Think times are turbulent?

Fifty years ago, the United States was at war in Vietnam, and with itself. It was the summer of love, and of hate. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage, and Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice. The Beatles ruled pop culture.

Into this maelstrom came the Indiana Hoosiers. They were coming off a 1-8-1 football season and a 51-6 loss to Purdue. If they were not the worst major college team of 1966, they were close to it. Coach John Pont wasn’t on the hot seat. He was as good as gone.

One year later:

If the Hoosiers were not the nation’s best team, they were close to it. They finished the regular season 9-1 and ranked No. 4 in the country.

ESPN can be excused for not filming a “30 for 30” documentary. Might be dismissed as fake news.

Except there was nothing fake about it.

After winning their Big Ten opener at Illinois, the Hoosiers became 3-0 for the first time since 1928. As players boarded the bus for the trip back to Bloomington, quarterback Harry Gonso found himself sitting near offensive lineman Bob Russell, one of the seniors who had endured two seasons with three total wins.

Gonso expressed amazement.

Russell turned, looked at his quarterback, and replied:

“You know, I think we’re for real.”

They were.

Players and coaches are returning to IU for a 50-year reunion. They will be introduced to the Memorial Stadium crowd Nov. 18 during the game against Rutgers.

The 1967 Hoosiers were the Cardiac Kids, playing eight games not decided until the final four minutes. “Punt, John, punt” became a catchphrase. The Hoosiers had an infusion of talent, were lean and fast, featured a new offense and a stout defense ... and, well, some luck. The Big Ten was down.

Mark Stevens was a freshman center at Indiana. Years later, he witnessed his son, Brad, coach underdog Butler to within one shot of college basketball’s national championship. As with those Bulldogs, sophomores were an energy source for the Hoosiers.

“Those upperclassmen were really, really good,” Stevens recalled. “You throw in a little hot pepper with those seniors, and boom, you’ve got yourselves one helluva chili pot.”

At a university renowned for basketball, the Hoosiers played the season as a tournament: survive and advance. The bracket led all the way to the Rose Bowl, the lone such occurrence for a program that has more losses than any in major college history.

What if I told you … nah, forget it. No one would believe it anyway.

“I think it’s one of the great anomalies in college football history,” said ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum. “I think it’s almost impossible to think that could happen again.”

***

In the early 1960s, Indiana was coming off one of the harshest penalties ever levied by the NCAA — a four-year probation in all sports because of recruiting violations in football. Somehow, coach Phil Dickens survived without being fired. He resigned after the 1964 season. He had little choice — his Big Ten record in his final five seasons was 3-28.

Athletic director Bill Orwig hired a new coach, the 36-year-old Pont, who had nothing but winning seasons in seven years at Miami of Ohio and two at Yale. Players heard the news on the radio. If anyone could turn around Indiana football, surely Pont could.

Yet after two seasons of 2-8 and 1-8-1, Orwig grew impatient. Another year like that, and he would fire Pont, according to “Cinderella Ball,” a recently published book by Mickey Maurer. The Indiana University law school is named after Maurer, an attorney, entrepreneur and chairman of the board of the IBJ Corporation.

Maurer graduated from IU’s law school the previous spring, was working in New York and did not attend a single game in 1967. From afar, he was incredulous.

“I kept talking to my friends. 'What’s going on down there?'” he said. “And it became real.”

A confluence of circumstances allowed the Hoosiers to do what they did. A lot of it was Pont.

On the recruiting trail, he told recruits they would play in the Rose Bowl. In 1967, he ordered everyone to cut weight. Players endured a workout after practices ended: a 40-yard sprint, a 30, a 20, a 10. The coach was young enough to run with his players and to tackle them (without a helmet). He did not fit a stereotype.

“He wasn’t just an X’s and O’s guy,” Gonso said. “He had the rest of the alphabet as well, in terms of having an interest in what you do, how your family is, how you feel.”

On a team with a dozen black players, Pont “was an equal ass-kicker,” defensive back Nate Cunningham said. Despite two losing seasons, the coach never lost faith.

“He was a firebrand. He was a motivator,” tight end Al Gage said.

And an innovator. Big Ten defenses were not ready for the Hoosiers and their speed-option I-formation.

