Tommy Barrett never thought he’d have found himself in this particular hell: sandwiched between two raucous Indiana fans amid a mass of them at the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, mouth agape, watching the school he’s rooted against for over 15 years reach the doorstep of college football immortality.
“The best way to describe it,” Barrett said, “is it’s a living nightmare.”
Amid Indiana’s improbable climb from the college football cellar to Monday’s national championship game against No. 10 Miami, thousands of die-hard Purdue fans like Barrett — an Indianapolis native who graduated from the school in 2017 — have had to face the same reality.
Indiana already has five national titles in men’s basketball to Purdue’s none, a fact IU fans are quick to rub in their rivals’ faces. Now the Hoosiers are on the precipice of another trump card in the storied in-state rivalry — in football, of all things.
It matters not that the Boilermakers have dominated, comparatively speaking, on the hardwood for the past two decades in this historically hoops-first state, nor that Indiana’s last basketball title came way back in 1987.
Although Matt Painter has turned Purdue into one of the nation’s best and most consistent men’s basketball programs, currently ranked fifth, it still lost when it finally reached the national title game two seasons ago. And here Indiana fans are, a game away from having the ultimate one-word rebuttal.
Banners.
All this, while Purdue football went 2-10 in 2025, including 0-9 in Big Ten play. So, yes, Boilermakers fans are going through it.
Barrett’s situation is even more unique (and painful): His wife, Courtney, is a proud IU grad, one absolutely reveling in her alma mater’s newfound success. The couple had friends over to their home in Indianapolis on New Year’s Day to watch the Rose Bowl, where Indiana routed Alabama 38-3. Watching in horror, that was the day Barrett recognized where this cream-and-crimson train was probably headed.
“This is potentially the worst thing that’s ever happened to me in my life,” Barrett said of IU’s rise. “I know in my heart they’re a good football team. I just can’t fathom what’s happening.”
Barrett’s sister-in-law, Kaitlyn, like his wife, is also an IU grad who lives in Atlanta. And with a built-in place to stay, Barrett couldn’t push back when Courtney wanted to attend the Peach Bowl national semifinal earlier this month, despite it going against every fiber of his being.
“I love my wife,” Barrett said. “That’s the most important piece.”
And while Courtney and Kaitlyn succeeded in dragging Barrett to Indiana’s eventual 55-26 rout of Oregon, the sisters couldn’t get him to don any IU gear.
“I will never,” Barrett added, “wear that damn color.”
Barrett’s fandom is just one example, but it’s emblematic of a portion of the Purdue faithful: die-hard fans, from Indiana or elsewhere, whose disdain for their rival usurps any other emotions.
Can’t wait for this once in a lifetime FLUKE season to be over and for them to return to reality next season in the gutter
— BoilerMuse (@BoilerMuse) January 10, 2026
However, some Purdue fans, especially those who grew up in the state, are more torn. Not because they like Indiana, but because the state is being represented on one of college sports’ defining stages.
Kylee Kleven, the sports editor of Purdue’s student newspaper, The Exponent, said she’s had that exact conversation with colleagues on her staff.
“Indiana representation … you should root for Indiana because obviously the idea of an Indiana school making it as far as they have (is rare), but at the same time it’s like, should we?” said Kleven, a third-generation Purdue student. “This is the team that I haven’t rooted for my entire life.”
Matt Connolly — whose mother grew up about a mile from Mackey Arena and whose grandparents, aunts and uncles all attended the school in West Lafayette — understands rivalry dynamics better than most.
Connolly covered Clemson as a media member in the 2010s, during its heyday under Dabo Swinney, when the Tigers won two national championships. Just as importantly to people in South Carolina, the Tigers won seven consecutive games against the rival Gamecocks.
That rivalry, like Purdue-Indiana, Connolly said, has historically been more consequential in one major sport than the other. Which is to say, if this were Indiana basketball on the brink of another banner, Purdue fans would be even more in shambles than they are now.
But considering it’s football?
“Both programs were so bad (historically) that I don’t think people really cared,” Connolly said. “Now in basketball, it’s one of the best rivalries that there is. I would put it right up there with Duke-North Carolina. I just think it’s that intense, that heated, that hated. … It’s a basketball state.”
That’s not up for debate for the coaches who have lived it. (First-year Indiana coach Darian DeVries gets his indoctrination on Jan. 27, when the Boilermakers come to Assembly Hall.) Tom Crean, IU’s basketball coach from 2009-17, went 5-10 against Purdue in his nine seasons in Bloomington — including losing his first five games straight against the Hoosiers’ bitter rival.
However, that sixth game, in February 2012 at Mackey Arena? Crean still remembers every detail, down to the snow on the ground. But nothing stands out, over a decade later, more than IU’s bus pulling up to the loading dock pregame — and students surrounding it while hurling insults and boos at his Hoosiers hours before tipoff.
Crean intentionally got off the bus first, then stood by the door high-fiving all his players as they disembarked, soaking in the scene.
“You definitely felt like you were walking in, in the old days, to the Roman Colosseum,” Crean said. “Watching them walk in, nobody was nervous. Nobody was giddy. Nobody was overwhelmed. … There’s really no feeling like going into the visitors’ locker room, and you feel like your team is absolutely ready to win this huge game.”
Crean also has a one-of-one view of what’s transpiring with Indiana football. Because long before he coached against Painter, back in 1994-95, Crean spent one season as an assistant at Pittsburgh, where he regularly interacted with Pitt assistant coaches in other sports.
That includes the then-tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator: a smart, focused, uber-detailed up-and-comer … named Curt Cignetti.
“Thirty-one years ago, Curt Cignetti was a straight business assassin. Even as a recruiting coordinator, he was not getting off his game,” Crean said of the current Indiana head football coach. “When you look at what he did, and you look at the way he evaluated prospects, and you look at the fact that he’s got top to bottom organization of his program (now) — I mean, I think of Matt Painter like that.”
One of the most significant similarities Crean, who now works as a college basketball commentator, sees between Cignetti and Painter is their track record of development.
Painter’s best example is Zach Edey, a former sub-400-ranked recruit whom he helped turn into the first two-time Wooden Award winner since Ralph Sampson in the 1980s.
Meanwhile, Cignetti has turned the losingest football program of all time into a total wagon without any glitzy five-star recruits, instead leaning on productive players from lower-level schools.
“Everybody that was going against (Cignetti at James Madison) knew what he was about; the nation didn’t know what he was about. Now the nation knows what he’s about,” Crean said. “I doubt you’d find anybody in those leagues that didn’t have respect or jealousy or animosity or reverence for him the way he was winning.”
The thing is, the line between respect and hate is incredibly thin, especially with rivals in such close geographic quarters.
All of Barrett, Kleven and Connolly said they’ll be watching Monday’s national championship game, albeit with differing sentiments. Kleven said she’ll be tuning in with pained respect, appreciating Indiana’s caliber of play while also lamenting her friends in Bloomington who “never watched football until Fernando Mendoza wins the Heisman and IU goes undefeated.”
Of course, Barrett will be watching with his wife (through gritted teeth), while already thinking ahead, he acknowledged, to a few months down the line: When the Final Four is in Indianapolis, and where Painter could finally deliver Purdue the men’s basketball championship it has chased its entire history.
As for Connolly? He’s fully expecting Indiana to finish the job. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t also trying to talk himself into some tremendous cosmic trade-off.
“If you told me if Indiana wins a football championship, it guarantees Purdue a national championship in basketball, I would 100 percent sign up with that,” Connolly said. “But otherwise? Go Miami.”
