Cook Hall Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatics Center Dale England Rowing Center Gladstein Fieldhouse Indiana University Golf Course IU Championship Cross Country Course IU Field Hockey Complex IU Tennis Center Robert C. Haugh Complex The University Gymnasium Wilkinson Hall
The Hoosiers' athletic program is perhaps best known for its basketball program, with its five NCAA Championships tying for fourth in history. Indiana's 1976 squad remains the last undefeated NCAA men's basketball champion. A 2018 study listed Indiana as the second most valuable collegiate basketball program in the country.[3] Additionally, Hoosiers' athletics is well known for its soccer program; by a number of indicators, it is one of the greatest college soccer programs in the history of the sport. Since the program began in 1973, Indiana owns more National Championships, more wins, has appeared in more College Cups (18) and has a higher winning percentage in both regular season and post-season play than any other school in Division I soccer.
Basketball players huddle before a game in their iconic candy striped pants
The school's official colors are cream and crimson. The official IU Crimson is Pantone 201.[4] However, in the 1970s former basketball coach Bob Knight and football coach Lee Corso started using uniforms that were more scarlet or bright red.[5] During the same time, cream gave way almost universally to white. But those colors reverted mostly to cream and crimson in the early 2000s, after then-athletics director Michael McNeely decided that the team uniforms needed to reflect the school's official colors of cream and crimson. Indiana cheerleaders still chant "Go Big Red". The changes over the years has led to some clashing of colors in some varsity sport uniforms, as is the case with the baseball team's jackets being a different color than their caps and uniforms. Athletic Director Fred Glass said, "My view is that we're an awfully big and diverse place. I think cream and crimson and 'Go Big Red' can survive in one place."[5] Only four other major college programs claim crimson as their dominant color: Alabama, Harvard, Oklahoma and Washington State, and only Oklahoma pairs crimson with cream.
Mascot
The school does not have a mascot, but student-athletes are known as "Hoosiers", a nickname for natives or residents of Indiana. A bulldog named Ox served as the football team's mascot from 1959 to 1965.[6] Indiana had a bison as its mascot in the late 1960s and introduced a mascot named "Hoosier Pride" in 1979. The mascot didn't go over well with fans and was quickly abandoned.[7]
School songs
The Indiana Hoosiers have two fight songs – "Indiana, Our Indiana" and "Indiana Fight!" – along with an alma mater song, "Hail to Old IU". Indiana's most recognized fight song, "Indiana, Our Indiana", was first performed by the IU Band in November 1912 at a football game against Northwestern. The song has since been played at every Indiana football and basketball game.Indiana's popular fight song melody is "Indiana Fight!", though the words are rarely sung at an Indiana sporting event. The crowd usually just sings "GO! IU! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Indiana, we're all for you!" at the end of the song. Indiana's official Alma Mater song, "Hail to Old IU" was first performed on March 10, 1893, in Indianapolis. J.T. Giles, who organized the IU glee club wrote the words to a Scottish song in order to give the Hoosiers a school song for a performance at a state contest.[8] The song has been a mainstay at Indiana events since that day. An additional school song, "Chimes of Indiana," was written by alumnus Hoagy Carmichael (Class of 1925-law degree 1926), and was presented to the university in 1937 as a gift from the class of 1935.
The Hoosiers have appeared eight times in the NCAA Tournament, in 1996, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019 including one College World Series appearance. They have won the regular season conference championship seven times – 1925, 1932, 1938, 1949, 2013, 2014 and 2019. The current head baseball coach of the Hoosiers is Jeff Mercer. Beginning in 2013, the Hoosiers play in Bart Kaufman Field.
