Hoeppner, Roethlisberger rose to prominence together
I came to know Terry Hoeppner because I was trying to get to know Ben Roethlisberger. I came away feeling like I had known Hoeppner for years.
Judging from the many tributes to Hoeppner, the Indiana University football coach who died Tuesday after a battle with brain cancer, I wasn’t the only one.
I spoke with Hoeppner only once, when he was then the head coach at Miami (Ohio) and was preparing for life without Roethlisberger, who had declared for the NFL draft. But Hoeppner’s enthusiasm and graciousness stuck with me. He was generous with his time, filling in some of the blanks for a story I was writing on his former quarterback, the biggest mystery being this: How did Roethlisberger, who grew up in Findlay, Ohio — Buckeye country, Big Ten country — end up in the Mid-American Conference?
Roethlisberger couldn’t get onto the field as a quarterback in his first three seasons at Findlay High. But at Miami’s football camp in 1999, Roethlisberger turned heads. As Hoeppner told it, the coaching staff was impressed, but they couldn’t offer a scholarship just yet to the kid with the long last name and the short QB résumé. Hoeppner was just beginning his first season as Miami’s head coach, and he wanted to play it safe.
“We waited until he played a game,” Hoeppner said. “I didn’t want to be the genius to offer this guy who never played quarterback.”
Roethlisberger threw six TD passes in that first start.
“I said, ‘That’s good enough for me,’ ” Hoeppner said.
Chalk one up for Hoeppner’s instincts and scouting eye. And his salesmanship, too: Roethlisberger accepted the scholarship offer.
The union changed the lives of both men. By 2003, college football fans and NFL scouts alike knew Roethlisberger had a future as a professional passer. Miami was a fixture in the national rankings that season, raising the program and the school’s national profile.
And soon, college football knew Terry Hoeppner’s name, too. Indiana came calling in December 2004, and he readily accepted the Big Ten’s toughest job. There was no recent tradition of winning, an apathetic fan base, a roster short on talent and facilities that lagged behind the rest of the conference.
But Hoeppner relished the challenge, imploring fans to support the downtrodden program and championing efforts to improve the facilities.
He also did something about the product on the field.
The record book will say Hoeppner led Indiana to nine wins and no bowl games in two seasons, but that doesn’t tell the story of his impact. To watch the Hoosiers the last two seasons was to see a culture of losing flaking away. Hoeppner’s IU teams were plucky, dangerous, prepared.
As Hoeppner tried to both rebuild and sell IU football, Roethlisberger quickly became an NFL star, starting for a Super Bowl-winning team in his second season with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Roethlisberger kept in touch with his old coach, and vice versa. "In the 32 years I've represented athletes, it's as close of a relationship between coach and player as I've ever seen,” agent Leigh Steinberg told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last October.
Hoeppner and Roethlisberger came into each other’s orbits at precisely the right time, when both men needed a break. Hoeppner undoubtedly benefited from working so closely with a quarterback who quickly developed from MAC curiosity to national star. And does Roethlisberger make it to the NFL if he attends, say, Ohio State, which couldn’t decide whether he was a tight end or a quarterback? Perhaps. But it sure helped that Miami needed a quarterback and was willing to be patient with him.
"He has been a second father, a teacher and a friend," Roethlisberger said Tuesday. "He believed in me, and I owe everything to him for where I am in life."
To know Big Ben’s story, you have to know all about Coach Hep.