This year’s football team came up short in its battle to hold onto the Old Oaken Bucket. However, their plight is not an unfamiliar one as winning in the Boilermakers’ backyard is never easy. As a matter of fact, you have to go back to 1996 to find the Hoosiers’ last win at Purdue.

That year was Bill Mallory’s last as the head coach of the IU football team and his troops were fired up to send off their coach on a positive note.

During the ’96 season the team opened with two wins against Toledo and Miami (OH), but then lost eight in a row, usually in heartbreaking fashion. A 3-0 loss to Kentucky, another three-point loss in double overtime at Illinois, a narrow 27-20 loss at Ann Arbor, and falling to eventual Rose Bowl champ Ohio State in a come-from-behind 27-17 loss. With all of those crushing defeats you would have thought the team was headed to West Lafayette with little to no morale, but former IU safety Kywin Supernaw says that wasn’t the case at all.

“Going into the Purdue game we knew we were going to kill them, I mean we knew we were going to win,” says Supernaw. “It was a weird feeling because when you lose a lot it just kind of breeds losing. Then for us to be so confident for that last game was a pretty neat feeling because we hadn’t felt that in a long time.”

On the field that day against Purdue Supernaw’s confidence became obvious as he keyed the Hoosiers’ to a 33-16 comeback win over the Boilermakers. His two interceptions, one of which he returned for a touchdown, helped make the difference in bringing the Old Oaken Bucket back to Bloomington.

It marked the fourth time in seven tries that Mallory walked away from West Lafayette with the Bucket and the Hoosiers haven’t been able to do it since. It was truly a special victory for the team that day and one Supernaw will never forget.

“Beating Purdue in Coach Mallory’s last game, it was an unbelievable feeling,” he says. “It was more for Coach Mallory I think because it was the end of his career, he hasn’t coached since and I doubt he will again, so it was special.

“I have played for a long time and have been part of a lot of big wins in high school, junior college and the pros. But they can’t even compare to the feeling you had beating Purdue that last game knowing that it was Coach Mallory’s last game.”

The reverence Supernaw has for his former coach is something he says will always stay with him. Just recently he visited his former coach and was excited to find out he once again is having a hand in IU football. Mallory’s son, Curt, is currently the safeties coach for the Hoosiers and Supernaw believes having the Mallorys around the program is a good sign for the future.

“Anytime he has something to do with football it is going to be pretty good,” says Supernaw. “He is probably one of the most honest and real men I have ever met in my life, just a good person. I think the best example of that is when they put him in the (IU Athletics) Hall of Fame the number of guys that made the effort to come from all over the country to go to that thing.”

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While that Purdue game marked the end of Mallory’s coaching career, it was just the beginning of bigger things for Supernaw. Shortly after his time with IU Supernaw caught on as a free agent with the Detroit Lions. For four seasons Supernaw helped patrol the middle for the Lions at the safety position before a lingering neck injury prematurely brought his NFL career to a close this past summer.

In his third year in the league Supernaw started to feel the effects of a herniated disc pushing on his spinal cord in his neck. He pressed on that year due to his overwhelming love for the game and played the entire year, but by the beginning of his fourth year the pain and discomfort became too much.

“In the beginning of the fourth year the very first time I tackled somebody my damn arm went numb and starting burning real bad and it went all the way to my foot,” says Supernaw.

“I came off the field and I told coach that I can’t do this anymore, I am going to end up hurting myself. He goes, ‘nah, just play’ and like a dummy I went out and kept playing and played the whole game.”

In an attempt to lengthen his career Supernaw had an operation performed where a piece of his hipbone was taken out to replace the disc they removed from his spinal cord. He was cleared to play and began working out with the Lions again, but the injury, which never properly healed, severely dampened his prospects of making another team.

“They would tell me if it comes down to me and another player who hasn’t had neck surgery then they are going to take the guy without the neck surgery,” Supernaw says. “It is a pretty ruthless business, but looking at it from their perspective I wouldn’t sign a guy with a bad neck, either, so they have to do what they have to do.”

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Now just four months removed from his NFL days, Supernaw is out looking for life’s next adventure. He is pondering getting into coaching and has talked with Mallory about the career, but he says he doesn’t want to commit himself to something until he can jump into it 100 percent.

Right now most of his time is being spent with his new son, Michael Kywin, who was born last August, and his wife Amy, also a former IU student. The couple met in Bloomington when Amy was a waitress at the Malibu Grill and they were married about two years ago.

Supernaw says the newest addition to his family has brought more joy to his life than he ever could have imagined.

“Oh man, it is awesome,” he said. “When you see people with kids when you are younger and hear them say kids are great, they are the best, they change your life, you just think, ‘yeah right you are just saying that because you have them.’

“But once you have them it is amazing. I have been pretty fortunate because I have been around a lot for these first few months and get to see the first time he laughs and see him sit up for the first time, it is just amazing. It’s amazing that somebody could love something that much.”

The Supernaw family has lived in Clarkston, Mich., for the last few years, but that hasn’t stopped them from still coming down to catch up with the football team and support the Hoosiers.

“We’ve come down every year for Homecoming except this last one because of the baby,” Supernaw says. “I hope they get things turned around down there. They did a lot of the right things and took a lot of steps in the right direction, winning with only 60-some kids on scholarships and playing with kids not even on scholarship. It will take time to build a consistent winner, but if they win the support will come.”

Besides watching the Hoosiers try to build a winner, Supernaw is also intent on building something of his own, a big family. The newest addition to the family already has him thinking of bringing more Supernaws into the fold.

“Oh yeah I can’t wait,” he says. “My wife, I don’t think she knows what she is in for.”