Gold November night

It’s the Friday night before the 84th annual Indiana University vs. Purdue University game in Bloomington and the chilly November air has given my cheeks their own cream and crimson complexion.

After waiting in line for the better part of an hour to get inside Nick’s English Hut – a time-honored college-town bar only two years younger than the rivalry game itself – seeing the grim-faced bouncer at the noisy and overheated, wood-paneled entrance is actually a relief.

Inside, this Bloomington landmark is teeming with boisterous middle-aged and elderly alumni in a swirl of red turtleneck sweaters and black and gold hats. Making my way up the dimmed oak stairs and past the sizzling kitchen, I notice that nearly the entire top floor has been overtaken by the 1978 IU football team.

Meandering through these bustling brutes, my friends help themselves to the once-private buffet now being raided by Hoosiers and Boilers alike. At the oak counter table across from me, an IU-adorned middle-aged father raises his glass in a toast to his newly 21-year-old son – who wears a large Purdue cowboy hat, and an even larger grin: “To 21 tough years of parenthood," the father says, "And one very poor college pick.”

Amidst the cacophony of raucous banter and classic rock radio, a glass shatters, and nearly all the stocky former footballers frantically look over to catch a glimpse of a red-faced, stumbling, silver-haired man in an Antwaan Randle El jersey. He is threatening a drunkenly wobbling man in a Purdue sweatshirt. Armed with only a broken beer mug, the man is physically restrained by his flustered college-aged son.

As the father calms down, the entire alumni-packed room fills with a bellow of boos, and an uproarious chant directed to the confused student begins: “Let them fight, Let them fight!” The two staggering men both start laughing hysterically and playfully slap each other while the son looks around the bar dumbfounded at both the crowd and his father’s fleeting flare-up. The crowded alumni atmosphere returns to its previous jocular repartee.


The good-humored rivalry of the Old Oaken Bucket game – as opposed to the deeply rooted animosity of many American football games - lives on in all its absurd, liquor-laden collegiate glory.

Started by a group of eight Indiana and Purdue alumni during a 1925 meeting in Chicago, the Old Oaken Bucket game was created to provide Indiana’s two largest public universities with an annual rivalry: a trophy game. Arbitrarily enough, the name for the game comes from an 1817 poem by Massachusetts native Samuel Woodworth that many Indiana natives apparently felt captured commonly-held sentiment for their home state:

"How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to view!
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew!
...And e'en the rude bucket that hung in the well—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well.

But don’t let the flowing poetry and cheerful bar banter convince you that game day is without its foul language, empty threats, and decadent debauchery.

Groggy eyed and confused, I’m startled to life from a comatose sleep at a white-columned third street fraternity by the sound of senior Pat Lisinski and three other brothers screaming the word, “Shots!” Meanwhile, the cash-strapped college student drink of choice – a $9 plastic half-gallon of quadruple-distilled ‘Kamchatka’ vodka – is proudly brought into the room by a jolly, beer-bellied father of a visiting Purdue senior named Daniel.

“Oh come on, you Hoosier hussies!” exclaims the elder Boiler. “No bowl game in sight, but the Boilers won’t give up the fight!”

The front lawns of fraternities on Third Street are filled with polo-wearing fraternity brothers and sorority girls in red headbands and black wayfarer sunglasses. The 65- degree weather takes everyone off guard, and a mixture of red and gold sweatshirts litter the grass lawns.

At about 11 a.m., the growing heat and impending walk up to the tailgate fields is interrupted by a large circle of students and parents who exclaim they’re going to play a game of “swine flu.” It calls for one slobbered-over bottle of liquor to be passed around the circle until either emptied or until everyone believes they’ve caught the rampant disease creeping around campus.

On the walk to the stadium, one sees the cars lined up on Indiana Avenue exchange in non-stop arguments with pedestrians migrating north to 17th Street. A school pride call and response endures: “Hoo Hoo Hoo, Hoosiers!” is followed by “Who Who Who, Who sucks?” The gold-jersey students pumping their fists up and down scream “Boiler Up!” which prompts nasty retorts of, “Purdouchebag” and “Purdon’t!”

But if numbers don’t lie and history has told us anything, IU may just have to swallow its pride and look forward to basketball season once again.

On the field, Purdue leads the all-time series dating back to 1891 with 70 wins to IU’s meager 36. Purdue also leads the Oaken Bucket trophy series 56-26-3 since the rivalry game was first recognized in 1925. Ironically enough, the inaugural 1925 Old Oaken Bucket game of players in leather helmets and knee-length knickers ended in a 0-0 tie at IU’s newly erected Memorial Stadium on 10th street. This resulted in the very first and most visible link attached to the bucket, a combined bronze “I-P” link on the bucket’s handle.

Purdue has won 11 of the last 13 contests, but there’s another recent trend also present in this particular game. Both Purdue and IU hold a 4-7 record – meaning both teams are ineligible for a bowl game and, therefore, both will once again be watching college postseason play from the comfort of their own couches.

