Coach Hep

Forgive me, Hoosiers, for the time passed since the death of Terry Hoeppner that I haven't said anything about it. I grew up in Michigan, and eventually went to a college with no football team (grad school, too - how'd I pull that one off?), so Michigan has been my team all my life, and the Big Ten has been my conference. I certainly can't root for Michigan State, or Ohio State, or Wisconsin, or Penn State, or even Iowa or Minnesota, but Indiana... well, they're just Indiana. A school that felt like it had to have a football team because it's massive.

Anybody who knows anything about Indiana knows that football is not a big deal there. Now that the Colts have won the Super Bowl, maybe the lukewarm atmosphere will start to change, but in Bloomington, if you say the word pigskin, chances are that people will think you're actually referring to the skin of a pig in raw form.

So you kind of root for Indiana. You know they're not going to beat you, and most years, you'll beat them 35-3 or 42-10 or something lopsided like that. And they have that uphill battle against IU basketball, which three consecutive undefeated seasons couldn't win them. So when a guy like Terry Hoeppner passes, the whole conference feels it.

This guy was Ben Roethlisberger's coach a couple years ago. He left Miami after Ben's first season away (probably knowing things would never get better than 2003), and went to IU. Everyone questioned him for that decision. He could have had his pick of big schools, but he had his roots in Indiana, and he stuck to them. This guy coached after receiving treatment for his brain cancer in summer 2006, and the 06 Hoosiers weren't a bad team. You always get the feeling with IU that they're about to turn that corner, and then they never quite do it. The loss of Coach Hep might be the spark this team needs to get to the next level. He gave them everything he had, even if it was only for two seasons.

Last summer, we mourned Randy Walker, who kept the Northwestern program strong even when people said he couldn't do it. We'll never know what Terry could have done at IU. It's going to be a tough year for that program. We'll miss you, Hep.