“Tom Crean, who embraces every stitch of glory-days Hoosier tradition, wouldn’t think of it.” “The IU coaches who would have dared – and no doubt preferred - to change them have been moved on,” Hammel said. Fittingly, those who didn’t embrace that tradition haven’t lasted long with IU. Once Indiana settles on a look it likes and has success with that look, they stick with it. This is a program that has made minimal changes to its jerseys - famously lacking nameplates on the back - and led for many years by Knight, whose red knit sweater became a part of his persona over the years. While Oregon has left its impression of the college sports landscape with bold, fashion-forward choices, Indiana has always been happy with occupying a niche at the other end of the spectrum. Soon, they became an iconic part of an Indiana program partially defined by fashion. “When people saw Indiana play, they recognized those candy-striped uniforms.” “Indiana University has been on … more than any other Big Ten institution as far as being on CBS or ESPN on a nationwide basis,” IU assistant director of event management Kit Klingelhoffer told the Tom Crean Show in 2011. (The highly-rated “Game of the Century” between UCLA and Houston had taken place three seasons before.) For TV audiences, those candy striped warm-ups were a calling card. In 1971, college basketball was entering a new era where, for the first time, it was a viable television property. Knight opting for something different couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. “This was before the rest of us got to know Bob Knight well enough to think how wildly out of character it was for a man so conservative and stodgy in his basketball styling.” Whether Knight actually got the idea from the Globetrotters is unclear. The Harlem Globetrotters made candy-striped shorts popular decades before Knight brought the pants version to Bloomington. But it should be noted that the pants themselves were not original. The look was already familiar in the Hoosier State, as the Indiana basketball team had already turned striped tube socks into a fashion statement. “I just liked them,” Knight told Hammel earlier this week in classic Bob Knight fashion. They were, however, unique in the college basketball world. There was nothing particularly loud about them in comparison to the fashion at the time, which was dominated by geometric-patterned attire most visibly – and famously – seen on glam rock musicians. Knight’s 1971–1972 squad was the first to play in Assembly Hall and the first to rock the candy-striped warm-ups. Not trying to parallel any roles here, now, but asking why seemed sort of like asking God why the sky is blue.” “I just never thought about it, because they were … there. “As well as I know Bob and as many conversations as we’ve had, I’ve never thought to ask him the whys of the striped pants,” Hammel said in an e-mail exchange with Lost Lettermen. Even Bob Hammel, co-author of a new book with Bob Knight called “The Power of Negative Thinking," didn't know how they became an Indiana trademark. Prior to each game, Indiana players take the court sporting these blasts from the past, but very few people know the origin of the distinctive pants because the Hoosiers have worn them for so long.
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