Welcome to Indiana Hoosiers Hate Day 2023

Welcome to our enlightened regular readers and our distinguished visitors. Today is one of the most important days of the year for many college sports fans across the country. Today is Indiana Hoosiers Hate Day!

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I know that many of you have eagerly anticipated this day as your opportunity to mock the hapless Hoosiers and their failed attempt at running a competent athletics program. You have gleefully looked forward to taunting the Hoosier faithful with facts and statistics showcasing their inability to accomplish anything of note.

Perhaps you were planning to bring up the fact that the Hoosiers haven’t won a bowl game since the 1991 Copper Bowl. For those counting at home that’s eleven thousand, four hundred and sixty-nine days since Indiana University last won a bowl game.

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Some merciless foes of IU might have take advantage of Hoosier hate day to mention that the Hoosiers haven’t had a NFL first round draft pick since 1994, the longest active drought among power five programs. Or that the next longest droughts didn’t start until 2008. Indiana’s drought is almost twice as long as the next longest drought!

The truly cruel contributors on this site might make note that Indiana University was the only Big Ten program not to have a NFL draft pick this year. Even the much maligned Rutgers had one.

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Once, I would have been among the hate filled crowd, kicking the downtrodden Hoosier fanbase. I would have brought up that Indiana is the only pre-millennium member of the Big Ten not to win a Rose Bowl, that the Hoosiers have the worst all-time winning percentage of any Power Five program, and that they were the first Division 1 program to reach the 700 loss milestone.

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But for me, this year’s Hoosier hate fest feels different. I don’t feel the need to bring up all of these embarrassing facts to mock Indiana University. It seems a cruel and unusual punishment for the crime of being a Hoosier fan.

You might be wondering why my attitude to the Hoosiers has changed. Has the boilerbot algorithm crashed?

Well, no. Last November I travelled to Bloomington, Indiana for the first time in my life and was pleasantly surprised by how well the Hoosiers treated us visitors. Outside of two misguided youths, who very impolitely told me to f*ck off as I was walking towards the stadium, Hoosiers fans for welcoming and polite. They made sure that Purdue fans had plenty of legroom and space to spread out in the stadium.

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Not to mention the football team went out of their way to make sure that Purdue was able to defeat them and in doing so win the Big Ten West division.

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Like the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag, I have realized the importance of coming together for a day of thanksgiving. While today is Hoosier hate day and I wouldn’t dream of asking others to not share the reasons they hate Indiana University in the comments, I want to also take today to personally say thank you to Indiana University, their athletic programs, and their fans. Without your* contributions, Purdue fans would not have gotten to experience a trip to the Big Ten championship game.

*special thanks to the Nebraska Cornhuskers as well

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You guys truly are the best neighbors us Boilermakers could ask for.