So, this is a men's basketball school.
Not that I didn't know that before travelling to Bloomington for the Penn State-Indiana football game this weekend. Anyone with any knowledge of the history of college sports can tell you how polar opposite the two schools are in their comparative focuses on football and basketball.
There are no other schools in the Big Ten that have as little of a balance of success in the two sports as Indiana and Penn State. No other teams have such long-standing traditions of winning in one of those sports and equally long standards of losing in the other.
As a Penn State student, I have come to expect a half-full Bryce Jordan Center for every game since Joe Crispin left town, I still expected Indiana's Memorial Stadium to be at least respectably filled. Big Ten college football is still Big Ten college football, Penn State is a big draw anywhere in the country, and Indiana is in America, right?
But apparently there aren't too many people in Bloomington who think seeing the No. 16 team in the nation and a possible Heisman Trophy candidate is enough of a reason to brave the elements of a cold November day. There were 27,454 people at the game, at least according to Indiana's attendance figures. That's barely half of the 52,180 seating capacity.
"I'd never seen that many empty seats," Nittany Lions defensive end Michael Haynes said. "It kind of reminded me of our spring game, but even in our spring game, we have 50,000 people."
A little over an hour after the football game ended the Indiana men's basketball team tipped off their exhibition game against Nike Elite, the same team Penn State's basketball team played last Monday. The Hoosiers drew 13,465 fans for the game. Last week, the Lions brought in 4,522.
The atmosphere at Assembly Hall could be described as something less than electric. The game was meaningless after all. There were empty seats in the 17,257 seat arena, and the Hoosiers 74-49 blowout victory eventually became a yawner, but Assembly Hall was at least as hyped up for an exhibition game as the BJC is for an average Big Ten game.
I interviewed three students about the team's differences. One of them said, "You picked the wrong night."
Even on the wrong night, the Hoosiers drew more fans than have attended a Penn State basketball team since Feb. 24, 2001 when Sweet 16 bound Penn State hosted Michigan State, an eventual Final Four team. All three of them seemed like they knew sports. They all spouted off knowledge about the Hoosiers latest basketball recruits. However, all three were seniors, and in their college careers, they had only seen five football games.
"We go tailgating, but if we're tired from that we just don't go in the game," said Andy Miller, a Biology major.
The only reason they had gone to any football games was to see former quarterback Antwaan Randle-El play, and with him gone there is nothing left to see.
"We've just been bad for so long," Miller said. "In basketball, we expect to win every game, in football, we always expect to get crushed."
And on Saturday, the 58-25 score seemed to show that the Hoosiers did get crushed, but in truth, they put forth a valiant effort.
It reminds me a lot of last year's Penn State basketball team that faced superior talent every game, fought till the end, and walked off the court at game's end defeated by a similar deficit.
Watching them fight as they do, you almost wish that the black sheep of the Indiana and Penn State families could get a chance to play in atmospheres like their respective universities' golden children. It's a shame to see players with that much heart play in such overwhelming shadows and obscurity.
But then, like me, they knew what they were getting into before they came.
