Doyel: Historic buzz for biggest IU football game in 50 years

• Ohio State at Indiana, 8 p.m. Thursday, ESPN

BLOOMINGTON – This IU football game is so big, already you’re reading words you’ve never read before. The first seven words of this story, I’m saying.

This IU football game is so big …

Ever read that before? Can’t imagine you have. Get used to it, though, because you’re about to read a lot more words previously unwritten about an IU football game, certainly any IU football game in the last half-century or so. Words like these:

This IU football game is a Marvel comic.

The military is coming for IU football.

The IU football press box is so full, some media are being sent onto the roof above.

And: ESPN College GameDay will be at Memorial Stadium.

None of these things happen on this campus, not for a football game anyway, but they’re happening Thursday night when Ohio State comes to town and brings with it the Hoosiers’ former coach, OSU offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson, who was forced out at IU in December amid allegations of player mistreatment. He was replaced at IU by his defensive coordinator, Tom Allen, the former Ben Davis coach who will open his first full season as coach of the Hoosiers in a sold-out Memorial Stadium against the No. 2 team in the country in a game broadcast on seven different ESPN platforms.

This just doesn’t happen at a basketball school like Indiana, which makes Thursday an unprecedented opportunity for IU to sell itself in a national marketplace — college football — that rarely acknowledges it. To capitalize, the Hoosiers don’t have to beat Ohio State. Much as we like to reduce nights like this to a zero-sum game, win or you’ve blown it, that’s not fair. Nor is it reality. The Hoosiers will blow it, yes, if they’re blown out. And that could happen. Ohio State is a juggernaut under Urban Meyer, one of the three greatest coaches in recent college football history (along with Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh). The Buckeyes have third-teamers who could start at IU, and second-teamers who could be stars in Bloomington. They are much, much better than IU.

But if the game is competitive …

And if Indiana plays an entertaining brand of football …

And if the atmosphere is bonkers …

Then Indiana wins, even if Indiana loses. Of the above three categories (competitive, entertaining, bonkers), I can assure you that at least one will happen: Bonkers. This night will be bonkers. The intensity already is ramping up in Bloomington, where students are getting feisty. On a big orange traffic sign alerting drivers on Dunn Street near Kirkwood Avenue to a “Lane Closed Ahead,” someone scribbled below in black magic marker: No fooling.

In homes nearby, students are painting bed sheets and hanging them from their roof or balcony. Of the three sheets I saw Tuesday, all were supporting IU or attacking Ohio State or both, though only one had a slogan that can be printed in a family newspaper.

Sold my other sheet 4 tattoos, reads the sheet on Smith Avenue. And: #BeatOSU.

The other two signs had nasty references to IU’s opponent, to which I say: Good for you, IU fans. Get nasty. A night like this is commonplace in Ann Arbor and Tallahassee and Tuscaloosa and, yes, Columbus, Ohio — but this game here, this game could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Bloomington, and absolutely will be if the atmosphere isn’t electric. But it will be.

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More electric than any game in the history of IU football. Literally, I’m saying. After ESPN told IU two weeks ago that it would broadcast this game on its parent network and six others — including ESPNU, ESPNEWS and ESPN3 — IU has scrambled for enough generators to accommodate such amperage. By Tuesday afternoon, workers were snaking thick electrical wires all over the cement columns supporting Memorial Stadium.

By Thursday morning, people will be tailgating. Those lots open at 8 a.m., and while 12 hours before kickoff seems excessive, it won’t be for IU associate professor Galen Clavio, director of the National Sports Journalism Center.

“When I heard the lots would open at 8 a.m., I felt I had to do it,” says Clavio, 38. “This is such a unique situation for IU football. I’ve been coming to IU football games since I was 7, and I bet the atmosphere will be unlike any we’ve ever had.”

Try this number: 608 media members.

That’s how many credentials the IU sports information department has processed, and while that number is inflated by the ESPN production crew that will erect and maintain the GameDay set on the field at Memorial Stadium, the coverage will be unprecedented. At least three radio crews will be dispatched to the roof high above the stadium, because there simply won’t be room inside the press box.

Also, try this: Marvel Comics has made a special cover to promote this game, with a bellowing and brawny IU football player engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a scowling Brutus the Buckeye.

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And this: For years, IU has tried and failed to get a military flyover for a game at Memorial Stadium. It’s an expensive undertaking for the government — dispatching jets and fighter pilots, and providing the jet fuel — and it is one buried beneath multiple levels of red tape.

“We’ve tried, but we’ve never gotten past stage one,” says IU senior associate athletic director Jeremy Gray. “As soon as we mentioned Thursday night and College GameDay being here, the request got to the Pentagon, and we got that signature.”

The flyover will happen before the game, at the instant Jim Cornelison finishes singing the national anthem. Oh yeah — for this game IU got Cornelison, a 1992 Jacobs School of Music alum whose rendition of the anthem for the Chicago Blackhawks has become a national treasure. Cornelison is so good, and the flyover so fantastic, ESPN has asked IU to move the anthem from its normal spot, 19 minutes before kickoff, to nine minutes before kickoff. That way, ESPN can show the anthem live.

It’ll be electric, I’m telling you — the biggest game for IU football since the 1968 Rose Bowl — and if you don’t have a ticket yet: condolences. Jeremy Gray has been approached for tickets by friends dating to his childhood in Indianapolis, and he’s all tapped out. Most IU games, he could accommodate his entire 1994 graduating class from North Central. But most games, friends aren’t clamoring for seats. They are for this one, and Gray had to draw a line. He drew it in blood.

“My parents are getting two free tickets,” he says. “All my friends paid.”

History doesn’t come cheap. Nor does it come often.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.