BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – As sportswriters, we are trained not to get too close to the topics we cover.

The keep your distance principle is about not letting relationships influence your journalistic judgment. It’s unwise to get caught up in a kind of Florence Nightingale syndrome about your subject. Notice things immediately, but not so much that you let it cloud your thinking.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, this is a prudent rule to follow. However, in pursuit of this, you may develop some myopia.

You can get lost in the weeds of details, be too skeptical about how the sausage is made, and lose sight of the greater truth in what you’re dealing with. You can get so close, in the sense of being so close, that you don’t fully appreciate what the rest of the world who isn’t in your immediate circle is seeing.

The Hoosiers On SI team has written extensively about Indiana’s undefeated start and how historic it is. But when you’re around it all the time, it’s a journalist’s job to get beyond the first layer of pure joy and try to explain how it happened. Why is it happening?

I think I fell into that trap, at least on Saturday. Right now, but maybe it’s not in the right place.

Heading into the Hoosiers’ home game against Washington, I had football details on my mind. Can Tayven Jackson get the offense moving in the right direction? How would Indiana handle the first decent running back it has faced all season (Jonah Coleman)?

There’s nothing wrong with thinking about these things, but it’s easy to miss the magic that creates the moment. It’s human nature to get used to anything constant. Winning even at Indiana’s clip reaches a point where the novelty wears off if you’re around him all the time.

If it is human nature to get too close to the issue at hand, then I should take Indiana coach Curt Cignetti’s advice and fight human nature. Focus on one thing.

The one thing about Indiana football after nine weeks is how remarkable the entire experience has been.

Again, do I need to say this? Of course not, but I’m always there for him. Superlatives become routine, which is a sign of a great team but not good for smelling roses.

Our job is not to smell the roses ourselves; It’s about understanding when smelling the roses is justified.

I’ve gotten used to the idea that Indiana has all kinds of possibilities on the national level. A Big Ten title? This is achievable. College Football Playoff? The Hoosiers are in contention. I priced them, processed them, got used to them, and moved on to the professional judgments that come with those realities.

It took my parents to give me a much-needed Francis of Enlightenment moment. To get me out of my professional headspace and see the forest for the trees.

My daughter just graduated from Indiana and was a Walking Face member from 2021-23. The year he was supposed to experience the Indiana bowl game was 2020, but he was off campus due to the then-raging COVID-19 pandemic and our family wasn’t living in Bloomington at the time.

It was bad luck for him that Indiana football went south while he was an active member of the group. But she now lives in Bloomington and decided to volunteer to help Walking Faces with their social media efforts.

When I came home from Memorial Stadium on Saturday, we were talking about the game and I mentioned a column idea I had about how I needed to live in the moment a little more than I had before. She recounted her experience watching Indiana’s success and began to burst into tears.

She said one of the reasons she volunteers is to have the chance to be in the moment. To see Memorial Stadium packed to the brim. Dreaming big of getting to the Big Ten championship game and the College Football Playoff. Enjoying success in a way he couldn’t when he was in the band. Very happy to be a part of this journey.

It melts your heart as a father when your daughter gets emotional, but one story my wife told me really brought my house down.

My wife is not a sports fan. It’s her accident (curse?) that she marries a sports-obsessed man who finds a way to be around what he loves.

He wasn’t at Memorial Stadium on Saturday. We moved to Bloomington over a year ago and don’t know many people here. He works part-time at a local bakery at the Bloomington Farmers Market, partly to help him make friends.

He said merchants there were worried that Indiana football would suck all the oxygen out of Bloomington and take some of their sales with it. The concern was unfounded. The market was very active as always.

He said Indiana football is on everyone’s mind. I was told I worked there as a writer covering the Hoosiers, and that started more conversations about IU football.

Whatever novelty there was in my work was wiped out for him years ago. But Hoosier’s Fever intrigued him.

After completing his day at the Farmers Market, he decided to drive to Memorial Stadium. By then the game had already started, but he found a vantage point from which he could observe from afar.

He heard the roar of the crowd and saw all the noise surrounding the stadium. He went to many games to support our daughter, but he had little interest in the fate of the football team.

He said what he saw impressed him. Bloomington wasn’t just a place he moved to, it was part of a shared experience that he felt was a part of himself.

Their stories woke me up. I can quote all the impressive historical statistics. These are all the last and first times in the stories I’ve written about what this Indiana football team has accomplished.

The numbers are nice, but they only provide glimmers of hope that this dream will come true for long-suffering Indiana football fans. People who are not interested in sports are also starting to notice this. This is a phenomenon.

I knew all of this deep down, but when you get too close, you can be accused of not noticing what’s right in front of you. It’s a journey that very few Indiana football fans take.

With at least five games left, including at least a bowl game, I have to remind myself to put myself in y’all’s shoes. Like you, I need to experience this once-in-a-generation experience.

History is being made in Indiana. And if you can’t allow yourself to surrender to the moment and feel it, what’s the point in trying to document it? Indiana is 8-0 overall and 5-0 in the Big Ten. It’s time to enjoy the ride, even for a professional like me.