The Hoosiers are also sixth in NCAA Tournament appearances (36), sixth in NCAA Tournament victories (62), seventh in Final Four appearances (8), and 11th in overall victories (1,665).[9] The Hoosiers have won 22 Big Ten Conference Championships and have the best winning percentage in conference games at nearly 60 percent. No team has had more All-Big Ten selections than the Hoosiers with 53. The Hoosiers also rank seventh in all-time AP poll appearances and sixth in number of weeks spent at No 1. Every four-year men's basketball letterman since 1973 has earned a trip to the NCAA basketball tournament. Additionally, every four-year player since 1950 has played on a nationally ranked squad at Indiana.[10]
A 2012 study listed Indiana as the third most valuable collegiate basketball program in the country.[11] Indiana has ranked in the top 15 nationally in men's basketball attendance every season since Assembly Hall opened in 1972, and often in the top five.[12] When asked if Indiana basketball fans were the most passionate in the country, ESPN commentator Dick Vitale said, "I don't think there's any doubt about it. They eat, sleep and drink the game."[13] Basketball sportscaster Gus Johnson called Assembly Hall, "the Carnegie Hall of basketball."[14]
Women's basketball began as a varsity sport in the 1971–72 season. The Hoosiers were co-Big Ten champions the 1982–83 season, won the Big Ten Tournament in the 2001–02 season, and won the WNIT in the 2017–18 season.[15] The current head coach of the Hoosiers is Teri Moren.[16]
Indiana began playing football in 1884 and currently plays in the 52,656-seat, open-air Memorial Stadium, built in 1960. The current head football coach of the Hoosiers is Tom Allen.[17] The team has won the Big Ten Championship twice, once in 1945 and again in 1967. It has appeared in twelve bowl games, including the 1968 Rose Bowl:
Indiana men's soccer faces the University of Tulsa in 2004Fans at an IU soccer game at Jerry Yeagley Field at Bill Armstrong Stadium
By a number of indicators, the Hoosiers are one of the greatest soccer programs in the history of the sport. The Hoosiers have won eight national championships in men's soccer (1982, 1983, 1988, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2012), second only to St. Louis' 10. Indiana owns more wins, has appeared in more College Cups (22) and has a higher winning percentage in both regular season and post-season play than any other school in Division I soccer.
The Hoosiers have also dominated conference play. Since the Big Ten began sponsoring men's soccer in 1991, Indiana has won 11 Big Ten tournament titles. Indiana has also been crowned regular season champion 14 times, including nine-straight seasons from 1996 to 2004. A league-record 11 Big Ten Players of the Year come from Indiana.
Every year since the NCAA began tracking men's soccer attendance in 2001, the IU program has ranked among the top three in average or total attendance. Indiana led the nation in average attendance in 2004 and 2005 and in total attendance in 2003. The Hoosiers are currently coached by Todd Yeagley,[18] the son of former Indiana Hall of Fame coach Jerry Yeagley.
Women's soccer
On November 18, 2007, the Hoosiers defeated Purdue University in the NCAA second round to advance to the NCAA third round for the first time in program history.
Both the Hoosier men's and women's teams compete at the Counsilman-Billingsley Center in the Student Recreational Sports Center, a 44,651-square-foot (4,148.2 m2) aquatics center. It features an eight-lane Olympic-sized pool spanning 30,512 square feet (2,834.7 m2) with depth ranging from seven to eight feet to allow for greater speed. The Billingsley Diving Center, complete with one of the country's few indoor diving towers, features four one-meter and two three-meter springboards as well as one-, three-, five-, seven- and 10-meter platforms. The Indiana University Outdoor Pool serves as the team's training facility in the summer months. It features a ten-lane Olympic-sized pool along with a diving pool that includes a 10-meter platform.
Men's swimming and diving
The Hoosiers won six straight NCAA national championships from 1968 to 1973, giving them the fifth-most in NCAA history. Their 24 Big Ten crowns, including every Big Ten championship from 1961 to 1985, rank second in the conference's 90-year history. Indiana has produced 80 individual swimming and diving national champions, over 191 Big Ten swimming champions, 25 conference diving champions and has won 45 Big Ten relay events. The 80 national champions ranks third among Big Ten schools while the individual Big Ten diving, relay and individual swimming crowns all rank second among all conference schools. The success goes well beyond the Big Ten and the NCAA Championship as is evidenced by the eight straight U.S. National Diving Championships that Indiana divers have won.
