January 19, 2026 is undoubtedly the most sacred day in Indiana University Football history. On this day the Hoosiers defeated the Miami Hurricanes to claim their first ever football national title. Unfortunately for Kenneth Hudson, my dad, he passed away on March 21, 2025.
For Dad, who achieved two degrees from Indiana, IU football was a passion. It was almost like his second religion. He attended home games at every chance he had. He listened to games on the radio decades before Don Fischer became “the Voice of the Hoosiers’ in 1973. He followed them as much as he could when he was stationed in Korea. When IU was playing football, he was going to be consuming it in one way or another.
Dad died a season short of the national championship, but he was not alone in his misfortune of missing the Hoosiers’ greatest season ever.
The death rate in our country for 2025 was 689 per 100,000. Indiana University has nearly 800,000 living alumni, the largest of any school in the country. Using these figures, I estimate about 5,500 IU alumni died in 2025.
How many followed IU Football? Who knows. How many of them cared for a team so synonymous with losing?
For those that did, they’d certainly have reason to celebrate.
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My Dad was born in 1933 in Hendricksville, about 10 miles south of Indiana’s first Memorial Stadium, which opened in 1925. I believe the first games he attended were with the Greene County Boy Scouts, who often volunteered as ushers for the IU football games.
Dad would have been 12 in 1945, putting him in the stands when the great George Taliaferro led the Hoosiers to their first Big Ten Football Championship in school history. When I was growing up, it seemed like my Dad never stopped talking about seeing Taliaferro and his unbelievable exploits on the grid iron.
His favorite story went something like this: George made an interception or returned a punt and ran from sideline to sideline on his way to the end zone. Dad said he ran like 150 yards to make a recorded 90-yard score.
Taliaferro, one of the most decorated players in IU football history, was the first black player drafted by an NFL team—the Chicago Bears. This was a major milestone for Indiana University Football and the Big Ten Conference in 1949.
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The 1968 Rose Bowl for over 50 years ruled as IU’s biggest game. Our family watched it at my Dad’s sister’s place on Kinser Pike in Bloomington with about 25 other extended family members. That New Year’s Day, we had a big meal and then watched the Hoosiers lose to USC and O.J. Simpson. We watched it on my aunt’s new color television. That was a big deal.
My wife and family lived in Florida, so I didn’t see a lot of games with my Dad. But we did meet in Atlanta to watch Indiana lose to Tennessee in the 1988 Peach Bowl. Coach Bill Mallory and star running back Anthony Thompson made the game competitive, but the Hoosiers fell, 27-22.
In 1991 we were all together on New Year’s Eve at my brother’s in Indianapolis to watch IU beat the Baylor Bears, 24-0, in the Copper Bowl. In 2000, two of my daughters and I went with him to the IU – North Carolina State game. Phillip Rivers threw for 401 yards and 5 TDs and the Wolfpack edged out IU and Antwaan Randle El, 41-38. It was very satisfying to see my young girls with their grandpa experiencing their first college football game.
After I returned to Indiana, Dad and I attended the 2013 IU – Penn State game in which IU prevailed, 44-24. Dad was always against PSU joining the Big Ten and really enjoyed this victory. The last game I saw with Dad at IU was the 2016 Oaken Bucket game where Kevin Wilson coached IU to a 26-24 win. It was Wilson’s final game as head coach as well.
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Going to games with my Dad was an experience. He always had a game plan. He had parking habits.
I am pretty sure he never paid for parking, with the only exception being a few of the church lots surrounding the stadium. I remember as a young kid parking at my aunt and uncle’s on Kinser Pike, going through open fields, jumping ditches, and sprinting across College and Walnut streets. I was mostly running to keep up. It seemed like forever before we could see the stadium, and then ultimately seeing the stadium in the distance would give me a shot of adrenaline to make it the rest of the way.
Dad never tailgated. Never. Not once.
He was going to a football game, not a social event. Although he took plenty of people with him to games throughout the years, the social aspects happened in the car on the way and in the hour-long ride back home.
He was also very big on not leaving a game early. We got there early – for reasons to be revealed later – but never left early. When the game was over, it was still a track meet back to the car. Traffic out of Bloomington was pretty easy because most of the fans had already left for obvious reasons – again, this is Indiana Football we’re talking about.
Indiana Football wasn’t just bad; before Cignetti’s miracle turnaround, the Hoosiers held the record for the most overall losses in FBS history and was statistically the losingest program in major college football. In the 30 years before Cignetti arrived, Indiana had three winning seasons. In Cignetti’s first year coaching Indiana in 2024, the Hoosiers scored their first 11-win season.
Maybe my Dad could have envisioned Indiana becoming a winning program, even the juggernaut it presents as now. If this is true, he was one of the few Indiana faithful who was willing to walk through a desert of mostly-bad football his entire life waiting for Indiana to put together a winner on the gridiron.
