An open letter to IU Fans

First appeared on March 18, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Dear Hoosier Nation,

If you don’t mind, I’d like to take my Part Time Pretend Sports Columnist hat off for a moment and talk to you one Indiana basketball fan to another. I grew up in a house where Indiana Basketball took center stage. I saw Knight toss the chair and remember the shirt I was wearing when Keith Smart beat Syracuse. I grabbed my socks at the foul line in Junior High School and screamed at the television while Ted Valentine fouled our four best players out of the National Semifinal in 1992 against Duke. I was in the Georgia Dome when we flirted with banner number six and will maintain forever that Calbert Cheaney was the best college basketball player I ever saw.

I was also in the stands two weeks ago when 17,000 booed the Hoosiers during the Iowa game and read with great horror what happened to Tom Crean’s son later that week. We’re better than this. For as long as I can remember, Hoosier Nation has demanded excellence, but there are boundaries.

I understand these boundaries are invisible and thus really hard to see, but Americans still seem steadfastly determined to push them further than ever before. Two weeks ago, Hoosier Nation obliterated them by booing 18 and 19 year old kids over a coach. Booing a group of kids who turned down numerous other schools in order to play for you is counterproductive and just plain dumb.

And, if it’s true some high school students chanted “Tom Crean sucks” when his son took the floor during a Sectional game, we should all stop following sports right now. Cancel the Big Ten Network, box our gear up and ship it off to some needy Third World country like the Central African Republic or Kentucky.

It’s true the actions of a mass of high school students have forever been largely amateurish and entirely unpredictable, but these are presumably the children of Indiana fans. The same sons and daughters who’ve heard their parents cursing Tom Crean in the kitchen, in the car, on the phone and between the pews.

As far as fake nations go, we used to be a standard bearer. Taking our candy striped pants and down home Hoosier values from sea to shining sea to watch our beloved team play. All the while laughing, smiling and remaining gracious in the face of back-handed compliments like “I’ve always said, somebody has to farm.”

Now we risk spiraling into some dark chasm of ill mannered temperament. A freefall destined to bottom out amidst the doldrums of sportsmanship, stranding us in a place inhabited by the worst the sports world can offer (see fans of the Red Sox and Ohio State Football). I’m fairly certain Thomas Paine had never seen an Indiana game when he wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls”. Still, no quote is more fitting for Hoosier Nation at this moment.

If you don’t like Tom Crean, rise up. Rise up and send Fred Glass a sharp-toned email. Rise up and write a letter to your local editor. Rise up and post your scathing thoughts to a message board hiding behind the handle ‘Hoosierdaddy87’. Rise up and shout it out on sports talk radio. Rise up and refuse to go to games.

Whatever you do, leave 18 and 19 year old kids out of the equation. Show the rest of the world what Hoosier Nation is about. Show them we bring a lot to the Sports World Table, including a rich history of tradition, sportsmanship and, above all else, class.

Yours in fandom,

Eric Williams


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

March Madness is many things to many people

First appeared on March 20, 2012

March Madness is many things to many people. For basketball fans it is the greatest time of the year because the ubiquity of buzzer beating plays injects itself into the national consciousness faster than a congressman can tap your foot under a restroom stall. For haters of power programs, and fans of those ugly, plain clothed teams who didn’t get asked to the dance, it’s a time to rejoice that David’s stone was true once again as you go online and order a Norfolk State Basketball T-Shirt.

For the average part-time pretend sports columnist it’s a great time as well if for the simple fact the tournament produces such incredible stories. Turns of event that allow you to prattle on about nothing of note all the while stating what is fairly obvious in as many different ways as you possibly can think of; and you do it with pride because this is what your readers have come to expect of you.

It’s a prognosticators playground for they, even those who know nothing about basketball, have a 1 in 64 chance of being right. For Bill in Purchasing it’s a chance to remind people to listen to him because he was, at one time, a stand out varsity player; while others only see him as a bitter pill who has succumbed to both the jagged hands of Father Time and one dozen too many Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins. And while these can wreck his frame and rob the “quickest first step in Wabash County”, they cannot harm his pride.

Drama, upsets, the same 5 commercials looping constantly, March Madness is also a television station manager’s dream. The Genie that is the NCAA Tournament is so mesmerizing it has ridden its magic carpet straight into the Oval Office. And as Obama took time away from solving Mid-East peace to share his picks with the world, it was a chance for the President to both show his non-political side while also pandering to the little-sought-after demographic of former basketball players turned couch potatoes.