“I’ve always thought we took the Big Ten by surprise,” Gonso said. “We had an awful lot of good fortune, took advantage of it. Created some of it.”

Team chemistry is difficult to quantify, but the Hoosiers developed it. Freshmen were ineligible then, and the sophomores needed to coexist with the veterans.

A student trainer, Dean Kleinschmidt, had spent a summer internship with the Green Bay Packers, who were coming off victory in the first Super Bowl (which did not yet have that name). The trainer said the Packers won because — remember, he was speaking to roomful of college football players — they loved each other.

Kleinschmidt said the Packers held hands and sang an old gospel song … and the Hoosiers proceeded to do likewise, belting out: “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”

They finished off by singing:

He’s got the Rose Bowl champions in his hands;

He’s got the Rose Bowl champions in his hands;

He’s got the Rose Bowl champions in his hands;

He’s got the whole world in his hands.

“That, to me, started the season. I really do believe that,” said Nick Mourouzis, then an Indiana assistant and later head coach at DePauw for 23 years.

***

Maurer’s meticulously researched book includes backstories on key figures.

None were more influential than Gonso and John Isenbarger, two sophomores battling to be starting quarterback. One would succeed Frank Stavroff, who had been third in the Big Ten with 1,406 yards passing.

Gonso and Isenbarger were all-around athletes.

Gonso, of Findlay, Ohio, ran 100 yards in 10.2 seconds, was a swimmer and diver and was offered a baseball bonus to sign with the Detroit Tigers.

Isenbarger, of Muncie Central, pole vaulted 13 feet and finished fourth in the state. He was recruited in basketball, his favorite sport, by Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp. Isenbarger received a letter from Tom Harmon — Heisman Trophy winner, World War II hero and sportscaster — that urged him to pick Michigan. But Isenbarger just liked Pont.

Gonso was not announced as the starter until a week before the opener. Isenbarger became a running back, a position he had not played.

“You’re a sophomore on scholarship, and you’ve got to pretty much do what the coach says. And I wanted to play,” Isenbarger recalled.

Another sophomore was Jade Butcher, a Bloomington wide receiver who played basketball and ran hurdles. He was recruited to Indiana by freshman coach Howard Brown, a decorated World War II infantryman who was wounded four times. Brown was MVP of the Hoosiers’ 1945 Big Ten championship team and a former lineman for the Detroit Lions.

Butcher was close friends with Howard’s son, Bobby, who became a West Point graduate and was killed in Vietnam in 1971. Purdue and Tennessee both tried to lure Butcher, who said his mother wanted him to stay home.

The Hoosiers had holdover talent — the last of the Dickens boys — that belied their previous futility. Out of 30 signees in their class, lineman Doug Crusan calculated, 11 survived.

“The senior class, we had people who could have played just about anywhere,” linebacker Ken Kaczmarek said.

Kaczmarek was a senior who grew up near the Notre Dame campus but was not recruited by the Fighting Irish — nor by any other big-time program. He favored the Naval Academy but flunked the physical.

The Hoosiers’ top NFL prospect was Crusan, a 6-5 tackle from the steel country of Monessen, Pa. He was pursued by Penn State but sought an appointment to West Point. He would have needed a year of prep school to play for Army, and two neighbors had played for the Hoosiers. Decision was easy: Indiana.

“Great education, beautiful school,” Crusan said.

The senior fullback, Terry Cole, was from Mitchell, a small Southern Indiana town grieving the death of Virgil "Gus" Grissom. Cole was a neighbor of Grissom, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who was killed on Jan. 27 of that year in a prelaunch test for an Apollo 1 mission.

The junior class featured three black players in pivotal roles: Gage, Cunningham and Cal Snowden. Gage and Snowden are “like brothers to me,” Cunningham said.

Gage was Pont’s first recruit. Gage visited campus on the weekend in which Pont accepted the Indiana job, and he committed on the spot. Gage, of East St. Louis, Ill., had not played football until he was a sophomore in high school and never contemplated college. He was the seventh of 12 children and could not afford it. Military enlistment was his best option.

“Going to Indiana, I didn’t see it as a school with a losing history. I looked at it as an opportunity for Al Gage,” he said.