But as the game is both teams’ last game of the season, there are the combined factors of senior-year intensity and the presence of dedicated alumni. The combination makes for a game day filled with complex displays of manufactured intrastate hate.

My arrival at the tailgate fields is met by a series of sights that could lead any God-fearing person outside the world of Big Ten college life to wonder if learning has ever taken place in the state of Indiana. Opposing students jump from a tree to see whose fall will break a beer pong table 10 feet below. A Pan-Hellenic couple stumbles around in each other’s arms as they navigate through the throng in their drunken tunnel-vision of the day. For literally two minutes, a plaid-shirted man screams “choo-choo” while hanging out the window of a pickup truck shoddily made to look like a Boilermaker train. I’m fairly certain that I was the only one who saw the man’s performance.

At 3:36 p.m., the sun starts to sag above the leafless, bulb-shaped tree tops on Bloomington’s western horizon. I hear a cheering crescendo resonate from within the stadium that punctuates the opening kickoff.

It’s game time inside the stadium, but back in the fields, no one pauses for a beat.

Thrown in the middle of all this chaos is privately hired ESG security guard Mark Guilds. Although you could mistake him for a babysitter, Guilds has actually been assigned the daunting task of making students leave and go into the game. Standing at 6’5,” even Guilds admits to the futility of his efforts. “It’s too hard to get all these people out here and make them go to the game,” Guilds says. “I just look for the most raucous people, and if they don’t have a ticket to the game, I tell them to get the hell outta here.”

Entering the newly renovated stadium, the concrete horseshoe is filled to the brim with a pulsating sea of screaming red and white, gold and black dots. Sitting near the top of the stands, two college-age spectators giddily exchange pulls of “water" bottles they had stuffed in their jacket pockets. Down below, the sparkling crimson helmets of the Hoosier players clash and clutter with the glittering gold and black Boilermaker helmets.

The Boilers open with two successive scores and an interception, but the Hoosier fans behind me remain stubbornly optimistic. Or possibly just blind drunk.

1986 IU graduate John Fletcher bellows behind me, alongside his young son dressed in just about every possible Hoosier article of clothing ever sold. Flashing across the screen is a clip played at nearly every home IU game – highlights of IU’s 1967 trip to the Rose Bowl. “Just one of many trips to the big dance for the Hoosiers,” Fletcher screams in the air. “That’s just another notch on the belt, Boilers!”

1967 was the first and last time the Hoosiers went to the Rose Bowl.

Despite the confidence of many Hoosiers, and a few comeback hopes in the second half, the hundreds of IU fans who always leave during halftime had their pessimism proven once again.

For the second consecutive year, Boilers hoisted the Old Oaken bucket on their shoulders, a bucket that has a birth story which is still debated by historians today. Stories range for the bucket's origis. It may have come from a well near Hanover, or it may have been a bucket that was used by Confederate General John Hunt Morgan during raids into Indiana and Ohio in July 1863. Whatever the origin, for the next 12 months, it will be sitting in West Lafayette.

Making my way back home, the sun has disappeared beneath the starlit, chilly sky and another beautiful fall night descends upon Bloomington. Some stragglers remain in the darkened tailgate fields, and heaps of red and blue solo cups and cases of Natural Ice litter the formerly pristine fields off Woodlawn. The grave of Jawn Purdue still remains in the field from his fake burial ceremony the night before. Robert Compton – a 1956 graduate of Indiana University – says that Purdue also is guilty of more morbid, but similar ceremonies. “Purdue had a tradition of burning an effigy of Miss Indiana at the stake before the sixties,” Compton says. “But I’m glad IU brought back Jawn Purdue for this year’s festivities.”

Back on Kirkwood, the line for Nick’s has extended hundreds of feet back to the Dunn intersection. Diesel engine pick up trucks rev their engines as they blaze past the bars. Students exchange curse words with opposing fans in passing, joking tones. Or at least from those still of sober mind.

As I walk by Kilroy’s on Kirkwood, I look in and see women in tight dresses – many of whom appear to be middle aged – dancing with their arms up and balanced on the tables within the classically cramped bar and grill.

That’s when you know it’s late.

Smoking my final cigarette of the evening, I see a couple gently kissing and talking up against the famous Sample Gates entrance to campus. In adherence to common courting convention, I cannot figure out why the man in the Hoosiers hat appears to be resisting the young woman. He comes over and puts his arm around me to bring me into the conversation.

“Now let me confide in you for a second, my man,” says the man who identifies himself as Geoff. “As much as I would like to stick around with this beautiful girl, my ego simply will not allow it. She’s got to take her hat off, or I’m leaving for home without her.”

Perplexed, I look over to see the girl as she steps into the light. And the lighthearted teasing of the whole day becomes clear once again.

The black hat and gold letters read very plainly: “Not for Loosiers.”