.

Since receiving my PhD 23 years ago, I have returned to campus many times to deliver lectures and keynotes, including a 2024 Martin Luther King Jr. Day address. One of my favorite trips back was in 2011 to celebrate the centenary of the Brotherhood. Ten visionary black male students founded Kappa Alpha Psi there, a fraternity that now has more than 150,000 members. I’m proud to be one of them. These are just a few of the countless reasons why I have long been one of Indiana University’s proudest alumni.

Here are my memories of football games from the late 90s and early 2000s: Wow, oops! On Saturday morning, before a home game, a large number of people showed up tailgating outside our stadium. I’m often one of them. Those parties can be just as much fun there as they are at schools that win Power 4 conference titles and national championships. But our pregame tailgate had an embarrassing feature: Very few people actually made it into Memorial Stadium to watch the game. When I say “very few,” I mean at least two-thirds of the stadium seats were empty. I think it is rude and unsupportive for student-athletes to eat and drink in the parking lot for hours and then skip games – therefore, I opt for tailgate-only experiences no more than four times per season. The rest of the time I was inside cheering.

Even though IU’s tailgating culture has long been under the radar, it still has amazing fans. I used to scream with them at basketball games. During my most recent visit to campus, President Pam Wheaton graciously hosted me in her exquisite suite in the iconic auditorium for a Big Ten game. I was immediately reminded that my beloved alma mater has an exciting, inspiring and loyal group of basketball fans. Winning five men’s basketball national championships, 22 Big Ten titles and 41 NCAA tournament appearances (eight Final Fours) has proven to be exciting. It’s not so much to suffer so much defeat on the football field year after year.

For the past two seasons, ESPN commentators and other sports broadcasters have been annoyingly repeating that Indiana has long been the losingest major college football team of all time; I’ll leave that to others to fact-check. Going from a long stretch of underachievement to going 11-2 and making the playoffs last year, then a Big Ten title, a perfect 16-0 this year, and winning a national championship are just part of the reason IU alums and others are so excited. Oh, and Fernando Mendoza, our first Heisman Trophy winner, and Curt Cignetti, an inspiring head coach who accelerated the growth of our football program in just two seasons.

To immediately go from (reportedly) the worst ever to the undisputed best in college football is certainly exciting. That’s not the only reason Hoosiers are so excited, however. Our university excels in many areas. The academic programs there are outstanding; many, including those I graduated from, are consistently ranked at the top nationally. The university employs many of the world’s best professors and researchers. Its connection to Indiana is deep, measurable, and in many ways transformative. Surrounded by beautiful tulip sample gates, the Bloomington campus is a vibrant and exciting place to be a student. It feels like a great university because it was, is, and always will be. The fact that it is the birthplace of the greatest college fraternity needs no confirmation.

There is finally a football program that matches all the other great things about Indiana University, which is why those of us who have been through this place are so excited about our first-ever college football national championship. Greatness deserves greatness. Thanks to Cignetti and his staff, Mendoza and every student-athlete on the team, IU is finally achieving football greatness. They give me and others even more reasons to be extremely proud of a great American university that excels in academics, public outreach, athletics and many other areas. My conclusion: Hoo ho ho Sears!

Shaun Harper is a professor and provost professor in the Department of Education, Business, and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His latest book is titled Let’s Talk DEI: Productive Disagreement on America’s Most Polarizing Topic.