Dr. Phyllis Grant, 100-Year Old Indiana Hoosiers Fan Who's Had Season Tickets Since 1949, Is Experiencing The Absolute Peak of Sports Fandom
I'm going back to the well. This morning I wrote a blog about the Loyola Ramblers winning on a buzzer beater in their first game since Sister Jean passed away. It's a "two blogs about 100+ year old sports fans" kind of day. Because the Indiana Hoosiers have a 100+ year old super fan of their own. She's no Sister Jean in the sense of having a prominent role on the team. If Indiana makes a run in the playoffs, I doubt ESPN is giving Dr. Phyllis Grant top billing over Curt Cignetti and Fernando Mendoza. But to be an Indiana Football Hoosiers season ticket holder for the better part of a century... when it comes to being a sports fan, that's as admirable as it gets.
I would be such a sucker for fans like Phyllis if I were a college football coach. You give me one feel good story about the school I'm coaching... one sweet old lady for me to let down... and I'm stuck there for life. I honestly don't know how college football coaches can so easily jump ship from one school to another. I mean... I know it's for A LOT of money. I'm sure I'd do the same thing for a big fat check. But from the moment I met a super fan like Dr. Phyllis Grant, and saw what Indiana meant to her, and thought about all the abhorrent football she's supported for 75 seasons... I'd feel terrible leaving Phyllis in the dust for a bigger and better school. How the hell could I go coach Penn State knowing Phyllis is stuck back at Indiana? Cheering on her Hoosiers in a 17-17 dog fight with Rutgers. Scratching and clawing for a chance to play in the ReliaQuest Bowl. I couldn't bear to let Phyllis go back to watching bad football. It might actually kill her. The memory/ghost of Phyllis would haunt me forever.
76 years of season ticket holding for the worst team in college football. It would be one thing if Indiana played in a small conference, where making a run at a conference title was never THAT far out of reach. But Indiana was the most hopeless team in the sport. There was never even a thought that Indiana might make a run at a conference championship. As a Hoosiers fan, you'd go into every season praying we didn't embarrass ourselves vs a MAC team, so that we'd have a punchers chance of winning 3 conference games and getting our hearts broken in a meaningless bowl game. Except they weren't meaningless to Indiana. They meant SO MUCH. Indiana still hasn't won a bowl game since 1991. Which made getting their hearts ripped out by Duke on a baseball field, and blowing a 2 TD lead to Tennessee in the final 5 minutes of the Gator Bowl all the more tragic.
The list of quarterbacks Phyllis has sat through is something else. Matt Lovecchio. Tommy Velasco. Jay Rodgers. Steve Bradley. The three headed monster of the 2011 Indiana Hoosiers (1-11) that was Edward Wright-Baker, Tre Roberson, and Dusty Keil. I completely made one of those names up, and I bet a lot Hoosiers fans couldn't even tell you which one. But I bet Phyllis could.
What Indiana football is doing right now is so improbable, I'd imagine Phyllis isn't 100% certain she's still alive. She probably thinks she's in heaven. Because nothing she's seeing makes any sense. Sometimes I think being a die-hard sports fan is really fucking stupid. Because more often than not, it brings more pain & anxiety than happiness. But there can't be many payoffs in life better than watching the worst college football team ever for 75 years of your life, then out of nowhere becoming National Championship contenders. Fans of terrible sports teams always envy the fans of great ones. But you can't possibly experience the feelings that an elderly Hoosier football die-hard is experiencing right now if you're an Ohio State fan. That particular experience is just not on the table for them.
My co-worker, T-Bob said this on Wake Up Barstool the other day.
Everybody laughed at him. And if you really think about it, the people laughing are probably right. Over a long life, you're going to be way happier if you're winning consistently. But if we're talking about achieving peak sports watching happiness… even if it only lasts a short while… I'm not sure anybody has been higher on that mountain than Dr. Phyllis Grant is right now. Nobody in college football has ever ascended from worst to first second faster than Indiana. Dedicating your sports watching life to a horrible team doesn't always pay off. But when it does… that is the absolute peak of sports fandom.