Perrino says Damarlo Belcher and Tandon Doss make up the best receiving tandem in the Big 10.

Nico Perrino

Football

Every football team sets goals at the beginning of each year. It is an important part of preseason preparation, if not the most important part, because it gives the players an idea of what success at the end of the season would be. It goes without saying, however, that goals are different for every team depending on the type of program you play for: For Florida the goal as of late has been winning a BCS National Championship; for Navy the goal might be beating Notre Dame; for the ESPN College Game day crew their goal might be a successful attempt at propelling Tim Tebow to a level of divinity in the public eye by the end of the season. Whatever the goals are- you get it…- they are all different and the path to successfully accomplishing them is never the same.

As self-help guru, Brian Tracy, once said, “if you don’t set goals for yourself, you are doomed to work to achieve the goals of someone else,” and being that it’s not realistic for Indiana to adopt the same goals as Flordia (because let’s be honest with ourselves here….) and Navy (because they don’t play Notre Dame, Duh), their goal since their 2007 “Play 13” campaign has been just that: to “Play 13.”

That Goal -set for his 2007 team by coach Terry Hoeppner just before his death due to complications with brain cancer- has remained for his successor, Bill Lynch, but has yet to be achieved since that turbulent year when they were awarded a bid to the Insight Bowl and lost to Oklahoma State. Since that season Indiana has gone 7-17 and has not even come close to their goal of “playing 13.” Although drastically improving since last year, Indiana’s season was not a success according to their pre-season goals. Now any good coach will re-evaluate his team’s goals as the season progresses and new goals are within reach due to unforeseen success or unintended failure, but it’s hard to imagine that Indiana achieved any midseason, re-evaluated, goals either –especially since they didn’t beat Purdue- so what can be learned/taken from a season that for the most part was a sheer failure?

Here are five things I learned from the Hoosiers’ 4-8 season:

#1: The Fans will come out

• Twice this year Indiana sold-out it’s student section and was forced to add additional student seating to accommodate the demand. For the end of the year, “this means nothing,” game against Purdue Indiana sold 15,000 student tickets –something that hasn’t been done since the 90’s.

• Also, Indiana’s nail-biter against Michigan during week 4 was the second highest rated Big Ten game in ESPN2 history, drawing around 2.1 million viewers. The only game with more viewers? Illinois and Ohio States 2006 matchup.

#2: Big Ben Chappell can be a Big-Time Quarterback

• In his first full season as the Hoosiers’ starting quarterback junior Ben Chappell had a QB rating of 126.4 while completing 62.6% of his passes and throwing for 17 touchdowns and 15 interceptions. Now I understand that these numbers may not be all that spectacular, but having watched Chappell at the beginning of the season and at the end I saw a quarterback that has matured by leaps and bounds and has the potential to become a big-time player for the Hoosiers next year.

#3: Tandon Doss is the Hoosiers’ playmaker:

• I’ve said it all season, Tandon Doss is the Hoosiers’ go-to-guy and my sentiments were confirmed when he was named the All-Big Ten WR this past week. Couple Doss with Demarlo Belcher (#88) and I think you’ve got the best WR tandem in the Big Ten lining up for the Hoosiers.

• An IU Athletic Department Press Release encapsulates Doss’ season best:

Doss led the team in receptions in nine games and receiving yards eight times, and he paced the team with 962 yards, 77 receptions, five touchdowns and 80.2 yards per game. The Indianapolis native finished second in the Big Ten and 27th nationally in yards per game and third in the league and tied for 21 nationally in catches per game (6.64).

His 962 yards were 14th in the country and the second most for an underclassman. Doss closed out the year second on IU’s single-season receptions list, just two shy of James Hardy’s record of 79 in 2007, and fifth in the school’s single-season yardage rankings.

Along with his three 100-yard receiving games, Doss owned 533 kick return yards, 127 rushing yards, 44 punt return yards and led the conference with 138.8 all-purpose yards per contest. He finished ninth on IU’s single-season list with 1,666 all-purpose yards, surpassed 100 all-purpose yards in seven of the last nine games and eight times in 2009, including a season-best 242 against Purdue.

#4: Fred Glass is the man (Look to my previous blogs for a more in-depth analysis):

• Even though he’s not working with a winning football team, Glass was able to entice students and fans to come out to the games and give IU it’s first 40,000+ attendance average per game since 1992 – Up from a 31,782 average last year.

• In addition to increasing attendance –and therefore increasing Athletic Department revenue- Glass has tried to start new traditions, improve facilities and staff, improve relations with the student body and the community, provide greater support for his coaches, and most importantly he has reemphasize the importance of sticking to contracts:

“I think contracts need to mean something again at Indiana University,” Said Glass. “He’s (Head football coach, Bill Lynch) in the second year of a four-year contract … I hope that, and really think that, coach Lynch will be very successful.”

In an age in college sports where contracts mean squat if you’re not winning,

Glass’ assertion that it’s important to Indiana that they honor their contracts with coaches is a breath of fresh air. How is any coach supposed to feel comfortable doing what he believes needs to be done to win if he constantly feels pressure and is insecure at his position? I know I wouldn’t write a good blog if I had someone looking over my shoulder right now threatening to break my computer if I wrote something he/she didn’t like, I can’t imagine what it’s like for football coaches these days who must be afraid to unpack their moving boxes for fear that one bad season might send them packing again. Look at Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz; he’s been there for 11 years and now that stability that he’s been given by the Iowa Athletic Department is starting to show some positive results; they went 8-0 for the first time ever! God Bless Fred Glass for demonstrating that Indiana University is an institution of character and will no longer go back on their contracts with their coaches; Indiana’s word means something again. Thank God.

