Thanks everyone for the advice. Especially the bar advice
Our tickets were thru the ticket office - Section 103 Row 10
I flew into Chicago a few years ago in Brew year zero and met an old pal at the Midway airport, who was marooned on an assignment in Resnealaaaaaaar Indiana. or some other miserable burg off I-65. He wanted to go to the 2007 IU game and agreed to meet me at Midway and head south.
We had a hotel in Indianapolis Thursday night but stopped at the Walmart in Lafayette for supplies. That was one great Walmart, and probably the highlight of that leg of the trip.
Actually we wanted to see the campus, and we were able to park right behind the "bowl" end of the Purdue stadium and walk right in to view the field. I have posted this before, but I expected it to be a mirror image of our old Memorial Stadium, since it looked very similar on TV before the addition of the giant block of suites on the west side. It turns out is was a giant HS looking erector set place with very flat, poor sightlines.
After that we went to Brothers and had a bunch of beers and then made our way to Walmart and on to Indy.
My impression that day was that the area to the east, just over the river in Lafayette might be a better pregame place than the campus side.
On to IU:
The highlight of the rest was tailgating in the heat in the grove area south of IU Memorial Stadium, and hitting the legendary IU bar, Nick's English Hut on Friday night.
All I can say about downtown Indianapolis is that it two hours from downtown Chicago and lot closer in spirit to Arkansas or Kentucky.
Oh yes, our Maroon and Gold clad warriors, led by Brewster were beaten handily that day. At least is was sunny and 90 degrees, and we went back to our Hotel inside the IU Memorial Student Union, freshened up and went back the Nick's English Hut and even had some great BT Basketball/ Bobby Knight talk with the locals.
These types of experiences are why I treasure traveling for Gopher Football, win or lose.