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Antwaan Randle El college highlights

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by troop loop, Jul 23, 2012.

  1. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    It sounds almost comical, but I still regret not seeing IU-Minnesota in 99 when I had a Saturday layover in the Twin Cities. Needless to say, he's the only reason I feel that way.
     
  2. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    I thought highly of Bill Mallory. Enjoyed covering his teams during my days at the IDS, enjoyed watching them over his career. He took a program that was pretty bad -- 0-11 his first year -- and made it respectable. Had 7 winning seasons in a 9-year stretch in the middle of his career, and is by far the most successful coach in IU history.

    But the last couple of years, they were just not really competitive. It was time for a good man to step aside.

    Cam Cameron was, on paper, a good hire. IU grad, enthusiastic, young, offensive genius. But he had never even been a coordinator, and his lack of game management skills really showed. The big blow for him came the night of that Iowa game everyone references -- his right-hand man, Pete Schmidt, passed away. Schmidt appeared to do a lot of the game management, and after he took his leave of absence, the games often looked like a fire drill, especially late. Things began to turn around in Randle El's senior year after a rough start, and that team was one phantom holding call in Happy Valley away from being in a bowl.

    Unfortunately, the "Bill Mallory was fired too soon" crowd was out of the woodwork before the ink was dry on Cam Cameron's contract. Half the fanbase wouldn't give Cameron a chance because he wasn't Mallory (and, seriously, blamed him for "ruining" prized QB prospect Earl Haniford, who was somewhere between bad and awful). That same half was complaining that "a true dropback passer" Tommy Jones was the real stud quarterback and Randle El should be playing running back or receiver. It's hard to really get excited about a team when all the fans are fighting with each other over things far beyond their control.
     
  3. westcoastvol

    westcoastvol Active Member

    Five times as many people will click on that link and watch it than the number of people who actually saw him play on tv.
     
  4. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    My IDS time was the halcyon days of Bill Mallory, so I'm one of the few student reporters who covered a winning team. Mallory was a great guy, but, yes, he just couldn't sustain what he had. Basically, he was able to get a few, rare, high-profile in-state recruits (Dave Schnell, Anthony Thompson) to stay home, and they worked out great. Unfortunately, he lost others, and those in-state, high-profile recruits he did get (Earl Haniford, anyone?) flopped hard. IU got lucky getting Randle El in that I believe it was among the few schools that would allow him to keep playing quarterback.

    I think Terry Hoeppner would have been successful in at least getting Indiana to consistent seven-win seasons. He was a great fit: Indiana-born and raised, successful pedigree as a head coach (with Roethlisberger at Miami of Ohio), and someone who truly believed IU was a plum job. Alas, Hoeppner died after only two years on the job, and the prospects for Indiana football seemed to die with him.
     
  5. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    I really thought Hoeppner would've gotten Indiana to where Minnesota or Northwestern have been -- consistent 6-7 win seasons, maybe have 4-5 wins in a down year every 3-4 years. He was the perfect fit for the job -- charismatic, a pretty solid football coach -- but his health issues and subsequent passing really set the IU program back years. I'm not sure they've hit a homerun with Kevin Wilson, but I do believe they'll at least be competitive once he changes the culture.
     
  6. I'm not sure the Hoosier fans showed stupidity in attendance.

    The team was bad. Real bad.

    I grew up going to games when Mallory was coach. I attended the school during the Randle-El years.

    Yes, the team was horrible the last two years under Mallory. He was rightfully fired. But I also remember Cameron's first game, and how the team came out in black uniforms with the slick new logo amidst all the fanfare of a new era dawning.

    And then promptly got blasted by Kentucky.

    The team never had a winning record with Randle-El there. Hard to bring fans in when you don't win. Add to that, the school kept jacking up ticket prices since nobody was showing up.

    My parents -- who had season tickets going back to the 60s and saw some truly bad football over the years -- finally gave them up after a lot of the people they spent years sitting next to began disappearing.

    Even with Randle-El's play, you knew the outcome of most games. Why pay extra?

    Much better to sit in the tailgate area across the street next to a keg.
     