Same for Cunningham. It was military, factory or football. He was the seventh of 14 children born to an Arkansas sharecropper and attended a segregated grade school in Danville, Ill.

Snowden, a defensive end from Washington, D.C., was offered scholarships by 100 schools. His first choice, Ohio State, did not offer one. Purdue could have taken him second semester of what would have been his freshman year, but Snowden didn’t want to stay out of school and risk being drafted. So he followed a former high school teammate, Cordell Gill, to Indiana.

***

Among those making the biggest sacrifice was Crusan, who became a first-round NFL draft pick of the Miami Dolphins at offensive tackle. Pont’s message: Lose 35 pounds and switch to defense. The adjustment was so labored that an assistant coach suggested Crusan switch back to offense.

“The hardest thing for me was on offense, you tie up with somebody and you stay with them,” Crusan said. “Well, it took me a couple of games to realize, ‘Hey, this isn’t working. I’ve got to get around these people, through them, or whatever.’ ”

He figured it out, as young Stevens learned during practice before the Rose Bowl. A forearm from Crusan left him unconscious.

“Man, I was out cold,” Stevens said.

It can be hazardous to hold full-contact drills between first-team offense and defense — 1s vs. 1s — but such sessions elevated the Hoosiers and engendered mutual respect. “Vicious” is how Gonso described those practices.

“I get goosebumps on my skin right now talking about it, just thinking about how fun and exciting it was to go against our best players on defense,” the quarterback said.

That it was an entirely different era is reflected in statistics.

What was characterized as a potent team scored 25 touchdowns all season. Indiana scored 62 touchdowns in 2013, and had a 5-7 record. Gonso did not pass for 1,000 yards in 10 regular-season games (931).

Season’s buildup looked entirely misplaced by halftime of the Sept. 23 opener against Kentucky. The Hoosiers trailed 10-0. Pont was irate. The coach punctuated his locker-room tirade with a drop kick, sending a film projector across the room, parts flying.

Then it was the Hoosiers flying. Isenbarger’s 42-yard run set up Gonso’s fourth-down touchdown pass to Butcher in the first of many such connections. Gonso’s 63-yard run set up another TD pass, this one to Gage, who actually scored twice — once nullified by penalty, and again when he caught a ball tipped by the Kentucky safety.

The Hoosiers won 12-10, matching their win total from the year before. Gonso was 11-of-15 passing for 121 yards and rushed 25 times for 115 yards. In his first college game, he was a national back of the week.

The pattern was set. The Hoosiers would win … but never easily.

Dave Kornowa’s fourth-quarter field goal beat Kansas 18-15. As Illinois was driving for a winning score, Kaczmarek’s 26-yard interception return for a touchdown secured a 20-7 victory.

The Hoosiers were more imperiled a week later against Iowa, protecting a four-point lead. Isenbarger, instead of punting on fourth-and-15, ran the ball — and gained a yard. Iowa went ahead 17-14.

After the Hoosiers reached fourth-and-12 at the Iowa 22, they seemed destined to attempt a tying field goal. Gonso described the sideline talk with Pont as hilarious.

Gonso: “What do you think we ought to do?”

Pont: “Well, what do you think we ought to do?

Gonso: “Well, they’re obviously watching us talk about stuff, so they’re probably thinking that we’re going to do something sort of different. Then, if they’re thinking that, they’re probably thinking that we know that, too. I think we ought to go for the fake field goal.”

Pont: “OK.”

Logic might have been convoluted. Execution was crisp. Gonso knelt for the snap, held the ball in the air above the kicking tee, then sprinted toward the end zone. He was stopped at the 4-yard line but made a first down. He passed to Butcher for the winning TD in the final minute.

Indiana 21, Iowa 17. The Hoosiers were 4-0 for the first time since 1910.

The craziest part of it all? That wasn’t the craziest part. That came a week later.

The Hoosiers led at Michigan 20-0. The margin closed to 20-14, and Isenbarger had to punt from inside the Indiana 10. Except he did not punt. He ran the ball and fumbled it away at the 16. The Wolverines scored, and only a botched snap kept the score tied at 20.

Pont told Sports Illustrated it was the maddest he had been in his life. Isenbarger told his coach, “Why do I do things like that?”

