‘A truly magical experience’: local priest reflects on time at football championship game 

Among the throng of IU fans who watched in person as the Hoosiers won the college football national championship were two local priests.   

Patrick Hyde is a pastor at St. Paul’s Catholic Center on campus, which is where IU quarterback Fernando Mendoza goes to church. He and Father Ben Keller went to the Big Ten Championship Game, the Rose Bowl, the Peach Bowl and the national title game with the help of benefactors.   

 “It was like this cleansing, this catharsis of like, wow, we're a good football team,” he said. “You know, we can compete, we can do great things, whereas so many people for so long had been disheartened and dispirited.”   

Father Hyde described the environment of the championship game as intense and magical. During the timeout before Mendoza’s touchdown in the fourth quarter, Hyde went to the bathroom, thinking he had enough time before play restarted. But the timeout ended sooner than he expected, and he ended up missing what turned out to be the deciding score.   

“That's life,” he said. “You win some, you lose some, right? You get the opportunity. Sometimes in your best intentions, it just doesn't go your way.”  

While many may have prayed for a win, Father Hyde didn’t do that.   

“I don't pray for wins or losses or whatever,” he said. “I just pray that everybody's safe and does their best. And then I like to say, ‘hey, if we play our best, we're probably going to win, right?’”   

IU did win 27-21, and afterward, Father Hyde posted on social media that he received a tap on the shoulder on the field during the celebration. It was Mendoza.   

From this experience, Father Hyde said he took away the lesson that if people work hard, good things will happen.  

“With the advent of AI and other things like that, how we need to cut corners, we need to even take advantage of people,” he said, “and to see the way our team plays as a team, to see how smart they play, how disciplined they play, that's all just being, you know, hard work, hard work and discipline, and it's a lesson for all of us that no matter what's going on, hard work and discipline can still get us to where we want to go.”