Sad-sack Sycamores

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – Donye McCleskey came to Indiana State dreaming of championships.

Now the senior would settle for a simple, dignifying end to the Sycamores’ losing streak, which reached 31 on Saturday with a 28-0 loss to Youngstown State.

“It ruined my college career, honestly,” McCleskey said before last week’s drubbing, 41-0 at South Dakota State. “As far as my social life, I don’t have one. I’m embarrassed to go out. I’m ashamed.”

This is not how athletic departments envision the college experience, but it is how life has evolved at this Football Championship Subdivision school near the Illinois state line.

Indiana State, best known for producing NBA Hall of Famer Larry Bird, is back in the spotlight because it has the longest active losing streak in Division I football.

Only three other Division I programs can claim losing streaks at least as long as the Sycamores’: Prairie View A&M, which lost a record 80 consecutive games from 1989-98; Columbia, which lost 44 straight from ’83-’88; and Northwestern, which holds the FBS (or Division I-A) record at 34.

Some Web sites are calling for Indiana State to drop football – sites the players and second-year coach Trent Miles have seen. Though players insist The Streak will end some day soon, students continually crack jokes and count the number of games they’ve attended on one hand. Or one finger.

McCleskey is one of the lucky ones. Of the 82 players on this year’s roster, McCleskey is one of four who has won a college game.

Could it be worse?

Indeed.

The only thing separating Indiana State from the ignominy of a 55-game skid is a 28-22 victory over Missouri State on Oct. 21, 2006, and the mercy of the NCAA. The Sycamores turned themselves in for using an ineligible player in three games that season, including the win that snapped a 24-game losing streak.

Fortunately, the NCAA took pity on the program. Indiana State was allowed to keep that win, though coach Lou West was suspended for one game in 2007 and the school was fined $1,500 because of the bookkeeping mistake.

The Sycamores (0-5) of the Missouri Valley Conference have been shut out the past three weeks and outscored 127-3 over the last 15 quarters. Against Eastern Illinois two weeks ago, they produced just 95 yards of offense, the Sycamores’ first sub-100 yard game since the pre-streak season of 2003.

And there was the inexplicable opening night loss to Quincy (Ill.), an NAIA program. But after taking an early 17-0 lead, the Sycamores lost 26-20 in overtime.

“We knew it wasn’t Quincy that beat us,” McCleskey said. “It was us that beat us – personal fouls, hiking the ball over the quarterback’s head, that kind of stuff.”

Maybe Miles is the man to fix the program. He is an Indiana State alum and Terre Haute native who shared ball boy duties with Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron in the 1970s. Miles has been an assistant at Stanford, Notre Dame and Washington and did a brief stint with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers.

Miles’ staff features former NFL receiver Troy Walters as offensive coordinator, former Sycamores star Shannon Jackson as defensive coordinator and former Indiana State head coach Dennis Raetz as defensive assistant.

But even the straight-talking Miles acknowledges the Sycamores are sort of like an expansion team.

“We had to blow up the program and start from the ground up,” he said. “We only had four seniors when we got here and we only have five this year. This program didn’t just get this way in a few years. It’s been a lot of years.”

Some hometown players, like defensive end Daniel Millington, saw it happen.

“When I was in high school, they were always fighting and competing,” he said. “But over the years, the mindset really deteriorated. They went from being a big, physical team to a smaller, faster team.”

When Raetz led the Sycamores, from 1980-97, he never won fewer than three games and finished with back-to-back nine-win seasons in 1983 and 1984.

Then the Sycamores cashed it in, literally. The annual recruiting budget was cut from $58,000 to $13,000 before Raetz’s departure, an administrative decision that doomed Indiana State’s program for the next decade.

“That’s not even enough to host kids for a weekend,” Miles said.