You're probably already aware of this but, in case you aren't, Indiana basketball is a big deal. A very big deal. It's in the echelon of blue-blood college programs - along with Kentucky basketball, Alabama football, North Carolina basketball, Oklahoma football and a couple dozen others - that people orbit their entire lives, their entire identities around. They were dressed in Hoosier crimson shortly out of the womb, and they'll be buried in Hoosier crimson when their time comes, but not before dressing their kids and grandkids in that same Hoosier crimson.
It was those people I thought of when I saw this tweet from Indiana head basketball coach Tom Crean today:
While it's obviously great public relations to give fans a chance to be a part of their favorite team's locker room, that's not what I like about this.
I like it because those are the people Indiana basketball plays for every night. The players are the ones who wear the uniforms, train in the weight room, and play in the famed Assembly Hall, but many of them were brought in from other states to be a Hoosier for anywhere between one and four years before they're off to somewhere else. The people writing what it means to be a Hoosier, they'll never wear the uniforms, but they cared about Indiana basketball 10, 20 and 30 years ago, and they'll still care just as much 10, 20 and 30 years from now.
And it'll be those peoples words on the players' minds next season when Wisconsin, Michigan or Michigan State are in town for a big game, because those are the people who will recite that night's box score from memory a quarter century from now.
If I'm, say, Mark Helfrich, and most of my roster isn't from Oregon, I want the words of some life-long Ducks fan that has hated Washington from the time the Huskies clubbed the Ducks on an annual basis on the mind of my players before they run out to face Washington this fall.