Under former coaches James Counsilman and Hobie Billingsley, the men's swimming and diving program won 140 consecutive dual meets, 20 consecutive Big Ten titles and an NCAA Division I record six consecutive NCAA Championships (1968–1973), most of which were won under swimming great Mark Spitz. A writer for Sports Illustrated in the early 1970s said, "a good case can be made for the 1971 Indiana swimming team being the best college team ever—in any sport."[22][23]
Women's swimming and diving
The Hoosiers have produced 4 individual national champions and six Big Ten championship teams in 2003, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2019. Fourteen Hoosier women count themselves as Olympians, winning six medals in all.
Cross country
Men's cross country
Men's cross country began on the Indiana campus in 1910. Since the inception of cross country as an NCAA sport, Indiana is one of only nine schools in the nation to have won more than two men's national titles, and is one of seven programs to win at least three national titles. The school's three team national titles came in 1938, 1940, and 1942. Indiana's 29 NCAA men's championship team appearances are tied for ninth-most in the sport's history. Indiana has found itself in the top five at the NCAA Men's Championship on nine occasions. A Hoosier has captured the men's individual crown three times, making Indiana one of only six schools in the country, and the only Big Ten school, to have more than two individual NCAA men's cross country champions. The three individual titles rank as the fourth-most by any school. Bob Kennedy, regarded as one of the greatest U.S. distance runners in history, graduated from the program in 1992.
Women's cross country
Women's cross country began in Bloomington in 1978. The NCAA began sponsoring the sport in 1981. The women have had a pair of
individual national champions, something only three other schools in the nation, and just one other in the Big Ten, can claim. On four occasions, the Hoosiers have competed for the NCAA crown as a team (1988, 1989, 1990, 2002). The 1988 season saw Indiana winning an individual men's and women's national cross country championship, a feat that had never happened before in the sport, and has never happened since.
Wrestling
The Indiana Hoosiers Wrestling began in 1909, with accomplishments such as: 50 individual All-Americans, 12 individual NCAA National Champions from 1932 to 2008, and 1 team NCAA National title in 1932. In 1946 Indiana took 2nd in the Big Ten Championships and 4th in the NCAA Championships. In recent years better seasons included the 1989–1990 season placed 2nd in the Big Ten Conference and 8th at the NCAA Championships, and the 2004–2005 season took 5th place at the Big Ten Conference and 9th at the NCAA Championships.[24]
Duane Goldman was head coach until he retired after the 2017–18 season after 26 years. In his four years as a Hawkeye, Goldman accumulated a 132–10 career record, won four Big Ten Championships and finished as a four-time NCAA All-American. After three consecutive second-place finishes, he won the NCAA Championships in his final season at 190 pounds. The Hoosiers have seen a tremendous amount of success during Goldman's tenure when he took the team to a top ten finish in the NCAA tournament in 2005. On September 5, 2009, Goldman was officially inducted into the University of Iowa Athletics Hall of Fame.[25] During his tenure, Goldman coached Joe Dubuque (2005, 2006) and Angel Escobedo (2008) to national championships. Escobedo was named as Goldman's replacement in April 2018.
The Wrestling team hosts most of their home matches in the 2,000-seat University Gymnasium. The Wrestling team practices in Assembly Hall but prefers the home court advantage of the more intimate University Gymnasium, also known as Intercollegiate Athletics Gym.[26]
Club sports
The Indiana University Club Sports Federation operates separately from the IU Athletic Department, which means that nearly all of the funding for club sports programs comes through organization dues and outside fundraising. Of the 40 club sports on the Bloomington campus, several are noteworthy for representing IU in high-level national competitions.
