Kyle Robbins did this every year. In 2019 though, he had an idea he needed to run by his friends.

The lifelong Indiana football fan and then-writer for SB Nation’s Crimson Quarry blog had experienced an epiphany somewhere between three and seven beers deep in a lounge at the San Francisco airport. When he got back to the Hoosier State, he went out for a night out in Indianapolis’ Broad Ripple neighborhood with his friends Connor Hitchcock and Chris Schutte

Robbins’ attempts to convince his friends that Indiana would win a high number of games in the coming season was a running joke. An impressive loyalty given how awful the program had been.

“It’s like, shocking how bad this program has been,” Hitchcock said. “It’s not like, five and six win seasons pretty regularly. It’s like, three wins almost every year. It’s bad.”

Entering 2019, IU was coming off two straight 5-7 seasons to start head coach Tom Allen’s tenure. Still, Robbins got his hopes up, and talked the others into his way of thinking.

He thought Indiana could win nine games that year. Never mind that their favorite team hadn’t done that since 1967.

The Hoosiers were bringing in Kalen DeBoer from Fresno State to serve as offensive coordinator. Couple that with an uncharacteristically soft schedule and Robbins was shooting for the stars.

The next day, Robbins worked up a blog post explaining the theory, while Hitchcock, a co-founder of Homefield Apparel put a shirt on sale evoking the classic Supreme logo and sticking a hashtag before a word they credited Schutte for coining.

‘We’re gonna have a dynamic offense’

It’s hard to fully understand just how bad Indiana football’s history was entering the 2019 season.

Until recently, the Hoosiers were the losingest program in the history of college football.

For years, Indiana was miles away from its Big Ten peers in football. Its facilities were well beyond. Recruiting wasn’t much better.

“The joke with Indiana fans always was, we’re competing with Central Michigan,” Robbins said. “It was always, we were recruiting against MAC schools.”

Hitchcock, whose parents went to IU, became a Hoosier fan watching Antwaan Randle El in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Robbins said his first IU game was in 1994, at age three.

Neither had been rewarded for the experience. In the early 2010s, the Hoosiers played the occasional chaos agent under Kevin Wilson. A trip to the Pinstripe Bowl was the best effort under Wilson, but he resigned in 2016 after an investigation into his treatment of players.

Allen, then the defensive coordinator in Bloomington, got the promotion before the 2017 campaign. But after two rough seasons, the fan base had criticisms.

“People just kept calling him a high school coach,” Hitchcock said. “Because that’s all he ever was as a head coach prior to being the IU football head coach. He’d been a position coach, coordinator before. But yeah, people felt like they had just kind of mailed it in on the hire.”

But Robbins’ blog post spelled out a new path forward. Indiana had three likely wins on its non-conference slate to begin the year, something it hadn’t seen much of through the years.

He predicted wins over one of Michigan State or Ohio State, then Rutgers, then Maryland. Robbins wrote the Hoosiers could beat a “kinda buttcheeks” Nebraska team on the road, then Michigan in Bloomington.

Cap it off with a bowl win and the Hoosiers would be there. The promised land. #9WINDIANA.

DeBoer’s arrival on staff was a major part of the optimism.

At prior OC stops with Eastern Michigan and Fresno State, DeBoer took offenses that ranked below 110th in the FBS and turned them into top 50 units. After a few years of uninspiring Mike DeBord-led offenses, fans were excited.

“We were like, ‘Oh sick, we’re gonna have a dynamic offense,’” Hitchcock said.

Robbins’ prophecy started the right way. IU won its first three non-conference games, beating Ball State by 10 before blowing out FCS Eastern Illinois, losing to Ohio State and stomping on UConn.

The Hoosiers fell to Michigan State, the first stumbling block to the #9WINDIANA prediction. They recovered though, picking up Big Ten wins over Rutgers and Maryland.

Next up, a trip to Nebraska.

‘You want to adopt the underdog’

Now donning a different shade of Crimson behind the podium as Alabama’s head coach, DeBoer called the Nebraska game his favorite moment of the 2019 season. The South Dakota native noted that the game was fairly close to his home.

