Today’s Tidbit... Images of Indiana Football Past
I’ve lived 52 of my 68 years in Big Ten country, and this is only the second morning I woke up thinking, “Indiana won the Big Ten football championship yesterday.” To honor this rare and august occasion, I’m posting images of Indiana football from yearbooks past.
I did not comb through old Hoosier yearbooks this morning. Instead, I collected these over the last decade as I combed through old yearbooks looking for images to illustrate elements of long-ago football. Those images worth saving get labeled and saved in a folder for future searching and reference.
Here are some images representing the best (and some of the worst) of Indiana football’s past.
We kick off with the start of the 1904 Indiana-Purdue game played on a checkerboard field marked atop a baseball infield in Indianapolis.
When Jim Thorpe stops at practice to offer punting pointers, Hoosiers listen.
Before everyone numbered players’ jerseys, Indiana added letters on the backs of their starting linemen, spelling I-N-D-I-A-N-A.
Coach Harlan “Pat” Page taught punt returners to catch the ball by dropping footballs from a plane. His unorthodox approach resulted in a 14-24-3 record in Bloomington.
Bo McMillan was the last Hoosier coach to win an outright Big Ten championship when he did so in 1947. Also, he and Curt Cignetti are the only Hoosier football coaches with winning records since Ewald Steihm left Indiana in 1921.
During the era that nearly every team had TV numbers on the sides of their helmets, Indiana also placed their logo on the front and back. They may have been the only team in America to sport the four-cornered look.
While that’s about as much positive Indiana football talk as I can handle, what they have accomplished is impressive. The Hoosiers went 3-9 in 2023 under Tom Allen with wins over 1-10 FCS Indiana State, 2-10 Akron, and 7-6 Wisconsin. Last year under Cignetti, they were 10-2, losing only to national champion Ohio State in the regular season and to Notre Dame in the first round of the playoffs.
NIL and the transfer portal have changed college football in ways we may not like. Still, Curt Cignetti and his staff worked under the same rules as everyone else and produced a program turnaround that is among the most impressive in football history.
With the holidays approaching, now is the time to add one or more books to your holiday lists. Make yourself and others merry.
Coach Pat Page surely perfected the aerial game.
Cignetti is the man and I have quite an affinity with him as he was on Saban’s Alabama staff some years ago. What he has done at IU is awesome and I’d also add his last school JMU is also in the playoffs. When JMU first entered the FBS the NCAA has a rule that a team cannot be a Bowl team for the first 2 years and he had JMU undefeated heading into their last game against App St. college game day was even there which shows how big of a deal it was. Well, they lost the game to App. St. But the NCAA relented and allowed them to go “Bowling”. Cignetti left in the off season to IU and history is still writing itself. He has balls I’ll say that. IU might surprise this year. I wouldn’t get too excited yet as while the win against Ohio St. was huge. The Buckeyes have played a very soft schedule. Anything can happen in the CFP and as far as coaching is concerned IU has one of the best right now.