An Indiana insult that just won’t go away
On Saturday when undefeated and 10The tenth— The top-ranked Indiana basketball team comes to Rutgers for the Big Ten Conference Opener (4 p.m., Big Ten Network), and a lot will be made of the Scarlet Knights’ five-game winning streak over the traditional powerhouse. But to fully understand the anguish this line has caused in the land of candy-striped pants, you have to know the story of Kyle Swick.
In 2015, Swick was a law student blogging about sports at Indiana University. A native of the state, he scripted a prep for a football game against Rutgers that featured a few hits on the Big Ten New Jersey draft picks.
“I wake up the next morning and there are 120 comments,” Swick recalls. “The Rutgers fans found it and were angry. They were as angry as I’ve ever seen a fan base. People cared about football at Rutgers to an extent that I had no idea. From that point on, as a young and immature crowd, we were like, ‘We’re going to By antagonizing these guys every chance we get.”
That came to a head on March 10, 2019. After Indiana crushed the Crimson Knights 89-73 on the court, Swick wrote the following paragraph in his “three things” analysis of the contest for the SB Nation CrimsonQuarry.com blog:
Rutger: They do not belong to the Big Ten. Big smoke sucks. While they got better this year (and it will be almost impossible for them to be worse), the next conference commissioner should make launching them into the stratosphere their top priority.”
The post sounded like a normal trolling to Swick at the time.
Turns out, it took on a life of its own.
Rutgers has been beating Indiana like a drum to the hardwood ever since, elevating Swick’s position to a realm of infamy among the Rutgers faithful. This past March, after recent 3-pointer Ron Harper Jr. drowned in Hoosiers in Assembly Hall, teammate Geo Baker mocked the post on Twitter. Rutgers rubbed more salt in the wound this fall, recording its only win in Big Ten football against the Hoosiers and beating the proud men’s soccer program in that sport’s championship final.
Every time, Swick hears it from a Rutgers fan.
Sure enough, the morning after the football game, someone with a first name and nine digits was mentioned after that, “What do you think Rutgers dominates Indiana in every sport?” “I don’t have much of a response at the moment.”
He added, “I’m wondering, how old will I be before IU loses to Rutgers and I have no one tweeting at me?”
Holy cow, that’s insane.
After Swick, now a 34-year-old lawyer and father of two who stopped blogging in 2019, received an interview request from a reporter on the subject, he shared it with his old friends at Crimson Quarry, who urged him to play heel to the limit. Bezel.
He said “I’m not that guy anymore”. “I’ve mostly hung up my trolling cleats at this point.”
He turns out to be an engaging, thoughtful, knowledgeable fan who respects yes, what Rutgers basketball has become under Steve Bickell. But he said the average Hoosier of his generation remains unstable due to the Big Ten’s continued expansion beyond the league’s traditional Midwest footprint.
More than anything else, that was the catalyst for his prodding to Rutgers.
“I was absolutely pissed off about the addition of Maryland,” Swick said. “But when I wrote about not wanting Maryland to participate in the conference, the difference was that nobody from Maryland was interested.”
Rutgers fans are really interested.
“I had a Rutgers fan send me a picture of my house at one point,” Swick said. I was like, “Holy cow, this is crazy.”
As the losing streak continued from the hardwood, Indiana fans became increasingly upset, to the point where Rutgers became Public Enemy No. 2, behind only in-state rival Purdue.
“Indiana fans can only assess teams historically,” Swick explained. “We’re having such a hard time as a fan base that we were able to take a quick snap saying, ‘This is where the teams are right now.'” It’s “good Indiana, bad Rutgers,” regardless.
The difference between hating Rutgers and hating Purdue, Swick said, is that there is a daily affinity between the Hoosiers and the submarine maker in real life.
“With Purdue, there’s only so much disembodied hate you can spew,” he said. “With just New Jersey and the internet, we can take the gloves off and cash in. Honestly, I don’t know a single Rutgers fan here in central Indiana.”
So trolling has reached the level of a fire hose flow. The Crimson Quarry style guide actually instructs writers to drop the S when referring to Rutgers, Swick said. So the utter insult – he intentionally misspelled the name of the college. Until now, when Swick types Rutgers into his phone, it automatically corrects to Rutger.
“The reason we keep doing this is because people are angry,” Swick said. It became, “We’ll give you your S back when you earn it.” Well, we ended up eating our words at it because the basketball rout started. Do they earn an S now? No, that’s the secret—you never earn it.”
Nerves to face on Saturday
Named in the preseason as a Big Ten favorite, this Indiana team turned the corner under second-year head coach Mike Woodson. Hoosiers athletic experience (7-0) and poise and All-America candidate in senior forward Trayce Jackson-Davis (19.2 ppg, 8.2 rpg), who spoke earlier this week about how he never beat Rutgers.
The Scarlet Knights (5-2) don’t have a good win yet, having lost to Temple and Miami with point guard Paul Mulcahy sidelined with a shoulder injury.
“I have a lot of confidence in this team,” Swick said of Indiana. “But there are nerves, going to a school that has your number in it. And it’s tailor-made for the area of disappointment.”
The Hoosiers won a home game against North Carolina on Wednesday, and as Baker said on his podcast this season, Rutgers won’t be afraid of the name on the front of their jerseys.
“Why are they afraid of us?” Swick said. “Why do they have any respect for Indiana basketball when we’ve been their doormat for their entire careers? Thank God (Baker and Harper) are gone. It felt like they’d been there forever. They were such talented basketball players and it tormented me so badly.”
Last March, after Harper had plunged his dagger into Bloomington, the mild-mannered young man turned to the Indiana student section, which had been teasing him relentlessly, and pointed at his crotch.
More than a few Indiana fans clutched their pearls. Not just you. He said he defended Harper’s gesture in conversation with friends.
After all, this is the same spirit that fueled Rutger’s sarcasm.
“Would I do it again? Surely, even if I knew what was coming—you’ve got these five strikes in a row, you’re going to be tormented by this for the next three years of your life,” he said. “That to me is what’s fun about sports – maybe not a lot of pictures of my house are a DMd to me, but there is a place for trash talk.”
You might even say that this retired elf really appreciated how Scarlet Knights beat him up again.
“I hope we get to a point, in the next four years, that we have a player that Rutgers owns like that who can stick him in the student division,” Swick said. “That kind of passion—that’s what college sports are all about.”
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and has tackled college basketball since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Call him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
#Indiana #insult #wont