Men's ice hockey
The Indiana University men's ice hockey team was founded in 1967, and has played in the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Division II Tri-State Collegiate Hockey League since 2019. In February 2022, the Hoosiers claimed their first TSCHL Playoff Championship, after finishing the regular season as runners-up.[27] Previously, they were members of the Central States Collegiate Hockey League conference, which is part of the ACHA Division I. The team plays most games at the historic Frank Southern Ice Arena[28] off-campus, but some fall practices and games are hosted by the Hamilton Ice Center in Columbus, IN due to seasonal maintenance concerns at "The Frank".[29]
The team holds the 1971 and 2001 Big Ten Hockey League championships, 8 Midwestern Collegiate Hockey League (MCHL) championships during the 1980s and 1990s, and the 2002 Great Midwest Hockey League (GMHL).[30] The Hoosiers men's ice hockey team was the National Championship runner-up in the 1995, 1998, 2000, and 2008 ACHA DII National Championships. The team will compete in the 2022 ACHA Nationals Tournament, being held in St. Louis, MO. Home and road games are broadcast live on the team's Youtube Channel,[31] although the IU Media School's student-run radio station WIUX (formerly WIUS) broadcast select games prior to 2005. The team is led by Head Coach Andrew Weiss, who took over during the 2021–22 season.[32]
The IU Men's Rugby Club competes in the Big Ten Universities conference, which is part of D1A Rugby – USA Rugby's elite division of college rugby.[33] The Hoosiers finished the 2016–17 season ranked #7.[34]
The club was founded in 1962 and played its first game against the Notre Dame Rugby Football Club. Head Coach Sarasopa Enari arrived to the program in 1994 and has led the team to many notable achievements.[35]
IU reached its first national semifinal in 1998. In 2011 they finished the season ranked 11th.[36] In 2013, IU won the Big Ten Championship match 58–38 over Michigan.[37] In 2015, Indiana defeated Ohio State 34–14 to win another BTU Championship game.[38] Following the conference championship victory, IU achieved a milestone 38–34 win over Kutztown University in the ACRC Bowl Series.[39] This capped a perfect 12-0 Fall 2015 campaign. The Hoosiers finished the season ranked 5th in the country in the D1A rankings. In the 2016-17 IU won another Big Ten Rugby Championship and fell to 4-time national champions BYU in a D1A quarterfinal.
Indiana has also been successful in rugby sevens, particularly in the Collegiate Rugby Championship, a tournament broadcast live by NBC every June from Subaru Park in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Indiana has competed in the CRC on 4 occasions since 2010. IU finished tied for 5th overall in 2015 after going 3–0 in pool play.[40] The pool play victory over Clemson was the first IU Rugby game played on national television (NBCSN).[41] In 2017 the Hoosiers reached the CRC semifinal before losing to 5-time champions Cal 29–14.[42]
The IU Men's Rugby Club has been hailed as the top "true club rugby team" in the country for its victories over programs who offer scholarships or benefit from their athletic departments, including Kutztown, Life, Davenport, and Notre Dame.[43]
Women's rugby
The IU Women's Rugby Club was founded in 1996, and has also represented Indiana University at a high level. In 2014, IU reached the national semifinals of the USA Rugby Women's Collegiate Championship.[44]
Women's ice hockey
Despite having a men's ice hockey team since the late 1960s, the women's team was founded in 2019, and began playing during the 2021–22 season. Their inaugural game was a road trip to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in February, with a full schedule planned for next season. The team plays their home games at the Frank Southern Ice Arena, south of campus in Bloomington.[45]
Men's lacrosse
The men's lacrosse team competes in the Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA) Division 1. The Hoosiers are a part of the Upper Midwest Lacrosse Conference (UMLC) and compete with Miami Ohio, Michigan State, Purdue, Western Michigan, Illinois, Iowa State, Minnesota, and Nebraska. The Hoosiers previously competed in the Great Rivers Lacrosse Conference (GRLC), and in 2013 were regular season champions for the GRLC D1 East. They finished the season 11–4 with their final loss of the season in the 2013 GRLC Championship game. In 2014, they finished the season 10-4 and won the GRLC conference championship 14-6 against Illinois State, earning a bid to the MCLA tournament, where they lost 18-5 in the first round to top ranked ASU. In 2018, they finished the season 10-3 and went to the conference championship, beating Purdue 8-5, again earning them a bid to the MCLA tournament, where they lost in the first round 12-6 to first ranked Chapman.