Isenbarger went to the bench. Michigan went on the move. Michigan should have gone ahead but missed a 22-yard field goal. Gonso pleaded for Isenbarger to be reinstated, and what was a coach to do?

Isenbarger scored from one yard out with less than two minutes left, and the 5-0 Hoosiers won 27-20. Kaczmarek called it a turning point.

“It was a kind of the goat-to-hero deal,” Isenbarger said. “Had that not happened, I might never have played again.”

Not that Isenbarger was alone in his quirkiness. For instance, offensive lineman Harold “Monk” Mauro once wrestled a monkey at the county fair in Brownstown. Butcher needed a manager to bring him two hot dogs and a coke at halftime of every game: “I just had to eat.”

A trip to Arizona brought the Hoosiers rare respite, considering they won 42-7 even after Gonso was sidelined by a bruised shoulder. Winless Wisconsin nearly ruined the Hoosiers’ homecoming, but a 14-9 victory raised the record to 7-0.

Picking up on a telegram sent by Isenbarger’s mother, Indiana fans shouted, “Punt, John, punt!” each time he was in kicking formation.

There was no such light-hearted theme for the trip to Michigan State. A year earlier, the Spartans were ranked No. 2 and not only beat the Hoosiers 37-19, but beat them up.

Linebacker Kevin Duffy had ruptured his spleen. The Hoosiers lost multiple starters to injury. Michigan State “just annihilated us,” Gonso said. The Hoosiers were not letting it go.

“When we went up to Michigan State,” Kaczmarek said, “we wanted to kill ’em.”

The game was so chippy that a fight broke out in the closing seconds along the sideline. The Hoosiers felt vindicated in a 14-13 victory. Isenbarger accounted for 59 of 69 yards on a drive that ended with him scoring from the 1 with 2:50 left.

Rose Bowl fever enveloped Bloomington. Indiana was 8-0 — 8-0! – and ranked No. 5. Victory at Minnesota (coming off a 41-12 loss to Purdue) would send the Hoosiers to Pasadena, Calif.

Instead, the Gophers scored 20 points in the fourth quarter and beat Indiana 33-7. Butcher did not cover a kickoff, and Gonso lost two fumbles.

“They weren’t that good. We had our pants down,” Butcher said.

They had to hitch up their britches for the No. 3-ranked Boilermakers, who might have had their best team ever. They had beaten then-No. 1 Notre Dame 28-21 and were undefeated in the Big Ten — but ineligible for the Rose Bowl because they had gone the previous Jan. 2.

Purdue’s stars were Leroy Keyes, who would finish No. 3 in Heisman Trophy voting, and quarterback Mike Phipps, the No. 3 pick of the 1970 NFL draft. Keyes was friends with some Hoosier players, having attended parties at the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity house.

After Minnesota, Mourouzis said, “Everyone thought our season was over. When we came back, everyone figured Purdue was going to beat us.”

Pont might have been fuming at Minneapolis but was scheming for Purdue. The Boilers would try to stop Gonso and Isenbarger on the option, so the plan was to send the fullback up the middle.

Simple football worked. Cole’s 63-yard touchdown run in the second quarter extended Indiana’s lead to 19-7.

The Boilermakers, trailing 19-14 in the fourth quarter, reached second-and-goal at the Indiana 4. On the 20th play of the drive, Kaczmarek hit Purdue fullback Perry Williams, who fumbled the ball away.

The Hoosiers remained in jeopardy, backed up near the goal line. Isenbarger went into punt formation, and this time he did kick. Best punt he ever hit, he said.

The ball traveled 63 yards, over the head of the Purdue safety. Phipps tried to rally the Boilers, but Keyes was of little help. He could not raise his hands above his shoulders. It was combat out there.

“My teammates had to help me out of my clothes in order for me to take a shower,” Gage recalled.

Final: Indiana 19, Purdue 14.

The Old Oaken Bucket became a vase for crimson-colored roses. The turf looked like a 1960s rock concert.

“There were so many people on the field, you could hardly move,” Butcher said. “It’s a wonder no one was killed.”

***

The Hoosiers still hadn’t secured a Rose Bowl berth, but it did not take long. Purdue (ineligible), Indiana and Minnesota tied for first place, and Big Ten athletic directors had to pick. Purdue was widely considered the league's best, and since IU beat Purdue, and Purdue beat Minnesota, Indiana was the pick, despite Minnesota beating the Hoosiers earlier in the year.

