I know that an informed citizenry counts on us newshounds to get to the bottom of things, so to the bottom of things I herewith get.
Many of you remain dismayed that a football season that began with such promise – experienced quarterback, two-headed running back, No. 2 ranking in the polls – has ended in an invitation to – try not to cry – the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl.
Many of you are equally aghast that Indiana, until this season the losingest team in college football history, is now the No. 1 team in the nation, having vanquished the abominable Buckeyes in the Big Ten Championship game.
The explanation for the topsy-turvy-ness of this college football season is hiding in plain sight, if you know your sports history.
In 1984, under cover of darkness, 15 moving vans transported the Baltimore Colts, jocks, socks, and Pagel (the QB), to Indianapolis, where they’ve trotted, galloped and cantered ever since. Memories of that heist apparently inspired the movers and shakers down I-69 in Bloomington to pull a similar caper. In this instance, though, what was arranged was a swap rather than an abandonment.
Specifically, the Indiana University Hoosiers and the Penn State Nittany Lions switched unis, kind of like when Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich traded families in the 1970s.
How else to account for the fact that the Hoosiers, who hadn’t won a Big Ten championship since 1967, have a good shot at this year’s national championship, while the storied Nittany Lions have a one-way ticket to Palookaville, which is to say, the Bronx in late December?
Suggested serenade for those planning to attend: Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl, Doo-dah! doo-dah!/ Santa gave us a lump of coal, oh, doo-dah day!
Why would Penn State agree to trade places with the Hoosiers? Obvi. The guy pulling the strings, Penn State Athletic Director Pat Kraft, got not one, not two, but all three of his degrees from IU. Those loyalties run deep, my friends. Go Quakers (got my last degree from Penn)!
As a consolation prize, henceforth we will be seeing Hoosier basketball in Nittany Lion blue-and-white. Here’s what that means, for you sports non-historians:
Indiana: 22 Big Ten Championships, 8 Final Fours, 5 NCAA Championships
Penn State: 0 Big Ten Championships, 1 Final Four appearance, 0 NCAA Championships.
In other words, Indiana, long a basketball powerhouse, will now be known as a football school and Penn State, first and foremost a gridiron juggernaut, will now be known for its hoopsters. Pro tip: If you go to a game at the Jordan Center this winter, beware of flying chairs.
And speaking of Bob Knight, the maniac who coached Hoosier basketball to its greatest glory, I’m told that he called journeying to Penn State for a game “a camping trip — there’s nothing for about 100 miles.”
IU voted against making Penn State the 11th member of the Big Ten.
S’mores, anyone?
One other positive to emerge from this fiasco of a football season: Pat Kraft has found his one true love. From Kraft’s news conference on the anointing of Matt Campbell as our new football savior:
- I needed a partner that I had trust and belief…
- it was a late-night phone call for the two of us…
- why did it take so long for us to find each other?
- He was perfect. We connected on so many levels.
- “Oh, my God, he’s the guy.”
Sweet, no? Sweeter still: Campbell’s compensation package.
**
Here’s the other thing I’ve gotten to the bottom of: the Welch Building fiasco.
Many of you have been wondering how the brand-spanking-new $128 million Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building could settle two inches, develop a crack that stretches from the second to the fifth floor and thus be “closed until further notice.”
My explanation, arrived at while I lay in a hypnagogic state induced by a bad head cold over the weekend: sugar cone crumbs.
A couple of years ago, President Bendapudi’s team was crafting the university’s “roadmap for the future.” Among the goals: create “a sustainable future and business model that provides room to innovate and to respond to unexpected challenges in agile ways.”
Over at the Penn State Creamery, meanwhile, the dipping of several hundred thousand cones per year went on as ever. As anyone who has experienced the heartbreak of cone failure can attest, this crumbly confection, made to hold many times its weight in Happy Happy Joy Joy, is a fragile thing. In the hurly-burly of dipping, especially on game days when the line stretches to Outer Boalsburg, a certain percentage of cones fracture and must be tossed.
A member of the roadmap team, doubtless while in a hypnagogic state induced by a bad head cold, pondered the cost of all the construction on campus and all that cone wastage and had an epiphany: An agile and innovative way to create a sustainable future would be to grind the discarded cones to dust and use them as mortar in all the masonry work. The Welch Building would be the demonstration project.
All went well until the building settled.
Per Coach Knight, Welch’s displaced persons might want to pitch tents.
S’mores anyone?
Thanks to Bloomington-based fellow columnist Mike Leonard for some of the factoids and ideas in this column, responsibility for which, however, lies entirely with me.
