Column: Football games are about more than football

Three years later, the memories remain as fresh as that first fall day.

My friends all gathered in their red IU “The Quarry” T-shirts, equipped with the fight song on the back for all of us then-freshmen who didn’t know it. We put on our brand-new IU hats and had gone to Traditions and Spirit to learn all of the cheers to fit in with the upperclassmen.

We were ready for our first IU football game.

My dad told me when I left for college as a freshman that I wouldn’t remember what my teachers put on the board on Monday, but the stupid stuff my friends and I did on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Now in my senior year, I can say that he was correct.

IU football games are chief among some of those memories.

No matter what you think about IU football — and by now, you should know I think it’s going to be a pretty good team — you should go to the games. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on a chance to make memories with your friends that will last a lifetime.

No, this is not a column about football. This is not a column about sports.

This is a column about making memories for the rest of your life.

Three years ago, my newfound friends and I ventured into the tailgate fields, amazed at the amount of free-flowing alcohol all around us.

Then we saw two guys wearing goofy fake mustaches, sunglasses and some ridiculous blazers. We would later learn their names were Brice Fox and Daniel Weber, who were filming one of their first IU music videos.

Later, they’d make a little video called “This is Indiana.”

We made our way into the stadium, well before most of the students.

Memorial Stadium is just a little larger than the Munster High School football field I had spent so many Friday nights.

Then the kickoff came.

It was a night game, just like tonight’s.

Dusk turned to night, and my friends and I found ourselves more interested in doing stuff that stupid freshmen do than paying attention to the game.

We took pictures. We put on stupid gear.

We made memories.

I can still tell you who I went to that game with, and I’m still fairly close with almost all of those people.

I can’t tell you what the final score was (I remember that IU won in a blowout), but I can tell you where we sat.

I can tell you a group in front of us hoisted a girl in the air for every point IU scored.

We talked to some people who told us they recently graduated, but they didn’t want to sit with the “old people” because they liked yelling too much.

I remember belting out a chant at the top of my lungs with the rest of the students that had, “Hey, you suck!” in it, along with a few obscenities. That chant hasn’t been brought back.

IU isn’t a football school. The feeling at Memorial Stadium is always going to be different from the feeling at Assembly Hall, for numerous reasons.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go to football games.

In fact, you’ll be missing a whole lot if you don’t go.

Tonight is exciting, not just because it is the first day of a new football season, but because new memories — lifelong memories — will be made.

­— robhowar@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Robby Howard on Twitter @robbyhoward1.