Optical illusion, or ...

 Tom Allen's endgame took another weary step yesterday, as his Indiana football team lost on Senior Day to the indifferent Michigan State Spartans, 24-21. The lowlight came with two seconds to play, when Chris Freeman missed a 48-yard field goal that would have forced overtime.

It was another puzzling, disheartening, slain-by-their-own-hand day for the Hoosiers, who outgained Michigan State 402-317, including 210-72 on the ground. But they also turned it over once, committed six penalties for 60 yards, tackled like lawn inflatables and, yes, got hosed on a couple of calls there at the end.

Which wouldn't have mattered without all the other stuff.

It left the usual IU diehards once again calling for Allen's head, citing his 3-23 conference record of late among other failures. One of those were photos taken right before kickoff, which showed such a nearly deserted Memorial Stadium you wondered if you'd missed the memo about Come As An Empty Seat Day.

Those sorts of visuals usually are the last thing you see before Coach gets pushed out of the airplane. Even if sometimes they're an optical illusion or at least partly one.

Not saying that's the case here, but I can think of a couple of factors besides another Tom Allen season circling the drain that likely played a role in all the emptiness. One, the students are on Thanksgiving break and have scattered to the four winds. Two, it's been my experience on game days in Bloomington that IU fans have always been notoriously late to the party. 

I can recall one time in particular, early in the season, when I was at an IU game not as a working schlub but a civilian. The group I was with was doing the tailgate thing in the parking lot, and when gametime arrived, no one moved. We all just kept tailgating, as did a whole bunch of folks around us.

Occasionally a muffled roar would drift our way, indicating the Hoosiers had just done something good. All that did was provide an excuse to crack another beer. I think we finally drifted into the stadium about halftime.

So maybe there was some of that going on prior to kickoff, and after.

I say this not to defend Allen's dying regime, but because I saw some photos of another Big Ten stadium yesterday. As at IU, there were vast swaths of empty seats. As at IU, it was Senior Day. And as at IU, one reason for the empty seats was the students had left for Thanksgiving break.

This was not a signal that the end was near for the home team coach, however.

That's because the stadium in question was Ryan Field, home of the Northwestern Wildcats.

Who in July fired their longtime head coach, Pat Fitzgerald, because of a hazing scandal. It threw a program that had gone 1-11 the previous season into turmoil.

Yesterday, Northwestern beat Purdue to become bowl eligible at 6-5. And that came in the same week interim head coach David Braun not only was not fired, but was promoted to permanent head coach.

In other words, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a nearly empty stadium is not a death knell.