Indiana football hasn’t mattered much in 58 years. But on a rain-soaked New Year’s Day in Pasadena, it mattered enormously — just not for the reasons you’d expect
The rain was falling in sheets, the kind that turns sidewalks into rivers and stadium parking lots into mud pits.
My friends and I slogged through it, beers in hand, dodging puddles and fellow drenched fans. We were heading to this year’s Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. But it wasn’t just a football game. For a group of former Indiana University (IU) swimmers, scattered across the country and decades removed from campus, it was a reunion, a pilgrimage and a reminder of where it all began — with a legendary coach and a family built on chlorine and laughter.
I swam for Indiana from 1983 to 1987, part of one of the most respected swim programs in the country and coached by the incomparable James “Doc” Counsilman. His teams won 23 Big Ten Conference championships, six straight NCAA titles, and he coached two of the most successful Olympic teams in history, producing 21 gold medals. But for Doc, titles were never the point. They were the byproduct of something deeper.
Doc’s mission was character. He had us in the pool early every morning and back in after a full day of classes, three to four hours a day, swimming well over 10 miles. Chlorine turned our hair to straw and our skin to sandpaper, and we carried the unmistakable scent of bleach everywhere.
We lived together, ate together, studied together and somehow still had energy left to party together on weekends. We even dressed alike: red Speedos in the pool, gray Indiana Swimming T-shirts with “What’s Up Doc?” on the shoulder for the classroom and red three-quarter-length parkas for cold walks home. We were instantly recognizable across the Bloomington, Ind., campus.
Doc enjoyed winning, but shaping people was his true mission. Character mattered more than the scoreboard. How we treated teammates, classmates and strangers mattered.
He could light you up for missing an interval and then ask how your chemistry exam went. He noticed struggles before you named them. Doc and his wife, Marge, hosted lasagna dinners at their home, where we ate, laughed and watched movies. He didn’t just coach a team; he built a family.
Forty years later, that family reunited in Pasadena.
On Jan. 1, Indiana football reached the Rose Bowl for the first time in 58 years. For about 15 former IU swimmers, it was the perfect excuse for a long-overdue reunion.
Years ago, as students, we spent countless Saturdays in Memorial Stadium watching the Hoosiers fumble and lose, often in front of crowds smaller than our swim meets. Yet there we were, drawn together by the impossible — Indiana at the Rose Bowl. Some victories, we realized, aren’t on the scoreboard. They’re in the people you celebrate them with.
Game day arrived with a forecast warning that Southern California was about to endure what meteorologists politely called an “atmospheric river,” but it felt more like biblical punishment. I carpooled with friends, loading my van with beer, sandwiches, ponchos and dry clothes sealed in plastic bags, preparing, as it turned out, perfectly for what was coming.
Rain poured relentlessly as we crawled toward Pasadena. Despite having prepaid for premium disabled parking, the weather redirected us onto a golf course that quickly devolved into a muddy Woodstock, still a mile from the Rose Bowl.
Once parked, tradition took over. First came the beer. Parked next to us, a car full of Indiana coeds refused to exit, wary of ruining their Hoosier outfits. They remained inside applying makeup, curling eyelashes and inflating their big hair to even more impressive proportions.
Then, we called friends who were already tailgating near the stadium entrance. We were promised plenty of food and more beer, so we abandoned the van’s relative dryness, said goodbye to the coeds and set off on a mile-long slog through mud and water, weaving through crowds of equally soaked revelers.
We weathered everything Mother Nature hurled at us and made it to the unofficial Indiana swimmer tailgate, which was packed with old friends, spouses and college-aged kids, all swathed in red-and-white Hoosiers gear.
Fortunately, my friends used good judgment by not showing up in vintage Speedos, but some of us could still fit in our 40-year-old gray Indiana Swimming T-shirts. Around me were former All-Americans and Big Ten champions, now men in their 60s — gray hair, beer bellies, conversations about artificial hips and arthritic knees and one friend celebrating another year post-heart transplant.
We hugged, laughed, took pictures and told stories about our questionable college behavior, stories that somehow improved with age and worsened with sobriety. Eventually, someone reminded us we were there to watch a football game, not to just drink beer in the rain. So, we joined the roughly 90,000 fans migrating toward the 104-year-old stadium.
As we funneled through a narrow tunnel that was barely 9 feet wide, half of what fire officials would recommend today, tensions flared between Indiana and the opposing Alabama fans.
We survived the gauntlet and made a mad dash into the men’s bathroom, where floors were coated in a pungent slurry of mud, spilled beer and poorly aimed urine. I chose not to think too hard about what I was rolling through. Once seated with empty bladders, I pulled out a package of Clorox Handi Wipes and did what any responsible fan would do — bought more beer.
The rain stopped just in time for kickoff. Then, with 40 seconds left in the first quarter, it started — touchdowns. One after another. Indiana dominated. I texted every Hoosiers fan I knew, plus a grieving ‘Bama friend who was watching from Hawaii. The taunting was irresistible. The final score was 38–3, Hoosiers. For the first time in our lives, Indiana football mattered.
After the game, we returned to base camp for one last beer, more photos and reluctant goodbyes. Someone suggested we might meet again at the national championship in Miami, just 18 days away. We nodded, knowing it was probably just the beer talking and our way of saying we didn’t want this joyous moment to end.
Finally, the mile-long trek back to my van began. We were among the last stragglers trudging through darkness, sinking into endless mud and skirting runoff from overflowing portable toilets. Thankfully, I still had Handi Wipes.
While we pawed through the van for the dry clothes we’d packed, an event security golf cart rolled up and deposited the coeds beside us. Their lashes were less curled and their hair somewhat deflated, but they were dry and mostly mud-free.
My friend blinked. “Wait. They have golf carts?!”
Three hours later, I finally made it home.
The next morning, as I hosed the mud and restroom slurry off my wheelchair, it hit me: We’d all come a long way since Bloomington. Doc has been gone a long time, but his legacy was right there in that stadium. He made us better people. He built a family that, over four decades, grew into something far larger than any of us imagined.
If Doc could see us now, I’d smile and say, “What’s up Doc? I hope we made you proud.”
As always, please share your thoughts with me at al@pvamag.com.