Indiana University’s football team accomplished what not long ago seemed impossible — a 16-0, national championship season — and countless Evansville area fans with IU loyalties relished the journey, cheering on the Hoosiers every step of the way.
Check out how these local IU fans relished the Hoosiers’ amazing feat.
Andrew and Amanda Wilson
For Andrew Wilson, the team’s Rose Bowl trip to start its playoff run was a special, full-circle moment. IU played in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, for the first time since 1968 — when Wilson’s father, Bill, was a saxophone player in the Marching Hundred band.
When the Hoosiers began this season’s playoff run at the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, Wilson says he and he and his wife, Amanda, told themselves, “We’re going to go and we’re taking the girls [their two daughters].” The New Harmony, Indiana, residents soaked in the entire experience, watching the Marching Hundred in the rainy Rose Parade and then seeing the Hoosiers trounce Alabama.
The Wilsons couldn’t stop after that experience. After Pasadena, “it was one at a time,” Wilson says. They drove to Atlanta, Georgia, for IU’s blowout of Oregon in the Peach Bowl on Jan. 9 before flying to Miami, Florida, for the Hoosiers’ thrilling win over Miami in the Hurricanes’ home stadium in the championship game.
Andrew, president of William Wilson Auction Realty, and Amanda met on IU’s Bloomington campus — he studied entrepreneurship and business as she pursued her education degree. Andrew graduated in 2002, the same year IU’s basketball team made its last Final Four appearance, and like many Hoosier fans, IU’s skyrocketing football success was one of the most pleasant surprises imaginable.
The Wilsons got home late Tuesday night, and “we’re still in a haze asking, ‘Is this real?’” Andrew says.
Ken and Erika Haynie
Former IU student Ken Haynie and his wife, Erika, an alumna, have rooted for IU football for a long time, and Erika’s parents are 35-year season ticket holders. “We took over their four tickets and added two about five years ago, so we’ve taken the kids to many games,” Ken says.
Ken, a Realtor and co-owner with F.C. Tucker Emge, went to the Peach Bowl with two fraternity brothers, where they were among a sea of crimson and cream. At the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, “I bet there were 200 Evansville people in the lobby,” he says.
The Peach Bowl was a blowout in the Hoosiers’ favor, but the national championship game brought a lot more suspense. The crowd “was standing the entire time,” Haynie says. “There were so many big plays, and ( quarterback Fernando) Mendoza’s run was just legendary.”
Zane Clodfelter
As hardcore an IU fan as they come, Clodfelter was on hand for 13 of the Hoosiers’ 16 wins, including the Big 10 championship game in Indianapolis and the whole playoff run. The Evansville Otters and University of Southern Indiana public-address announcer’s mother is an IU medical school graduate, and Clodfelter says that while growing up, “if we weren’t at games, we were at home with the game on — television on mute — with Don Fischer doing play-by-play on a nearby radio.”
Clodfelter says he always loved IU’s football team, even during years of poor results, making the program’s rise even sweeter. “The emotions I felt on Monday night in Miami were all over the place, thinking of all the games I’ve gone to with my dad and family, my friends who I tailgate with and all the players I’ve watched since I was a kid who helped set a strong enough foundation for today’s players to thrive,” he says. “For years, I’d judge IU on whether it got to six wins for a bowl trip. Even this year, coming off an 11-2 season in 2024, I just wanted them to make a bowl so I could take a trip post-Christmas. Little did I know that I’d get three extra games and travel the country coast to coast watching the greatest Hoosier team I’ll ever see in my lifetime.”
Tom Dowd
Tom Dowd attended IU as a freshman in 1977-78, hoping for a walk-on opportunity with the golf team. When that didn’t happen, he accepted a golf scholarship at the University of Evansville, and he loves both schools to this day.
He attended the national championship game in Miami, describing it as “hands-down the most amazing sports game experience in my life” and “almost like an out-of-body experience.”
“I woke the next morning after little sleep, and it was hard to believe it was all real,” the East Sider says. “I guess that’s why they put ‘surreal’ in the dictionary. Even though we had 300-level seats, they were totally fine, and the crowd was just as fanatical as we were. Mendoza’s now legendary touchdown run on fourth down was right in our corner, and we had a great ‘catbird seat’ view … I’ll never forget it!”
Amy Clements
IU energy courses through Clements’ veins — she and her late husband, Shane, are both alumni. Their daughter, Alaina, was the family’s 12th IU graduate, and Clements’ nephew soon will make it 13.
