Even now, I can picture the poster in the basement of my childhood home. The red uniforms stood out brightly against the fake wood paneling of the wall, as did the shock of thick white hair on the most imposing man on the poster: coach Bob Knight.
It was a poster of the Indiana University (IU) men’s basketball team. One of my parents is an IU alum, but more than that, we were all born in Indiana, flat land of cornfields and quarries, churches and schoolhouses, often the punchline of other states’ jokes. It was home to legendary basketball programs at both the college and high school levels.
The IU men’s team just lost to Miami in the NCAA Tournament Round of 32, ending its basketball season this year. But for so many seasons, IU has and continues to dominate. What is it exactly about small towns that give rise to such big dreams, as well as such driven talent?
The 1986 film “Hoosiers” provides a window. A staple of my youth, I watched it instead of cartoons. It was “Ted Lasso” before “Ted Lasso,” a near Bible for rural Indiana living, where for so long, one of the only ways to distinguish yourself in the eyes of the rest of the nation was on a court or a field, and one of the only ways out was to achieve glory there.
James Wright’s 1959 poem “Autumn Begins in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio” is about high school football and the neighboring state Ohio, but some of the lines could easily be about IU basketball, with mothers “dying for love” and “proud fathers” whose sons “gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.” It’s the hope of a small town, placed heavily on very young shoulders.Sports remind us of youth and the potential we all might have had, a potential relived vicariously in athletes often not even old enough to vote. As Barbara Hershey’s character, teacher Myra Fleener, says in “Hoosiers”: “Every game my bother ever played was the most important thing that ever happened to this family.”
Written by Indiana-raised Angelo Pizzo, who also penned “Rudy,” and directed by Indiana-born David Anspaugh in his directorial debut, “Hoosiers” tells the story of a small-town Indiana boys’ basketball team who makes it to the state championship in a “barn burner” game. The film, starring Gene Hackman and Dennis Hooper, was inspired by the true story of the 1954 Milan High School champions.This town doesn’t like change much,” Hackman, as new and controversial coach Norman Dale, learns when he takes over coaching. Like Ted decades after him, though much more explosive than the genial-to-a-fault character, Norman is doubted, challenged and mocked by players and men — mostly men — of the town alike. (The film and its title, referring to the IU mascot and the name for someone from Indiana, get a shout-out this season in “Ted Lasso.”) But while Norman doesn’t tape up a “Believe” sign in the dreary locker room, he gets the town on his side — and rooting for their own.
Because a good thing the town has is basketball. Sometimes, it feels like the only thing, a positive association, especially for places often connected with negativity. Witness the outpouring of love and support for Joe Burrow, who was raised where my son was born, an Appalachian town previously most often in the national news (frequently in broadly-painted, clichéd stories) for poverty.