BLOOMINGTON — The news item told the story concisely: John Isenbarger died Wednesday, March 6 at 76.
Of course for all to whom the name clicked, there was grief, sadness. But it also triggered so many memories, of times that then and now seem joyfully unreal — unimaginably so, John Isenbarger a rich contributor to most of them.
Find a 1966 pre-season IU football press guide, one with drab numbers and words reporting statistics and such from new coach John Pont’s first season (2-8) after coming from Yale and previews of the 1-8-1 season that was to follow.
One page deep in that guide listed the freshman recruits coming in that fall, among them:
■ Jade Butcher, defensive back, Bloomington
■ Harry Gonso, running back, Findlay, Ohio
■ John Isenbarger. quarterback, Muncie Central
Historically, freshmen had been ineligible to play on Big Ten or NCAA varsity teams. For the first time, in 1966 Big Ten schools were permitted to have freshman football and basketball teams and play brief schedules: two games in football. The first for Indiana was at Ohio State. And — shock of shocks, first of the wave that was to come — IU won!
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By then, Pont had assigned quarterback coach Bob Baker to install with the freshmen a speed-option offense that required a fast and athletic quarterback who could keep the snap and, accompanied by a tailback, sprint toward a containing end and force him to make a choice: stop the quarterback or contain the tailback and take away the quarterback’s option to pitch.
Both Gonso and Isenbarger were exceptionally good at making the quarterback’s instant read of the end’s choice and making it wrong by either keeping the ball and cutting upfield or pitching to the now-open in full flight tailback. And they were interchangeable: Gonso quarterbacking and pitching to Isenbarger, or Isenbarger taking the snap with an option of pitching to tailback Gonso.
And Butcher from the start was a superb receiver — he and Gonso remarkably successful on touchdown connections inside the 5-yard line.
The dilemma when that ’66 press guide came out was which way to go with Gonso and Isenbarger. It wasn’t resolved in that brief freshman season, or in spring practice. Fall practice in 1967 opened with both still at quarterback, but a decision had to be made. Gonso was Pont’s choice, and Isenbarger of course was disappointed.
But he also was outstanding on the way to future All-Big Ten as a running back who made defensive choices miserable by occasionally pulling up after taking Gonso’s option pitch and QB-style lofting a long strike to Butcher, wide open if the scrambling secondary over-focused on Gonso and Isenbarger.
At career’s end, all three dominated the all-time IU record book. And what an acronym, Butcher-Isenbarger-Gonso.BIG.
Big as in Rose Bowl, where the team they led played — for the only time in school history — after finishing as Big Ten tri-champions at 9-1, the capper a 19-14 upset of maybe the best Purdue team ever.
Of course, we in the press and I in particular were guilty of overplaying the flamboyant BIG three’s role. The mostly senior defense, newly aligned itself in a 4-4-3 defense, might have been the real key. At season’s end, the team’s average was exactly the Purdue score: 19 on offense, 14 on defense. Almost every Hoosier team since has exceeded the 19 on offense. No IU defense since has held teams anywhere close to a 14-point average.
And no player in IU history has made a personal sacrifice comparable to captain Doug Crusan, high on pro draft lists after two years as an outstanding offensive tackle, shedding more than 30 pounds and excelling at defensive tackle, and/or fellow senior Terry Cole, a two-year star at running back who selflessly moved to fullback and primarily a blocking role while the backfield spotlight shifted to Gonso and Isenbarger — until Pont twice caught Purdue over-conscious of the Gonso-Isenbarger option threat and broke fullback Cole wide open up the middle for long, touchdown-producing plays.
Celebration of Life
A John Isenbarger Celebration of Life will be held at 3 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, at Ritz Charles Magnolia Ballroom, 12156 North Meridian Street, Carmel. A reception will follow from 4 to 7 p.m.
Their rewards came later. Crusan, back on offense, was a starting tackle on Miami’s never-equaled unbeaten Super Bowl champions, and Cole, as a running back, was runnerup to NFL offensive Rookie of the Year and a Super Bowl champion with Baltimore.
And Isenbarger?
No one tops him in legends. Or irrepressibility.
After scraping to a 3-0 start, IU came home to play a subpar Iowa team. Isenbarger’s extra role was as the team punter. Pont saw an opening in the Iowa punt-receiving alignment and put in a play for punter Isenbarger to fake his presumed rule and bolt up the middle. Pont called it and it worked, a key to IU’s taking an early lead. Isenbarger thought he saw the same opening in the fourth quarter, with IU narrowly ahead, so on his own he tried it again.
Came up just short. Iowa went ahead with a short touchdown drive, but a Gonso-to-Butcher last-minute touchdown pass pulled out a win.
Now 4-0, IU played at Michigan, jumped out to a 20-0 lead. It was 20-14 when Isenbarger tried a fake-punt run, came up short, Michigan tied the game 20-20, but the BIGs rescued things again and won 27-20.
Now 5-0 and ranked in the Top 10, IU played at Arizona. Sports Illustrated was onto the Hoosier story by then, and lead college football writer Dan Jenkins wrote of the good-luck telegram Isenbarger received in Phoenix from his mother, ending with the advice that always was part of the Iso legend: “And punt, John, punt.”
Less remembered is the last act of the Purdue upset, when the No. 4 Boilermakers, with All-American Leroy Keyes and future All-American Mike Phipps, had Isenbarger punting from deep in the end zone. He launched his longest kick of the year, over the safety’s head into Purdue territory, and the 19-14 lead stood.
Isenbarger had once seemed too tall and too upright in running style to be a great running back, but he growingly learned to use those legs as powerful battering rams. There was nothing flashy, just sheer power in his repeated off-tackle blasts on a long, tie-breaking late-game touchdown drive at Michigan State that Rose Bowl season. And it was sheer will when — late in his senior year, when Gonso got hurt late in a losing game at Northwestern — Isenbarger reached back two years and filled in at quarterback trying to pull out a win.
All three BIGs shared it, but Isenbarger might have led them all in never feeling inferior. Heading into their senior year, a Big Ten writer on the annual pre-season stop-in noted that through a scheduling quirk, Indiana had never “had to play Ohio State.” Isenbarger’s smiling response:
“We look at it that they have never had to play us.”
In all its history, IU has retired one football number: Anthony Thompson’s 32. That is a wonderful tribute to a remarkable two-time All-American. George Taliaferro’s 44 has special status — totally justified.
But now that one of them has passed, some of us still awed by what we watched 56 years ago wouldn’t mind seeing some special respect and permanent notability given to 16, 17 and 40 – Gonso, Isenbarger and Butcher.They were BIG.
Bob Hammel served as sports editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times from 1966-96. He is the author of several books on IU basketball and a member of the Indiana Journalism and Basketball hall of fames.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Bob Hammel column: John Isenbarger helped turn around Indiana football
