19 INDIANA

VARSITY TEAMS: 22 INTRAMURAL SPORTS: 31
FAMOUS ALUMNI: MARK SPITZ, ISIAH THOMAS
EXTRA CREDIT FOR: HOOSIERS HOOPS FAITHFUL

Let's debunk a few myths about basketball-crazy Indiana. The
campus roadways are not paved in polyurethane-coated hardwood.
Backboards and rims are not attached to every dorm. Truth is,
the Hoosiers have won more NCAA titles in swimming (six) than in
basketball (five), and only two fewer national crowns in soccer
and cross-country (three each).

Moreover, there's an on-campus athletic institution as
celebrated as that grumpy basketball coach in the red sweater:
the Little 500 bicycle relay, held every April. The event was
launched in 1951 by university fund-raiser and racing buff Howdy
Wilcox, whose father, Howard, won the 1919 Indianapolis 500. The
Little 500, in which 33 teams of four riders (30 teams in the
women's race) ride 200 laps around a quarter-mile cinder track,
has been the focus of a movie (Breaking Away, winner of the 1979
Oscar for best screenplay), has been aired on national TV and
has generated more than $700,000 in scholarship money (from
ticket sales and sponsors). "I tell people who don't go here
about the race--10,000 students watching people they've never
heard of ride a bike around a track--and they think it's
ridiculous," says senior rider Mike Krueger. "They can't
understand the passion people here have for this event."

That passion extends to other sports. Indiana's intramural and
club programs run the gamut from basketball (of course) to
Wiffle ball and involve more than 15,000 of the school's 25,773
students. The Hoosiers' football team may not have finished in
the Top 25 since 1993, but every year it battles old rivals for
possession of an antique shop's worth of musty hardware: the
Oaken Bucket (Purdue), the Old Brass Spittoon (Michigan State)
and the Bourbon Barrel (Kentucky).

Still, the Little 500 is the school's athletic treasure.
Students train for it intensely, some paying their way to
Florida or Texas during spring break to put in up to 80 miles a
day of warm-weather riding. Riders also make what some might
call a college student's greatest sacrifice. "We can't go party
all night if we want to perform on the track," says senior rider
Rob Rhamy. "But nothing matches the high of being recognized by
other students as one of the guys who won the Little 500."

--CHAD MILLMAN

COLOR PHOTO: MARY ANN CARTER CAMPUS PEDESTRIANS, BEWARE DURING LITTLE 500 TRAINING[Men riding bicycles]