Clements made it to the Big 10 Championship game, as well as all three Hoosier playoff victories. The Rose Bowl and Parade made for a great memory, the Evansville resident says, and “even with the rain, it was amazing.”
After blowout wins in Pasadena and Atlanta, the close contest in Miami brought Clements nervous excitement. “I got little signs from my husband, and deep down, I knew we were going to win,” she says. ” … 100 percent. I felt like there were signs from him saying, ‘We’ve got it.’”
She adds, “It was the emotional journey along the way that will live with me forever. After all, it truly was an historical moment”
Chuck Whobrey and Anne Audain
Chuck Whobrey, the retired head of Evansville Teamsters, is an IU graduate, as well as his daughter and other family members. He and his wife, Anne Audain, have had season football tickets for more than 30 years, and “enjoyed tailgating with many Evansville friends through the years, and as we say, we saw a lot of bad football,” Audain says.
It all changed with the 2023 hiring of Curt Cignetti as coach. Audain, a former Olympic runner who hails from New Zealand, knows how important good coaching is — it brings discipline, focus, and confidence, she says.
Whobrey and Audain relished the Hoosiers’ entire playoff run in person, and “it’s been a great ride along with the thousands of IU fans that showed up, and so many older alums saying they still thought they were dreaming,” Audain says. “There was just so much joy in the crowd. Going through airports, so many folks wished us luck and shared congratulations afterwards. It felt like the whole country was needing this positive story.”
George Barnett
A 1977 IU undergraduate and 1980 law school graduate, George Barnett — a founding member of local band The PITS — went to the national championship game with an Evansville group and said the scene was full of “Indiana energy,” even though the contest was in the Miami Hurricanes’ home, Hard Rock Stadium.
“What stands out the most over the past few weeks is how many people have stopped me to say they are not Indiana fans … but love our players and our team,” Barnett says. “They love how good they are and what a good group of college kids they are, led, of course, by Fernando, but including the whole team.”
Charlotte and Paul Kohlman
Charlotte Kohlman is a 1983 alumna of IU’s Kelley School of Business, and her husband, Paul, and son Jeremy (an IU alumnus now living in Indianapolis) are football season ticket holders. The trio, plus Paul’s cousin from Jacksonville, Florida, attended the national title game in Miami.
“It was the experience of a lifetime,” Charlotte says. In addition to the game, her family also attended a warmup event the day before the game in Miami’s Bayfront Park, where Straight No Chaser — including Evansville native Steve Morgan — the Marching Hundred, and others fired up thousands of Hoosier fans.
The game at Hard Rock Stadium, Charlotte says, “was so loud. Our ears were ringing for hours and hours afterward.”
Reporting From Bloomington …
Hoosier fans also cheered on the team in its hometown, where celebration fireworks lit up the sky over Kirkwood.
Katie Rice
Yearbook adviser Katie Rice of Evansville was at Lennie’s in Bloomington, where she says “the floor shook with excitement.” Rice is the daughter of two IU graduates, and her oldest son, Jackson Church, is an IU freshman who attended the national championship watch party in Assembly Hall.
Rice thought about her family’s IU connections during the football team’s remarkable run. “As a child, if IU was playing, my dad was watching, usually with a few Miller High Lifes and a couple of his buddies on our basement TV,’ she recalls. “ … I was more into watching basketball than football because who knew what Bobby Knight was going to do, but I remember the joy felt from my dad anytime IU had a victory … He would have been so excited that his first grandson, Jackson, is attending IU during this epic football season. He passed away when Jackson was nine months old.”
Shanti Knight
Also at Lennie’s was Shanti Knight, an IU graduate (and former Evansville Living intern) who’s worked as the photographer at the university’s Eskenazi Museum of Art for the past six years. She also recently started teaching photography at Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.
Knight isn’t a hardcore sports fan, but this year’s Hoosier football team roped her in. “Even Taylor Swift couldn’t get me to care about football, but Curt Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza have done it,” she says.
After the victory, “we all went out to the balcony at Lennie’s overlooking Kirkwood. I couldn’t believe how quickly the street had completely filled with people. Fireworks were being set off all over the place. I’ve never seen anything like this in Bloomington. The energy was electric,” she says. “People were climbing trees and light posts and buildings, throwing their friends up in the air, uprooting street signs — it was comical and so much fun.”
