My first Indiana Hoosiers football game cost $5.
It was September 2005, and unlike the battle to get into Assembly Hall to see basketball, the school was desperate to get its students to cheer on football. Most Saturdays, students would turn up to tailgate — then just stay in the parking lot.
I quickly learned why. At my first game, the Hoosiers were playing a tiny school from outside New Orleans, Nicholls State. Hurricane Katrina had hit just a few days earlier, and most of the opposing players’ families were now homeless. Nicholls State had no running water, and the players’ uniforms had been washed away in the flood waters, so they played in the Hoosiers’ practice gear.
And Indiana still nearly lost. It took a last-second rally to finish off the Colonels 35-31, and by that point, the student section had only a few kids including me left. Most of us were rooting for Nicholls State to pull out a feel-good victory, too.
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