He slumped on a folding chair in the bowels of Memorial Stadium, head down, wine-dark cap and jacket darkened further by the afternoon's rain. Words came out of him in slow, soft syllables, like air leaking from a balloon. The weight of everything that had seemed possible pressed down on him like an invisible yoke.
Tom Allen, 2019, after Michigan 39, Indiana 14?
No.
Bill Mallory, 1986, after Michigan 38, Indiana 14.
And now you see it, do you not?
You see what Mallory was up against, what Lee Corso was up against, what Cam Cameron and Terry Hoeppner and all of them were up against, down where the southern Indiana hills blaze orange and yellow and crimson in the fall. It is institutional, what Indiana football is and was and seems always to have been. There have been some pretty good years and some better-than-pretty-good years and a whole lot of beige years, but in the end the mythical corner remains unturned.
You're still a school whose brand is basketball and whose true season begins, not ends, in November. You're still a school with one visit to the Rose Bowl in all its decades upon decades playing football in the fall.
And yet ...
And yet, it did seem possible this time, even for those of us who knew all the setup lines by heart. Allen brought an Indiana team to Saturday which had done things Indiana teams haven't done in decades, had instilled in it confidence and expectation. And waiting was a Michigan team that was good but not great -- a Michigan team that could be had if you caught it on the right Saturday.
And what better Saturday than the one before the Wolverines' great rivalry showdown with Ohio State?
Meanwhile Indiana had pushed No. 9 Penn State to the brink in Happy Valley a week ago, losing in the end by a touchdown. The Hoosiers were 7-3 for the first time since the Rose Bowl season 52 years ago, and were guaranteed a winning record for the first time in 12 years. And when they jumped out 7-0 and 14-7 on the Wolverines, it looked exactly like the dogfight all of the above seemed to promise.
And then ...
And then Michigan scored the last 32 points of the game, and it was just another blowout loss to somebody good.
And again we were reminded how stubborn culture can be, and what monumental lifting it takes to change it for keeps. Because this has been Indiana football all over for as long as memory holds, even in its bowl years: Good enough to beat the fair-to-middling teams, occasionally almost good enough to take down the heavyweights, but in the end ... not really.
It has been 33 years since that scene in the bowels of Memorial Stadium, but the tie that binds it to yesterday remains clearly delineated. I was a 31-year-old sportswriter then, and I am 64 years old now, but I can still see Mallory sitting there, still see that weight of dashed possibility. And I can remember how I led off my column that day.
Bill Mallory had thought he was done with these scenes forever ...
As Tom Allen did yesterday, no doubt. As Tom Allen did yesterday.
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