There was so much time before the actual game, the Hoosiers took two weeks off. When practice resumed, so did hysteria. Stevens, as a freshman, wasn’t supposed to be participate but was allowed to do so because others were injured. December “was a hoot,” he recalled.

“All the hotshot sportswriters of the day were there,” Stevens said. “It made it a party atmosphere.”

That continued upon arrival in California. The Hoosiers visited Disneyland and lost to USC in the Lawry’s Beef Bowl that measured which team could eat the most steak.

Guard Gary Cassells had already seen some USC players at an All-America banquet, so he knew what awaited the Hoosiers. The Trojans boasted five players who were first-round picks in the upcoming NFL draft, plus O.J. Simpson, the 1968 Heisman winner and later the No. 1 overall pick.

“Overmatched? I don’t know. But they were big,” Crusan said.

It was intimidating, Gonso conceded. The Hoosiers did not play as if intimidated. With Indiana trailing 7-0 in the second quarter, Gonso threw a perfect pass to Gage.

“I was at the goal line, the ball was in the bread basket,” the tight end said. “I looked down to see where the goal line was … and it went through my hands.”

Kornowa came in to kick a field goal, trimming USC’s lead to 7-3. Simpson later scored his second touchdown, and that’s the way it ended:

USC 14, Indiana 3.

On defense, the Hoosiers were stout enough to win. Oddly, Kaczmarek said, they felt much quicker the day before. On offense, they “just never got it going,” as Isenbarger put it.

Gonso was 9-of-25 passing for 110 yards, and he ran 15 times for 11 yards. Pont told him it was his only bad game of the season.

Gonso: “I said, ‘I agree. I’m sorry.’ ”

USC was the national champion. It was the last chapter of the storybook. Soon, it was the last of winning football. And of Pont.

***

Social unrest battered the Hoosiers worse than the Spartans ever did.

In 1969, 14 black players who felt grievances had not been addressed boycotted practice. Pont told them there would be no penalty if they returned. Four did. Ten did not.

Pont invited Gage, by then graduated, to sit in on meetings between coaches and black players. Gage said some of the complaints were about playing time. There was no resolution. It was the ’60s, Gage reiterated.

“It was the times. It was kind of like now. The times are the times,” Isenbarger said.

Hoosier careers of the “IU 10” were over. In May 2015, the 10 players reconciled with the university.

In 1969, there was fallout. Recruiting was damaged. Pont left for Northwestern after 1972. Butcher said the episode haunted the coach for the rest of his career.

Never again would the Hoosiers smell the roses.

***

Gonso, 69, said he had an inverted career, in that the best was first. Yet there was so much more to come.

The quarterback was not among the eight Indiana players who went on to play in the NFL. Crusan checks his calendar for reunions every five years — for the 1967 Hoosiers and the unbeaten 1972 Dolphins. Crusan, 71, and Isenbarger, 69, now live in the same Fishers subdivision.

Wide receiver Eric Stolberg, 69, started a memorial scholarship in honor of Cole, also a member of the ’72 Dolphins. Mitchell’s football field is named for Cole, who died of cancer in 2005.

Snowden, 70, earned a master’s degree in urban studies and started a federal program to help youth. He was chairman of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the NFL Players Association and founded the Living Heart Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to health of retired athletes.

Cunningham, 70, became a coach, as Pont had forecast. Cunningham coached high school football in six states and was the first black head coach at his alma mater, Danville (Ill.) High School.

Gage, 71, had government career, mostly in social services. He was a special assistant to former Gov. Robert Orr in Indiana and worked under four governors in Missouri. His son, Justin, was an NFL receiver.

Gonso, 69, a senior partner at Ice Miller, has been an attorney, entrepreneur and member of the IU Board of Trustees. He was chief of staff for former Gov. Mitch Daniels from 2005-07.

Hoosiers will exchange hugs at their reunion. The moments they relive might sound unbelievable, but the stories all will be true. With a half-century of hindsight, the one-hit Hoosiers are no less a wonder.

“It just flat-out can’t be repeated,” Gonso said.

Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.