Note: This is part of a series that has been running periodically during the season. If your team’s sob stories haven’t appeared yet, your time is coming. Fans of the Badgers, Nittany Lions, Hawkeyes, Cornhuskers and Wolverines have already had theirs.

It’s been a lost year for Indiana football. This whole season might haunt Hoosiers fans, coming as it does on the heels of 2020’s breakout 6-2 campaign.

Indiana has celebrated the last couple seasons, ending big years in bowl games. This year’s injury-riddled fallback will leave a bad taste when it mercifully ends.

Over the past couple decades, specific games have left bad tastes, some because they were agonizingly close. Others because they weren’t.

Oh so close

Indiana thought it was on the verge of scoring an upset in 2015 when No. 15 Michigan came rolling into Memorial Stadium.

By Nov. 14, 2015, IU was still winless in the Big Ten, starting 0-5 in the league. But the games had been close: leading No. 1 Ohio State in the second half, holding a 25-point lead vs. Rutgers in the third quarter, falling to Iowa by only 7.

The UM game was the closest of them all. The Hoosiers took the Wolverines to double overtime, only losing when Nate Sudfield’s fourth-down pass from the 2 bounced off the hands of receiver Mitchell Paige.

The loss continued Indiana’s misery against Michigan, as the Hoosiers dropped their 20th straight vs. the Wolverines dating back to the 1987 season. It’d add 4 more Ls before finally toppling UM in 2020.

Chomped by the Vols

Indiana was on the brink of its first bowl victory since 1991 and a 9-win season.

It led Tennessee 22-9 with 5 minutes left.

But in a blink, the Volunteers stormed back to win the game, edging by the Hoosiers on Jan. 3, 2020 in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. It was a brutal way to lose; the Vols scored 14 points in only 31 seconds to rally. Special teams killed the Hoosiers, with a missed extra point and a field goal, but the back-breaker was the on-sides kick that helped Tennessee set up the back-to-back TDs for a 23-22 win.

Bowl L Again

The Hoosiers thought they’d definitely break the bowl streak a year later, when they were a heavy favorite against Ole Miss in the Jan. 2, 2021 Outback Bowl.

Instead, the seventh-ranked Hoosiers rolled over for much of the game, before finding a pulse late. But their rally fell short in a 26-20 loss to a .500 Rebels’ team that was horrible — as in nearly last in the FBS in all relevant categories — on defense.

Indiana, which had lost only 1 game, did everything it had not previously during the season: It was loose with the football. It dropped passes. It got behind early. It wasn’t sharp mentally or physically. And the hole was too big, even though IU had rallied back for a 20-all tie in the fourth quarter.

Wait, how many points?

This one doesn’t haunt because it was close.

It haunts because it wasn’t.

On Nov. 13, 2010, Wisconsin racked up 83 points against the Hoosiers, winning by 60. The points matched the most by a Big Ten team in a conference game since Ohio State’s victory against Iowa in 1950.

And the Badgers played without running back John Clay, the reigning Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year. Didn’t matter. In his first start, Montee Ball had 3 touchdowns, and James White added 2 more.

The loss dropped IU to 0-6 in the Big Ten, but this one was a real eye-opener. The Hoosiers had actually started the season 4-2, with one loss to Ohio State and the other by only 7 to Michigan. And the 2 losses previous to Wisconsin were by 3 (to Northwestern) and 5 (to Iowa).

Indiana’s only Big Ten win, as it turned out, was a 3-pointer to end the season vs. Purdue.

The experiment fails

Here’s a great idea: Move your quarterback, one of the most dynamic players in program history, to wide receiver. (Note: This was a terrible idea).

That was Cam Cameron’s plan to start the 2001 season and so it wasn’t a surprise when he was fired following a 5-6 year. Randle El, who had lit up NC State in 2000, was a near non-factor in the return game in North Carolina for the Sept. 6, 2001 season-opener.

Instead of Randle El, Tommy Jones started at QB. His touchdown pass with 5 minutes remaining was IU’s first score; by then, the Hoosiers trailed 35-7.

Randle El had 4 receptions for only 30 yards, and he rushed the ball 7 times — mostly lining up as a Wildcat QB — for 40 more. But it was a disaster, leaving most Indiana fans to wonder what in the heck Cameron was thinking.

A loss and a loss

Indiana came into the 1989 Old Oaken Bucket game needing a victory to get to the postseason.

It was a huge game, not only a rivalry vs. a hated opponent in Purdue, but a chance to go bowling and perhaps more importantly a chance for another game for running back Anthony Thompson, a Heisman candidate.

The Hoosiers were a 2-touchdown favorite against a Purdue program suffering badly at the end of the 80s. But Purdue earned the win, 15-14 in Memorial Stadium. It cost the Hoosiers their extra game, a showcase for Thompson in a bowl. Not only was IU only 5-6, but Thompson lost the Heisman to Andre Ware, as well.