The Hoosiers' biggest traditional rival is the PurdueBoilermakers. The West Lafayette (Purdue) and Bloomington (IU) campuses are the largest in the state of Indiana and are the flagship campuses of the Purdue University and Indiana University systems, respectively. IU and Purdue have competed for the Old Oaken Bucket in football since 1925, a series which Purdue leads 70–36–6. In basketball, IU's 22 Big Ten Championships are second only to Purdue's 24. The Boilermakers also lead the men's basketball series 115–89. Since the 2001–02 year, IU and Purdue have also competed for an all-sports trophy called the Crimson and Gold Cup. IU leads the series 7–6–2.
IU also has a heated border rivalry with the KentuckyWildcats. The annual basketball game between the two often carries national significance as they have combined for 13 national championships. Since 1991, the game has rotated between neutral sites in Indianapolis and Louisville. This neutrality ended during 2006 when the game was played at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, with the 2007 game played at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Indiana. Basketball games between the Hoosiers and Wildcats have at times drawn over 30,000 fans. Although the two teams had played every season since 1969, a dispute over whether future games should be played at the schools' respective home courts or at nearby neutral sites led to the cancellation of the game for the 2012–13 season.
Illinois
After Purdue, one of the Hoosiers' biggest conference rivals are the IllinoisFighting Illini. The rivalry is particularly strong with the Illinois basketball team. The all-time series is currently tied at 85–85, the closest series in the Big Ten. The rivalry has lasted through the ages, from Lou Henson and Bob Knight publicly feuding, to Kelvin Sampson and Bruce Weber's heated interaction in recent years.
Indiana has a rivalry with Michigan StateSpartans which started in 1950. They battle for the Old Brass Spittoon in football. Michigan State is leading 40–13–1 with Indiana snapping Michigan State's two-year winning streak in 2020.
What began as one man's idea Big Young of a bicycle race to raise scholarship money has become an annual IU springtime tradition. The Little 500, which was first held in 1951, inspired the 1979 Academy Award-winning film Breaking Away. Sports Illustrated and USA Today have featured the race in their pages, and it has been covered on national television by CBS, ESPN, Fox Sports, the Outdoor Life Channel, and live in high-definition television by HDNet. Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong called the Little 500, which has raised more than $1 million in scholarship money, "the coolest event I ever attended."[46]
In March 2020 the Little 500 race was cancelled for the first time in its history due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[47]
Olympic participation
Between the Los Angeles 1932 games and the Athens 2004 games at least one former alumnus medaled at every Summer Olympics. In world record times, Mark Spitz captured seven swimming gold medals in at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.[48] Following the Rio games, at least 223 IU athletes have competed in the Summer Olympics, of these are representatives of 25 nations. On twelve occasions, Olympic coaches have come from Indiana University. In total, the IU medal count is 104, which include 55 gold, 17 silver and 32 bronze.[49]
Championships
NCAA team championships
Indiana has won 24 NCAA team national championships.[50]
D. J. White, First Team All Big Ten, 2008, Big Ten Player of the Year, 2008, Big Ten Freshmen of the Year, 2005, Freshmen All-American, 2005; NBA player: Charlotte Bobcats, Boston Celtics
^Plummer, William; Floyd, Larry C. (2013). A Series Of Their Own: History Of The Women's College World Series. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States: Turnkey Communications Inc. ISBN978-0-9893007-0-4.