#5: Indiana will be good in 2010 if they can replace five key defensive starters:

• Next year the Hoosiers will be without their five best defensive players: Jamie Kirlew, Austin Thomas, Will Paterson, Ray Fisher and Matt Mayberry. These players account for 5 of the teams’ 7 leaders in tackles, with Mayberry and Thomas ranking 1^st and 3^rd, respectively. Jammie Kirlew is the Hoosiers’ two-time team MVP and defensive leader, and they will undoubtedly miss his team leading 6.5 sacks in 2009. In order to win next year players will need to step up to fill these huge holes that graduation will leave. I doubt there is another defense in the entire conference that will be as decimated by graduation as Indiana’s will be.

Nico Perrino

Breaks such as the one this week for Thanksgiving are always difficult for athletes. You see all your friends leaving early because classes have been canceled Monday and Tuesday, but you are forced to stay until late Tuesday night because you have practice. When you are a Freshman and are missing home these forced stays can dig at you, but as you get older you start to accept the fact that you have made a commitment and with that commitment comes sacrifices. The beauty with this realization is that once you accept that you will be alone with your teammates in a deserted college town for days, and often weeks, on end you begin to have fun. I can honestly say some of the best times with my teammates have come during the last week of winter break when we are required to be on campus to practice for the early January competitions, and during spring break when there are absolutely ZERO people in town because all of them have gone to Panama City for a week of drunken debauchery on the beach. Your friends and family will always be there, but your teammates are only your teammates for so long and college is short lived, so it’s not worth is to dwell on the fact that everyone gets to go home. After all, us athletes should view ourselves as the lucky ones, we get to stay in a college town without any responsibilities, with our expenses paid for through per diem, for what always ends up being a great time.

Nico Perrino

So last year the Athletic Department started this new marketing campaign for the football and basketball games which I think is pretty cool. They hired an artist to make these “cartoonish” posters that in every case depict the Hoosiers’ upcoming opponents getting abused in someway by “something,” and the creative cartoons are accompanied by catchy, dare I say sometimes pathetically funny, phrases which corresponds with whatever is happening in the image. For example, one poster says “Brand the Broncos,” and it has a picture of the Western Michigan bronco getting branded. I think you get the point.

The posters are always in white and red, and the Athletic Department hangs them up all over Assembly Hall and campus to promote their upcoming games. As of late they have sort of become a collectors item so students almost always tear them down as soon as they’ve been put up and hang them in their dorms, apartments or houses.

Check out the pictures to see what a few of them look like; I think these are pretty unique to IU:

Nico Perrino

Isn’t it strange how when you’ve been around a coach for a long time they can just stare at you and you know exactly what they are thinking? It’s a phenomenon I won’t ever quite understand, but I’ve experienced that sense of understanding often lately and have been thinking about it quite a bit. I don’t know whether I like it or not yet… I’ll get back to you on that one soon.

Nico Perrino

Today is Tuesday, and with Tuesday comes the dreaded Tuesday workouts -The hardest track workouts of the week.

Today’s workout was a doozie: 5×600m at a pretty fast pace with 3 minutes rest. Not an easy workout by any means, but I always find that there is one surefire way to ease my anxiety leading up to any hard workout.

Jimmy Buffet.

The resonating sounds of “Margaritaville” and “Cheesburger in Paradise” bring us runners to a happy place far, far away, from the arid landscape of Bloomington Indiana. A place with a beach, cold drinks, maybe volcanoes (who knows!), fun, and where the biggest conundrum is not figuring out how you are going to get through a grueling 400m workout, but instead whether or not you want to serf, snorkel, or do neither and just bum it out on the beach!

For a few glorious minutes we are Jimmy… living the good life… wasting away again in our own personal Margaritaville somewhere in the hidden recesses of our soul.

But before too long it’s back to reality. Burning legs, exaggerated gasps for air, and vomit; that’s the life we live.

Even so, we know things will be alright in the end because as Jimmy once said, “We are party people, and things will get better.”

Nico Perrino

Trying to navigate Assembly Hall as an athlete on the day of a basketball game can sometimes be interesting, although often not.

The way track practice goes, you start in the field house, which is on the east side of Assembly Hall, and when you’re done with your running portion of practice in the field house, you head over to the weight room, which is at the football stadium on the west side of Assembly Hall. The issue with this on game days is having to meander through all the game day “hullabalu” while periodically explaining to the ushers guarding specific entrances that you are an athlete and need to get through to go to practice. Although, most of the time these ushers are very nice and don’t bother you; they mostly just figure you’re an athlete because who else would be walking around Assembly Hall in red spandex dripping with sweat before an IU basketball game?

Parking for practice can also sometimes be an issue, but usually if you tell the guardsman guarding the entrances to the parking lots that you need to get through to go to practice they are pretty cool.

I would say overall athletes are not given too much trouble by IU game officials on the day of games, mostly they just let us go about our normal routine.