Bill Murphy has been an Indiana football season ticket holder for 66 years. He says he has rarely missed a game even though 55 of them have been losing seasons in a historic stretch of bowl-less holidays.One of those rare misses stands out: The 1968 Rose Bowl, when Indiana lost 14-3 to O.J. Simpson and a USC team that went on to be crowned national champion. Murphy was 15 at the time, and his parents weren’t on board with sending him to California alone. But neither Murphy nor his parents could have anticipated the bowl drought that followed. The Hoosiers didn’t make another bowl until 1979, and after that, 1986.Now 77, Murphy wasn’t sure this day would come again. So a backup plan was established in case of an emergency.“I told my wife, son and daughter, I told them, ‘If I die before we go to the Rose Bowl again, I want you to take my urn and buy a program, buy a seat, set the program and urn on the seat, and I’ll be there with you guys,’” he said.Murphy’s story would resonate with any lifelong Indiana football fan, though he warns there may not be many. He grew up a dedicated supporter of Indiana’s losing football team in Bloomington, a …