For one month we become both zombie and robot, slaves one and all to the melodious voice of Jim Nantz or the herky-jerky Kevin Harlan. Only in March can Gus Johnson make something as innocuous as a twelve year old filling Gatorade cups behind the bench sound like the greatest thing since Neil Armstrong placed his size 11 down upon the surface of the Moon.

But as with everything in life, except bunny rabbits and free beer, there is a dark underbelly to March Madness. Fans of Missouri and Duke are suffering through March Sadness after they made tournament history by becoming the first pair of number 2 seeds to fall in the same year. The finality of the tournament can drop you like a steel hammer. That head-splitting moment when March Madness becomes “April Malaise” leading you to torch your own bracket; frustrated that it wasn’t the best of 6 million submitted online to ESPN.

Or it’s a warrior like Robbie Hummel giving the fight of his life before going down. And it’s the sight of her son dropping his sword for the final time that moves a mother to tears. Yes, it’s the rare combination of beauty and tragedy; Broadway meets testosterone.

But until this moment comes, the Tournament holds great promise. So your team wins a game at a very late hour and you go in and kiss your sons on the forehead as they sleep because that is the only thing that can possibly add to your happiness at that moment. And what a sweet moment indeed.

© 2012 Eric Walker Williams

Coming up 47 feet short of National Championship nothing to sneeze at

First appeared on April 7th, 2010
in The Lebanon Reporter

Somebody get Blue II some aspirin. Apparently in an effort to forget Butler’s loss Monday night he lapped up a bit too much of Duke’s celebratory champagne from the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium. So much so they found him passed out Tuesday morning on the front lawn of the Governor’s mansion.


So the Butler Bulldogs are not National Champions. Despite their heartbreaking loss to Duke, there are still so many feel good stories when it comes to Butler that you can’t fit them all into one column. I had decided, in the classic style of the part-time pretend sports columnist who takes himself too seriously, to take the easy way out and write the all-encompassing “Despite the loss, let not this Butler team be forgotten” piece. You know, the one peppered with words like “epic” and “improbable” all the while waxing poetic about Butler being a team of destiny. But that seems like a fairly obvious thing to do now.

I can’t begin to tell you how epic this column was going to be had Butler won however. Here’s a sampling of the flowery prose you could have expected: “Fifty years from now, when the Final Four returns to Indianapolis, officials will once again trot out basketball legends from bygone eras. Small children will look on with wonderment as an aged Gordon Heyward fondly recalls the soft-spoken, baby-faced coach who proved to his players that dreams can come true. The adults will whisper and scoff as if there were no way Butler could have really won it all.”

But alas even Heyward, with as great as he was during the Tournament, couldn’t get a half-court shot that would have won it all in front of 70,000 to fall. And so now I have nothing to write about. Lack of respect from those at the “Four Letter” (yes I mean you Digger) was one possible angle, but even that is somewhat understandable considering Butler’s advancing this far was never in the plans. Surely even Bulldog Head Coach Brad Stevens would admit it was really never in his plans either.

Sure Butler was given some recognition during the season with rankings in the Top 15. And, yes the Selection Committee likely felt charitable handing a 5 seed to a Mid Major. But once the ball was tossed up in the Tournament, the experts forewarned of the smothering 2-3 zone of Syracuse, K-State’s size and Michigan State’s experience, yet all the while Butler simply played harder, smarter and better than all those teams.

There are just so many things this team did to win that stat sheets don’t chart. But they belong to history now and history will remember them as an unselfish team with relentless desire and an uncommon understanding of basketball’s fundamentals. Despite the loss, history should define these players as champions and their rare attributes as the “Butler way”.

But alas, in the face of such an incredible run and heartbreaking loss, this column does not belong to Butler. This is more about one of the greatest NCAA Tournaments I’ve ever seen (and this is saying a lot considering Indiana wasn’t playing). More to the point this is about the NCAA proposing changes to their tournament in the face of one of the most dramatic on record.

Is it simply human nature that man feels compelled to change things when they appear to be at their best? Color Television to HD. The two-slot toaster to four, then six. Bigger is not always better (see Indiana Class Basketball for proof). So while you are firing off that health care letter to your local senator, throw in something about keeping the NCAA Tournament field at 64. Maybe then we’ll all get something worthwhile.