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

Merry Christmas from the Sports World

First appeared on December 18, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

For you Christmas lost its meaning in third grade when the Santa outside 3D got mad at you for crushing the pack of cigarettes he’d stashed in his front pocket. And as his profane string of insults throttled your virgin ears, they arrived riding the strangest of smells.

A toxic potpourri that would remain undiscovered until many years later, where at a gathering of so called friends in a dark college apartment, full of crushed cigarettes and hormone-powered profanities, you found yourself bitten by the Wild Turkey for the first time.

Today the sermons sound simple and ring true. Speeches about caring for others and giving to the less fortunate, but for you Christmastime remains frozen in time. It’s the season to wish for the things you don’t have. Things that seem within reach but for a variety of reasons remain at arm’s length. And so you still compose lists in your head, your own personal get back for that rag tag Santa who shattered the world as you once knew it.

Those in the sports world profess to be selfless human beings, but we know deep inside the depths of their souls, in a place no probing journalist has ever found, lurks an ugly Grinch-like desire to lie, steal and cheat their way to the top of Mount Crumpit. Facts are facts, you don’t get to the top without a little of the green guy in you.

With this in mind, coaches and teams are not above wishing for things that could make them better. Tom Crean’s list begins, “Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is someone taller than 6’8 who can play.” Meanwhile, eighty miles to the north, Matt Painter is up late baking gingerbread cookies to leave out with his short note, the one asking for a chance to play North Florida again.

John Calipari’s list is a bit longer. He wants an undefeated season for his Kentucky Wildcats capped by a National Championship, and he’d like it to arrive as soon as possible, that way he has enough time to enjoy it before the NCAA strips it away. Indiana fans want a chance to play the Wildcats again, while Kentucky’s faithful have written the North Pole hoping for things like some new socks, a professional sports franchise other than UK’s basketball team and more front porch space.

Frank Vogel wants his team to play hard, fight every night and scrap their way into the Playoffs. Apparently his list includes an opening round bloodbath at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers as well. Meanwhile, every Pacer fan on earth wants them to lose every game by 50 and stink their way into the lottery where they might luck out and pick up one of Kentucky’s bench players.

The Colts are asking Santa to bring Andrew Luck a pair of glasses so that he might see the opposing team’s secondary while Reggie Wayne is hoping to find a new pair of knees under the tree on Christmas morning.

For Cubs fans Christmas came early with the signing of free agent Jon Lester and for Lester’s kids, well there’s really no reason for them to make out a Christmas list now is there? But Cubs fans have been down this road before, they know it’s too soon to talk World Championship. This means they’ll just bide their time and wait for the wheels, or Lester’s arm, to fall off before their season crashes and burns up in a fiery, catastrophic and somewhat all too familiar, death.

Merry Christmas to you and yours and may God bless us everyone (even the Kentucky fans).

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams