All I’m going to say before showing you the quickly-becoming-infamous This is Indiana video by Brice Fox and Daniel Weber is this: Purdue fans and Notre Dame fans are surely having a grand ol’ time making fun of this, but they have cheesy video skeletons in their closets as well – here for Purdue and here for Notre Dame.
Now watch. My thoughts after.
You all know that I grew up in Bloomington, I graduated from IU, and I bleed cream and crimson…so me even trying to offer up an objective response to this video is pretty pointless.
Does it feature white guys rapping? Yes. Does that and many other elements of the video make it cheesy as hell? Absolutely. But did I thoroughly enjoy every second of the old school basketball footage and remembering why I suffer through all of the losing right now? Well to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Man when asked if he ordered the Code Red: You’re goddamn right I did!
Now, in the interest of fairness and balance, I’ll let Travis Miller of Hammer and Rails – a Purdue voice I greatly respect – offer up the opposing viewpoint that I’m sure the majority of you will share:
Just saw the infamous IU basketball video at work. Even with no sound it is epically bad. If I were an IU fan I would cower in shame
Travis, the Hoosiers have not been competitive in football since my dad was there in the 80s and early 90s and our basketball team has been the Big Ten’s worst over the last three years. At this point, it’s going to take a lot more than this video to make me hang my head in shame.
Really, when you think about, this video is just the natural progression of the steady decline IU’s athletic department has seen since its heydey when I was growing up in Bloomington. What comforts me in is the knowledge that the combination of six straight losses, the Derek Elston tripping controversy, and this video might very well signal a low point. With brighter days on the horizon in basketball if for no other reason than an influx of talent, and hopefully better days ahead for the football team with new coach Kevin Wilson, there actually appears to be a very slight silver lining poking through the dark clouds that have hung over Bloomington since I graduated.
Maybe, just maybe, we’ve reached rock bottom with all the pointing and laughing this video is inducing across the country. And now we can begin the climb back up to respectability.
That’s how I’m looking at this anyway. (Hey, it beats hanging my head in shame!)
Sorry Brice and Daniel – this post is probably not the “compliment” you were looking for, especially from a fellow member of the IU family. I do appreciate the hard work that clearly went into making the video, and I actually think it has some redeemable qualities from a musical production standpoint, and I obviously I agree with all of the sentiments you express from an IU standpoint…but after lambasting Purdue and Notre Dame for their videos, I do have to at least try to be fair in assessing it overall.
Now go cheer hard Saturday night when Michigan comes to town. When we’re winning Big Ten titles and back in the top 10 again, we can make videos like this and tell our critics to kiss our ass when they make fun. Right now? Well, let’s just say having one more rap video than we have victories in the Big Ten isn’t a good thing.
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Update: On the anonymous Internet, where you can be completely unaccountable for what you say and do if you want to be, there is nothing I respect more than people who put themselves out there and who do not shy away from the inevitable criticism that will come with it. Daniel Weber, one half of the duo featured in the “This is Indiana” video above, earned my respect today.
Obviously I did not provide a ringing endorsement of their video with this post, nor with subsequent tweets about the subject, but Weber (follow him here) reached out and addressed my comments head on:
read the blog/tweets and stuff.… i appreciate the honesty, and if it were up to us we would’ve waiting a year to release it!!
but we had a deadline, and as much as it hurts to see our program down like this, we wanted to offer a little hope for hoosiers :)
From one Hoosier to another, kudos to you Daniel. You acknowledged your critics but maintained pride in your work. That kind of attitude will serve you will as you pursue a career in entertainment. And hey, as I learned a long time ago, you never know what will introduce your name to people or make them see you for the first time. All that really matters is how to handle it thereafter. Keep it up.
Update: I suppose I should note the tweet I just sent out:
Damnit @dwebermusic I’ve been humming/singing “This is IU” to myself all day. It’s growing on me… http://ow.ly/3CP9X #iubb
The cheesiness is hard to ignore, but damnit, it’s hard for me to hate on something too badly that professes so much love for my school.
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