“Thought that was a big one for us,” DeBoer told reporters.

IU fans were excited for a different reason. According to reporting from Robbins, then-Cornhusker coach Scott Frost had dissed Indiana during the offseason.

“We all knew, it hadn’t come fully out yet, how much Scott Frost had been on coaches conference calls and other things,” Robbins said. “There was quite a bit of hand-wringing over, you know, like ‘Indiana gets these soft cross-divisional games and we gotta play Ohio State every year.’

“There was a lot of satisfaction in just beating the hell out of that Nebraska team.”

Indiana went on the road and won 38-31, to get bowl-eligible.

The path to nine wins was there. DeBoer’s offense, led by Michael Penix Jr. and Peyton Ramsey at quarterback, was clicking.

Meanwhile, Homefield’s #9WINDIANA shirts were selling. Eventually, Hitchcock, who had started selling them without asking, received official permission from the school to continue his endeavor.

The greater college football internet also took notice. Fans of what was then a popular network of SB Nation blogs latched on to the hashtag and story. Matt Brown, who now runs his own Extra Points outlet, was then in charge of the team site network, credited the Crimson Quarry group with building a culture that was primed for something strange and viral.

“You had just built this culture that was both very funny, very internet driven,” Brown told AL.com. “And if you were the kind of fan that wasn’t an Indiana fan but hung out in similar circles, whether that was the EDSBS extended universe, or what would later become the Sickos Committee, would later become these other places, you were aware.

“And everyone, I think, in that corner of the internet, loves an underdog, right? Like nobody’s gonna sign on to some kind of cheeky pro-Alabama thing. You want to make fun of the superpower and you want to adopt the underdog.”

The four-team playoff meant most national attention went to just a few programs. Robbins hypothesized that the Indiana story caught on because it was dumb, fun, weird and something different to latch onto for fans who were tired of thinking about Alabama and Ohio State.

Indiana’s win streak ended at No. 9 Penn State in November. Then, it fell to Michigan in Bloomington and the #9WINDIANA prophecy looked to be in trouble.

But entering the postseason, it was still alive. The Hoosiers took down Purdue on the road in four overtimes, securing its eighth win entering the Gator Bowl against Tennessee.

Robbins, Hitchcock and company headed down to Jacksonville. But of course, not before Robbins started another online bit, claiming Smokey the dog had fallen for an Iraqi Dinar revaluation scam.

‘I didn’t think it was the top’

Like most things involving Indiana football, the 2019 #9WINDIANA story doesn’t have a happy ending.

IU led entering the fourth quarter but Jeremy Pruitt’s Volunteers scored twice late to stun the Hoosiers.

As Hitchcock watched the disaster unfold, his notifications filled with customers who had ordered #9WINDIANA shirts early in the game. They were canceling their orders.

“I always think about my co-founder, wife, Christa, she grew up a huge Michigan fan because her dad played there” Hitchcock said. “And I just remember at the end of the game, when we had just lost looking over her and seeing her with just tears streaming down her face. I was like, ‘Oh no, what have I done? Like, I got you to go from caring about Michigan football to Indiana football. Now you’re crying over the Gator Bowl.”

It wasn’t the end of Indiana being (relatively) good though. DeBoer left for the Fresno State head coach job during the offseason, but Nick Sheridan filled his shoes well enough for a 6-2 COVID-impacted 2020 season.

It started to slip after that. Indiana went 2-10 in 2021, then 4-8, then 3-9. IU fired Allen before the 2024 campaign, while Hoosier fans bemoaned the fact that DeBoer wasn’t their head coach and had seemingly slipped through their fingers, along with a chance at long-term success.

But for Robbins and those who were paying attention, it seemed like an investment might be close to paying off.

“I didn’t think it was the top. I really didn’t,” Robbins said. “I’ve always had this belief that we’ve got a giant alumni base. Indiana is a sports state. Indiana University is the most dominant brand in the state. And the second people here got a taste of what football winning felt like, I think everybody got addicted to it. And I think ‘19 was the start of that.”

