Indiana Football "Hurts So Good"

The nation -- at least the college-football-watching demographic -- has marveled at the rise of Indiana University Hoosiers football. IU, one of the losing-est college football programs in history, will play for the CFP National Championship as the number one seed against the tenth-ranked Miami Hurricanes, a traditional powerhouse. And this IU team, coached by the enigmatic Curt Cigneti, is being talked about as one of the top-5 greatest college football teams ever. It's a truly fascinating story.

And, who knew it was strongly influenced by "Jack & Diane."  

Ok, not really. It was actually influenced by the musician behind that iconic 80s song. And, not even really influenced by John Mellencamp, but there is a connection between the Indiana musician and artist and IU football program. That little tidbit of trivia is the surprising subject of a feature in the Wall Street Journal this week:  The Chain-Smoking Rock Star Who Made Indiana Football Hurt So Good

There are a select few ways to become wealthy enough to join the ranks of college football’s most powerful boosters. The late T. Boone Pickens, the chief benefactor for Oklahoma State, built an oil fortune that he dispersed to the Cowboys. Phil Knight, who bankrolls Oregon, turned Nike into an intercontinental empire that transformed the Ducks into a gridiron behemoth.

Then there is Indiana University. The program that opened the season as the losingest team in Division I football history now stands one game away from its first championship—and it hasn’t gotten there via the pursestrings of one of the world’s richest people. In fact, the Hoosiers’ most prominent booster isn’t a tech genius or hedge fund titan.

It’s the guy who wrote “Jack & Diane.”

In a college sports landscape lorded over by billionaires, none other than John Mellencamp—the 74-year-old heartland rocker—has played no small part in Indiana’s rise from laughingstock to the No. 1 team in the country. Year after dismal year, Mellencamp trudged to Hoosiers games on Saturdays. At a time when nobody saw Indiana football as a good investment, he gave $1.5 million to build the team’s practice facility: the John Mellencamp Pavilion.

The facility’s namesake harbored no illusions that his donation might one day turn the downtrodden Hoosiers into the country’s top team. “It was a bunch of down years,” Mellencamp said. “That’s just the way it was.”