BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Welcome to the Hoosier circus, the greatest show on Earth. A whopping 17,456 fans are treated to an afternoon of crazed entertainment, little of which has to do with basketball.
It starts in the pregame shoot-around, when the Indiana players wear goofy-looking red and white (or, as the Indiana cheerleaders are named, “crimson” and “cream”), vertically-striped warmup pants that are sold to the public for a tidy sum of $140. This clown-like effect isn’t exactly reduced by the fact that a man walks around Assembly Hall on stilts throughout the game wearing a much longer version of the same pants.
The show under the Big Top continues after tipoff. Fans in wild-animal outfits roam around the arena. The crimson and cream cheerleaders are, in a word, terrible. They can only handle one-word cheers – creative stuff like “fight” or “red” or “white.” And the fan favorite is the three-ring cheer. All the cheerleaders, the dancing team, a random student and the father of one of the cheerleaders – who, of course, was wearing the striped pants – run in a circle at midcourt with flags that spelled out INDIANA. On each side, spare cheerleaders form smaller versions of the ring. The pep band, clad in bow ties and red vests, plays a wild, brass-heavy, bouncy tune. And the imbecilic fans love it. You gotta wonder what they’re so excited about.
Maybe they’re relieved to be sheltered from Gloomington, Ind. They live in a state that proclaims itself to be the Crossroads of America – no one actually comes to stay, they just pass through.
The fans also gave an impassioned standing ovation at the end of the game. With the victory, the Hoosiers clinched a share of the Big Ten championship, and a ceremony followed the game. The fans said “Farwell” (that’s apparently how it’s spelled in Indiana, possibly inspired by a nice little street in Rogers Park) to seniors Dane Fife and Jarrad Odle, and second-year Indiana coach Mike Davis made a frightening declaration. “You’re the best fans in the Big Ten,” he said.
Yikes.
Assembly Hall is hardly a place to be taken seriously. The arena is beautiful, but between the clown uniforms, the wild-animal outfits, the three-ring act and the one-word sentence-speaking fans, the whole show is amusing and ridiculous.
The score of the game itself flew back and forth like a trapeze artist. Regarding Northwestern’s loss, no worries. Just a bump in the road, or more accurately, an icy patch on an otherwise well-plowed highway.
Joe Ziomek is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]
