Hoosiers creamed ... and crimson

It all began like your first taste of alcohol. \nA 3-yard touchdown run by sophomore Marcus Thigpen put an easy seven points on the board, an IU lead and the satisfying feeling that things would be looking up. \nKind of like your first taste of alcohol -- that first touchdown went down smooth, almost too easy, and with a smile on your face, you look forward to the immediate future.\nOf course, alcohol can catch up to you that way. \nThe thing to remember about Saturday's game is that with eight minutes remaining in the third quarter the Hoosiers were up 14 points on Southern Illinois.\nThe game was IU's -- and yet afterward, with each possession came another swig from the flask of failure. That is, when the Hoosiers played, the team's alcoholic state of mind became dizzy, blurry and everything turned quickly from good to grim. \nTelevision networks dubbed this college football week as "Separation Saturday." The only separation the Hoosiers secured on Saturday was a place further down the Big Ten totem pole. Go figure, the totem terrorizing IU would be a Saluki: a tall slender dog native to Egypt and Arabia.\nI thought Arabia was an imaginary place from the Disney movie Aladdin. At the same time, I thought I was imagining Southern Illinois take a 28-21 lead. In fact, it was our first taste of alcohol, and everything seemed imaginary. From the press box, I imagined an IU defense that was too drunk on the Salukis' momentum to effectively stop them. Oddly enough, the team inside the stadium appeared more disoriented than the students in fields full of alcohol outside the stadium. Sure enough, the lead slipped away to the Salukis as they trounced the IU defense for three unanswered touchdowns.\nThe nightmare I thought I had been hallucinating had become a reality. The flask was empty and the failure very vivid in our fuzzy minds. IU lost its first game of the season to Southern Illinois, and as a result, I felt "So Ill."\nI guess there's something to say when the easiest team on your schedule is the one team that beats you. In their four non-conference games before the Big Ten bombardment, the Hoosiers have only one Division I-AA team among three Division I-A teams -- that team was Southern Illinois. \nThese days, it ain't easy being creamed (and crimson). In less than a quarter and a half of football, Southern Illinois showed who wanted to win the game more. In that short span the Salukis socked the wind out of IU's lungs and served the stadium a deep dish of disappointment.\nStripped down from sober on Separation Saturday, the Hoosiers showed their true colors. They slipped into a drunken stupor and watched helplessly as a double-A dog outfoxed them. This game should have been over soon after it began. Instead, Southern Illinois came back and hijacked the Hoosiers' crimson hearts.\nForget crimson. IU got creamed.