21,185.
This number carries little significance to the average person. It’s a five-figure number that feels so random yet, on this day it means so much to one fan base.
21,185.
That is how many days it’s been since the Indiana Hoosiers have played in the Rose Bowl.
In the 21,185 days between Jan. 1st,1968, and Jan. 1st, 2026, a lot has happened.
Man has walked on the moon. 58 Super Bowls have been played since. The Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox have won the World Series. Alabama will be playing in their third Rose Bowl Game at that time when the teams kick off at 3 p.m. CT on ESPN.
This day just isn’t another Rose Bowl for the Indiana fan base, this is generations of families who have held onto hope, even when it seemed like hope laughed in their face year after year.
If Alabama fans seem to feel like they’re outnumbered in Pasadena, it’s because the promise of “Next time, I’ll go” is finally paying off for multiple generations of Hoosiers, over 21,000 days later.
The Rose Bowl Fund
Archive photo of Joanne and Gerry Solomon.Amy Metheny
Gerry Solomon and his wife Joanne hadn’t met yet, but both attended the 1968 Rose Bowl. Gerry, a member of the Indiana Marching Hundred, and Joanne, as a junior at IU. Once they married, Gerry had put together the idea of a “Rose Bowl fund”.
Much like today, a trip to the Rose Bowl can hit the pockets of fans, no matter the school.
Gerry, the loyal Hoosier fan who only missed two home games since his freshman year until his death in 2022 had saved up money for the day (he) and Indiana were to make their triumphant return to Pasadena.
“He started a fund to pay for the next Rose Bowl,” Joanne Solomon said. “He ended up buying two cars out of that fund.”
Gerry and Joanne went to 11 of Indiana’s 12 bowl games together between 1979 and 2020.
“I have all the tickets from all the games he went to,” Solomon said. “He would write the scores on all the tickets for the games he went to. The only time he didn’t go was for his uncle’s 50th anniversary, and his mother made him go. He was so upset!”
Joanne, now in her late 70s, recalls the day back in 1968 being “beautiful” and how excited she was to see the parade.
That’s just one of many stories you’ll hear from Indiana fans. A surprisingly common theme in talking with Indiana fans throughout the week was recalling the moments they were told “next time, we’ll go”. In 1968, the Big Ten still limited bowls to just its conference champion, meaning the next time IU would be eligible for the Rose Bowl was 1970.
That season, the Hoosiers finished dead last with a 1-9 record overall, going 1-6 in the Big Ten.
“We’ll got next time,” Indiana alum Amy Metheny said. “Like you heard all these people say it and so I think that’s why everybody’s like, we’re going — we’re absolutely going, this is everything. The Rose Bowl, it’s just so special. It’s not like any other.”
The moment Indiana beat Ohio State in the 2025 Big Ten Championship game, Amy thought of her friend and fellow church member Joanne.
She knew she needed to get her to Pasadena on Jan. 1, 2026.
“She (Joanne) is a little worried about getting around,” Metheny said. “I’m like, we’ll take care of it. So, my wife and I picked her at the house Tuesday morning. Here cousins are here too, and so is her niece from Colorado.”
That is just one of many stories you will hear as Indiana fans mill about Southern California. A parent or grandparent who went to Indiana, who promised their kids they’ll go are now adding their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Metheny tells AL.com that there’s some families that will have four generations of families in attendance at the Rose Bowl.
Pictured (L to R): Ron Kraus, Krista Kelsay Sherman, Emma Kraus, Jenny Burkhardt Kraus, Susan Steffey pose with an Indiana flag before taking a flight to see Indiana play in the Rose BowlAmy Metheny
Wading the darkness
When you walk into IU’s assembly hall, you walk into one of the great cathedrals in American sports. Five bold crimson banners drape the hallowed halls that represent the school’s five national championships in men’s college basketball.
Meanwhile, Indiana football in the aftermath of their 1968 Rose Bowl, went 11 seasons before going back to a Rose Bowl, this time led by iconic Hoosier head coach and college football personality, Lee Corso.
Before Lee Corso was putting on mascot heads minutes before kickoff on college football Saturdays, he was leading a program in the dregs of the Big Ten. The Hoosiers were an extra bye week for the Michigan’s and Ohio State’s of the world.