All this to say, Dad always seemed to have tickets to the games. He either bought season tickets or got them through the high schools he worked at. In the early years of his career, Indiana University made two seats available to all the high schools in Indiana. There was not a lot of interest in football in the small schools where Dad coached basketball, so he was very happy to get this perk.
These free tickets were, of course, not the best seats in the house, but it didn’t matter to Dad. I am pretty sure 99% of the time he never sat in those free seats. I would also venture to say when he actually bought season tickets, he often vacated them for a better venue.
As I mentioned, we would get to the stadium early. Dad would pick up his tickets from will call and then head for the center aisleway. He would find seats around the 50-yard-line about 30 rows up and he would enjoy these seats for a short while – until the rightful occupants of the seats arrived.
I soon learned to be looking for our next seats for when the inevitable happened. I would scan around: two rows down there are like five seats, behind me 10 rows up there are several open seats. I was always anticipating our next move, and he was doing the same.
When the owners of the seats we sat in got there, it was always the same conversation. “We were just keeping them warm for you,” he would say, or sometimes he just kind of acted surprised and we moved on. For me, it was pretty embarrassing. He didn’t care.
I can remember sometimes sitting in our “borrowed” seats for maybe a whole quarter before the owners showed up. It was kind of traumatic. I would be watching the game, always wondering when we were going to have to move. As an adult, I often found myself checking my tickets at sporting events, making sure we were in the right seats and would not be forced to move.
A few weeks ago, I asked my Mom if Dad ever took her to an IU football game. It was their first date, she said, so I asked if she remembered anything about where they sat. I had to laugh when she said they sat way down on one end and there was no one around them. When I asked about games they went to after being married, she said they would move around a lot before getting to their final seats. She didn’t like the seat shifting and stopped going to the games.
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As I got older, I believe Dad must have bought regular season tickets. Mom said she always urged him to get tickets because he really enjoyed going. It seemed a pattern developed that he would take a friend or relative, and my brother and I would do the same.
Tim Cox, a lifelong friend, told me this summer the first IU game he attended was with us. Tim and I sat in the end zone as we watched the Hoosiers play Wisconsin. A few short years later, both of us and a few of our close friends were enrolled at IU.
Tim was an outstanding football player for our very small high school—North Daviess High School an hour south of Bloomington. Our senior class had 100 members, and yet Tim had gathered interest from a few Division III schools wanting him to play football for them. Tim had other plans and actually walked on at IU and played for two years.
Although he never traveled or saw any varsity game time, Tim did dress for all the home games and played some JV. To his friends, this did not matter. When he ran onto that Big Ten field in Memorial Stadium, we went nuts. We were so proud of him, and I know my Dad was just as proud. No one else from our school has ever made it to the Big Ten. Only Tim Cox.
As proud as Dad was for Tim’s football accomplishments, he was more proud that Tim joined the Air Force, became a pilot, and served our country. He was proud that Tim raised a wonderful family and that he was very active in his church. These things were important to my Dad.
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Yes, Dad missed out on the greatest season and greatest victory in the history of Indiana Football. He would have enjoyed every minute of every game.
Big picture, he has missed even more over the last 17 months. Another great-granddaughter and great-grandson have been born since he has passed away. His 71-year-old nephew, Cliff, accepted Christ and was baptized, and then he died 3 months later. Cliff listened to my Dad for years tell him about Jesus; he just never was interested and he would let Dad know it.
Now, I believe they are united in heaven. How could anything be finer?
Today, I had a very profound conversation with my brother. Believe me, this doesn’t happen often.
Mark was at a normal check-up two days ago and an EKG was taken. The practitioner did not like the results, and a few hours later Mark’s cardiologist contacted him and said go directly to the nearest emergency room. He was admitted to the hospital that afternoon. The next day he had a pacemaker implanted.
Mark was a little emotional when he told me how he really wanted to talk to Dad the night before about how he was going to be getting a pacemaker. It wasn’t because Dad had one – well, maybe it was a little – but it was because my brother wanted to share something important to him with my Dad and get his words of encouragement, calm, and reassurance.
He wanted the love of his earthly father. Mark is a 65-year-old man who still wanted to talk with his Dad. Dad missed this. He would have loved speaking to Mark and helping him more than anything.
This made me think. Will any of my family want to share significant things with me when I am gone?
What is really important in life? I think most of us know life is way more than football and national championships. Roughly 5,500 IU alumni died along with Kenny Hudson in 2025. Did they have the right priorities? We can all hope they did.
Faith. Family. Football.
GO HOOSIERS!
David Hudson with Joe Van Hoose
Me and Dad at the Penn State Game. It was a BIG win!!!
