Light's Shining Still For Hoeppner
One year, after being inspired by the Tour de France, Terry Hoeppner had his Miami RedHawks wear red wristbands in the spirit of Lance Armstrong's yellow bracelet. The next year, he attended a seminar on Marine leadership and outfitted all his guys with dog tags that they couldn't take off until the season was over.
The light in Hoeppner's head never went out. When he visited Miami sororities to rally support for an upcoming game, he'd take along football uniforms for the coeds, pads and all, just to get them involved and impress upon them how doggone big the boys were. He did radio shows from the campus dining halls. He stood on stage with 50 Cent. More unlikely yet, he somehow got 90 percent of his team to vote in the '04 presidential election.
"Terry would do just about anything for Miami University," said Mike Harris, who was the sports information director there before moving over to the University of Cincinnati in the spring. "Even though he didn't graduate from Miami, everybody knew him as a Miami man. His love and passion went very deep. He brought that same kind of passion to Indiana and Indiana football."
He was from there, and one of the few coaches around who actually believed that IU could compete in the Big Ten. The symbol of his unmovable conviction was the three-ton limestone boulder he placed in the north end zone of Memorial Stadium, which he nicknamed The Rock.
It isn't often that a man can leave a legacy in two years. It took 19 for Hoeppner to carve his place in Miami history, the first 13 coming as a lively and patient assistant. "Terry Hoeppner is the people's choice,'' former MU athletic director Joel Maturi said when he introduced Randy Walker's successor. "I have never seen so much support for one man for one job."
At Indiana, Hoeppner was already an icon by the end of the first fall. Not that his team was particularly good. That takes longer. But the Franklin College product wasn't just coaching a team; he was coaching a state. He was forging a new autumn rite. He was altering the Indiana landscape.
It was his idea, for instance, to have the Hoosiers and their rejuvenated fans walk to the stadium together through the tailgate lot. As a coach, Hoeppner was an idea man. More than that, he was an ideal man.
"It was just that charismatic personality of his that got people excited," Harris said. "There was nothing fake about Terry Hoeppner. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He wasn't about to hold back. That's just who he was."
Until Tuesday morning. Because of the strength of his will and the force of his personality, not even his friends and players suspected that Hoeppner would die at age 59 from the brain tumor he'd been battling since 2005.
What the tumor couldn't do, though, was put out the light in Hoeppner's head. That light will shine on in the big rock in the end zone; in the walk through the parking lot; in the Cradle of Coaches; in the grandchildren he often brought to practice; in the dining halls where he did his shows; in longtime friend Bill Lynch, who will take over at IU; in ready young men like Ben Roethlisberger.
According to Hoeppner, Roethlisberger was the first and only RedHawk he ever recruited away from Ohio State. Even when Big Ben was a freshman, with only a year of high school quarterbacking experience, Hoeppner well-knew what he would mean to the Miami program. Almost immediately, the coach compared Roethlisberger to former RedHawk basketball star Wally Szczerbiak.
"Wally set a standard around here," Hoeppner said, "and I think that's where Ben will be. They have a lot in common. Among other things, they're both really hard to spell."
A year after Roethlisberger led Miami to 13 straight victories and the GMAC bowl championship, which required beating Louisville, his old mentor was able to observe, in the specific format of football, how a dedicated light - a talent not hidden under a bushel - shines on. He had just watched the Pittsburgh Steelers' rookie extricate himself from a hard Cleveland rush and find Plaxico Burress in the end zone.
"That," said Hoeppner, "was the first touchdown of our bowl game last year against Louisville. It was Mike Larkin, and Ben finds him coming off a scramble. That's our Ben."
Last weekend, which the doctors said Hoeppner wouldn't make it through, Roethlisberger chartered a plane from Los Angeles to spend an hour or so with the dying friend he called a father figure. When the quarterback was at Miami, he'd often heard Hoeppner recite a favorite, anonymously authored poem titled "Don't Quit." Now, he was able to witness the indomitable leader living that theme to the very end.
One of the verses goes like this:
Often the struggler has given up,
when he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
how close he was to the golden crown.
That never happened with Terry Hoeppner. He died with the golden crown of a good life sitting squarely upon his head, the light beaming off it in countless directions.