Coach Lee Corso exhaults his Indiana Hoosiers at practice before Friday night’s Holiday Bowl football game on December 20, 1979 San Diego. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)AP
One instance that gets brought up in Indiana football lore is the infamous photo Lee Corso had his team take after getting an early lead on Ohio State and Woody Hayes back in 1976.
Although Corso eventually brought Indiana its first bowl victory in school history, the Hoosiers remained a basketball school under legendary head coach Bob Knight.
In the 1980s, the Hoosiers won national titles in 1981 and 1987.
Meanwhile, Indiana continued to be (on a good day) good enough to exist in a league that also saw schools like Iowa, Michigan State, and Illinois make the Rose Bowl.
Metheny recalls students going to the games purely for the parties and atmosphere, not for the product on the field, a practice that continued for decades, until a coach arrived who had the belief that Indiana was more than just a basketball school.
Cignetti’s Clarian Call
Indiana’s newly announced football coach, Curt Cignetti, acknowledges the fans during a timeout in the first half of an NCAA college basketball game between Indiana and Maryland, Friday, Dec. 1, 2023, in Bloomington, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)AP
“Purdue sucks! So does Michigan and Ohio State!”
-Curt Cignetti addressing the Assembly Hall crowd on Dec. 1, 2023.
Just a day before, Indiana hired the former James Madison head coach to take over a program that was good, but not good enough during the years where Tom Allen, Kevin Wilson, and even Bill Malory attempted to make the Hoosiers relevant.
Cignetti’s blunt, yet forceful intro to Indiana put the crowd into a frenzy but may have scared Hoosier loyalists in the beginning.
“Hoosiers, we’re humble by nature,” Metheny said. “I was just like, oh my God.”
“He seemed a little brash, but I remember he’d done an interview somewhere and said that he felt like he needed to do something to drastic and wake the fan base up. I thought to myself, this was calculated.”
The way Cignetti carried himself, and the program in its early inception gave Indiana fans shades of one of their legends of the past.
“During a football game last season, I was talking with (former IU basketball player) Calbert Cheney who was still with the IU basketball program at the time. I had told him that he reminded me of, and Calbert finished it off with, Bob Knight,” Metheny said with a laugh.
Little did she know, just a few days before, Cheney had met Cignetti, and the former Bob Knight player understood the elements of what a coach like Knight did for the Indiana basketball program, and its fans. And Cignetti was starting to do the same.
However, he needed to produce a product on the field for fans to put those thoughts into motion. Cignetti did just that, giving Indiana its best season in school history in 2024, making the first round of the College Football Playoff, before losing to Notre Dame, 27-17.
But Cignetti’s 2025 act eventually topped what the Hoosiers did in 2024.
“How ‘bout those Hoosiers!”
It’s not uncommon for someone who presides over a church congregation to shoutout or even include one’s favorite sports team into a prayer, sermon, or used as an analogy.
Amy’s sister Rev. Rachel Metheny of Meridian Street Church, an IU supporter was no exception.
As Indiana’s 2025 season continued to evolve into uncharted territory, Rev. Metheny would begin the with the “major news” of the day, “Indiana’s still undefeated!”.
Her love of Indiana football and its journey even motivated members of her church that crossed enemy lines to help provide a reward for her IU loyalty.
“One of the people is an Ohio State fan helped arrange with the congregation, in buying her two tickets to the Big Ten Championship game and presented them to her on the Sunday before the game,” Metheny said.
In that Big Ten Championship game, the Indiana Hoosiers stunned the Ohio State Buckeyes, beating them for the first time since 1988 and winning the Big Ten Championship. Scenes of fans going crazy, in tears now that their school not only beat up one of its longtime bullies but locked up its first trip to Pasadena in 58 years.
In a world that now has a College Football Playoff, a school whose fan base thought they’d never feel part of it, now takes center stage in Pasadena, CA as the No. 1 team in the country.
So, if you see Indiana fans milling around the hotel, or walking around with smiles on their faces, mixed with a slice of gobsmacked euphoria that may bring them to tears, remember that it’s only been 21,185 days since their last trip to the Rose Bowl.
No. 9 Alabama faces No. 1 Indiana in the 2026 Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 1, at 3 p.m. CT on ESPN.