The rest is well-documented. The Hoosiers hired Curt Cignetti from James Madison and everything came together suddenly.

In 2024, Indiana won nine games. Actually, it finished with 10 victories, and an appearance in the College Football Playoff. The Homefield shirts were flying off the shelves once again, along with a #10WINDIANA variant that Hitchcock and company released.

This season, quarterback Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy and the Hoosiers are undefeated Big Ten champions heading into the CFP’s Rose Bowl quarterfinal against Alabama. In news that would have been shocking even in 2019, IU is favored over the traditional superpower.

Times have changed for the #9WINDIANA originators as well. Homefield became a major player in the collegiate apparel game, while Robbins went on to get his law degree after years of blogging at SB Nation, and is now gainfully employed in the Indianapolis area.

Uncharacteristically, Robbins undershot this year’s victory total. Ahead of the season, he thought eight or nine wins with a Music City Bowl trip was the limit.

Both Robbins and Hitchcock will be in attendance on Thursday. Their beloved Hoosiers have a legitimate shot at a national championship now.

But all involved still fondly remember the season that Allen, DeBoer and company made Indiana believe, even if they couldn’t fulfill the #9WINDIANA prophecy.

“I think there was a rallying cry around Indiana football in a way that there hadn’t been before that,” Robbins said. “And we’ve been building an incredibly online following for Indiana football fans, a little bit of a counterculture movement in the years before that. But I do think it brought more people to the team.

“And like I said, without ‘19 and ‘20, I don’t think that Indiana ever hires and makes the investment into football that they do for Curt Cignetti. Because they got a taste of it.”

Just days before the season opener, the Cleveland Browns still haven’t signed rookie running back Quinshon Judkins, and optimism about him being ready for Week 1 — or anytime soon — is fading fast.

Cleveland drafted Judkins with the No. 36 overall pick to be its feature back, but his situation has grown unusually tangled. The 21-year-old was arrested July 12 on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge involving his girlfriend. Prosecutors later declined to pursue charges, but at the time of his arrest, Judkins was already holding out in pursuit of a fully guaranteed deal, following the precedent set by other early second-round selections.

Although he’s been cleared legally, questions remain about what’s holding up a resolution and whether the NFL will hand down discipline under its personal conduct policy.

“I don’t know if it’s today, tomorrow, or next week. I did get the sense there was some hope movement would happen sometime this week, with the season starting,” Browns insider Mary Kay Cabot said recently on The Ken Carman Show. “I don’t know what the holdup is. I think there are a lot of moving parts — the team, the agent, the player, the league, the NFLPA.”

NFL Still Investigating Browns RB Quinshon Judkins

The sticking point appears to be how potential league discipline could impact Judkins’ contractual guarantees.

“There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes that we don’t really know about, and sometimes these things take time,” Cabot said. “The NFL is still investigating under its personal conduct policy. I think it’s more that than anything — the league trying to determine if he should be suspended or disciplined. It’s all tied together.”

The Browns have remained tight-lipped on Judkins’ situation, declining to provide any substantial update.

“I can’t get into that,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said this week. “Hard to speculate.”

Browns Still Confident in Ground Game

With Nick Chubb now in Houston and Judkins out of the picture, the Browns will be relying on veteran Jerome Ford, rookie Dylan Sampson and undrafted rookie Raheim Sanders to carry the load.

Despite the issues with Judkins, the Browns are committed to the run game. The offensive scheme is expected to return to a foundation of a wide-zone run scheme and play-action passing, with Stefanski taking over play-calling duties once again.

“Going back to when we added coach Bloomgren with Tommy Rees, really making sure we’re a sound run game,” Stefanski said this week. “When you talk about the run game it’s easy to say the running backs and the offensive line, but it does take everybody. We need wide receivers who can block, we need quarterbacks who can get you in and out of the right plays. I think the guys have put in a ton of work into the run game, and I know those guys are excited about some of the things we’re doing. But you have to go do it in the games.”

The Browns kick off their season on Sunday at home against the Cincinnati Bengals as a 5.5-point underdog.