  7. sportbook

    sportbook Member

    Randle El's senior year they finished 5-6 overall and 4-4 in the Big Ten. They won at Wisconsin and Michigan State and beat Purdue. The 1999 team finished 4-7 and lost to Michigan, 34-31, and Purdue, 31-24. Those teams were actually pretty competitive and if they would have played the non-conference schedule IU plays now they would have gone to multiple bowls. Instead, they were playing North Carolina, NC State, Kentucky, Utah, and other BCS conference schools.
     
  8. Just trying to point out that it's hard to get excited about 4-7, 3-8 and 5-6 football teams.

    I pretty much consider those bad records, thus bad teams. There were plenty of drubbings during that time to go along with the close games. And my memory is fuzzy, but I don't think Utah back then was the Utah of today. A utes team that went 3-8 or 4-something the year before came to Bloomington and beat them in what was supposed to be a somewhat sure non-conference win.

    Anyway, the point was that winning brings fans. They couldn't win. I remember ticket prices kept on climbing. No hard data, but a lot of people quit paying. Watching losing football just wasn't that exciting.

    I remember that Utah game -- if you were a student without season tix, a single game ticket was something like $25 or something. Maybe that's the norm, but I thought back then it was pretty outrageous to watch sub .500 football teams.

    My folks' tickets -- pretty high up -- were reaching into the $70 and $80 range or more per game by the time they cancelled.

    $70 for 4-7 football???

    No. Thanks.
     
  9. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Since it is Bill Mallory appreciation night, why did those teams have a pentagram shoulder patch?
     
  10. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Play college football...
     
  11. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    You're slightly off -- they wore the blacks in the 2nd home game of the year (and 3rd game of the season). Cameron was trying to introduce black to the color scheme, and rightly said after the game was over "we looked like Louisville, not Indiana." Those uniforms, apparently, are still buried somewhere in storage in Bloomington. That 1997 team had no talent.

    IU was pretty competitive during Cameron's tenure, but never could get over the hump. Blew a two-touchdown lead in the last few minutes to Phil Rivers and NC State in ARE's junior year (in part thanks to a defensive holding flag thrown about 3 years after the play by an ACC official that kept NCSU's last possession alive), had Randle El throw a perfect 65-yard Hail Mary to beat Tom Brady/Anthony Thomas and Michigan, only to have Jerry Dorsey drop the ball.

    In Randle El's senior year, they did lose to Utah -- but that was the foundation of the undefeated Utah team a couple of years later (and did so because they didn't line up correctly on a 2-point conversion that would've tied the game) -- that team beat USC in a bowl game. Lost to Penn State in Happy Valley when the winning TD was taken away by a questionable holding call. Turn those 2 games around, they're 7-4. They throttled Wisconsin 63-32 in Camp Randall. They were one of the top 20 teams in the country by season's end, but couldn't ovecome their slow start, and Cameron was unceremoniously hair-trigger fired by an AD who then conducted the worst coaching search in the history of college football and brought on three years of Gerry DiNardo.

    IU's ever-competent ADs at the time backed them into some awful schedules -- they were playing at least 2 BCS-level schools out of their three non-conference games each year. Had they played the schedules they play now -- 4 OOC games -- they'd have made at least 3 bowls during Randle El's tenure. They were not terrible. They had a terrible defense and the game management was questionable at best at times, but they were ridiculously fun to watch.
     
  12. I guess we could debate the merits of the team back then forever. To me, what you mentioned is a fair number of events going the opposite way to get them above .500. And again, I may be off on some games trying to remember this stuff from 10-plus years ago, but I also recall some just dreadful games, as well.

    Anyway, my main thing was just responding to the whole Hoosier fans showing their "stupidity" by not attending.

    I never really heard any anger about the Mallory and Knight firings from season ticket holders regarding football. Instead, the team couldn't win. Starting with Mallory's last few years, it became a tradition of losing.

    Ticket prices went up. Fans got tired of paying those prices to watch them lose. I don't think that shows stupidity, but smart business sense, actually. I remember that school begging people to come out to the games, but there just wasn't any incentive.

    This may be me just totally misremembering, but I think the school even talked about bringing John Cougar Mellenkamp to the stadium for a show if everyone filled the stadium for one game.

    And I think they did this during a year when Ohio State -- the one garaunteed sell out -- wasn't coming to town.

    But all that might just be complete fantasy from me. Can't remember everything perfectly.

    If they win, fans show up. Most people want to see winning, not great plays in a loss.
     
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