Hoeppner passes away (long, rambling personal stories)

[MicroBob]

I saw on ESPN ticker that Hoeppner passed away and saw it mentioned again in the off-season College Football thread.

Thought I would share my own personal memories of Hoeppner. Had originally posted to the off-season thread but it got pretty long (big surprise) and really gets in the way of the other discussion stuff there I think so I'll just post it in a new thread for those who are interested.

I made a similar post when Randy Walker passed away.

Man that's sad stuff. Those were two really great coaches (imo) out of Miami, Ohio who both passed away all too soon.

ESPN Classic is right now playing IU's big upset win over Iowa after which Hoeppner gets somewhat emotional.

Perhaps they will also play Miami, Ohio's GMAC Bowl win over Louisville capping off an amazing 13-1 season led by Roethlesberger.

Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure Hoeppner was a HUGE reason why Roethlesberger turned down other schools and came to Miami in the first place.

---------------------------

Pretty sad about Hoeppner.
I was decent acquaintences with him. An extremely classy guy (with the occasional blow-up in there) who always stopped to say hello to me and my wife (at the time) every time he would see us.

Seriously, I started to feel like we couldn't go to the Wal Mart in town without bumping into Hoeppner and stopping to chat for a couple minutes. This was when I was a part-time sideline announcer for Miami's radio network (but I mostly worked with the hockey and women's hoops teams).

but I knew Hoeppner well before that.
I shot the coach's film for Miami (Ohio) when I was a student in the early 90's.
Randy Walker (the recently deceased Northwestern Coach) was the head coach and Hoeppner was a defensive coach and later the defensive coordinator.

Hoeppner was the guy who hired me and who oversaw our 3 person video department.
I thought it was great. They were paying me to travel with the team on the road-trips which usually included a couple games to big stadiums like Michigan or LSU.


Two Hoeppner blow-up stories which I'm laughing a bit about now as I think of the sad passing of a man I knew and respected:

1. My Dad and he got paired at some match-play golf tournament at the Country Club in Oxford, Ohio (a pretty 'meh' 9-hole course).
Not sure if it was a 'handicap' tournament or not but my Dad was doing really well and was about to beat Hoeppner (big upset) and advance to the next round.
Somewhere around the 16th or 17th hole my Dad knocks down some chip from 50 feet or something. Shortly after Hoeppner misses a 6-foot put and throws a big tantrum about it that scares my Dad half out of his mind.
Keep in mind, my Dad golfs a lot so he's dealt with plenty of players throwing their clubs, etc. But Hoeppner's was borrowed more from his 'football-practice attitude' playbook and for my Dad to have taken notice of it I'm guessing it must have really been bad.

My Dad was laughing really hard when he was telling the story when he got home...and I'm sure he will tell the story again the next time we talk and we bring up Hoeppner's passing.


2. In 1991 we went 3-8 or something I believe. We go all the way up to Central Michigan and lose 49-7 in an afternoon game. I'm on the 2nd team bus with mostly reserve players and only a couple coaches.
about 3 or 4 hours in after one of the movies on the bus VCR wraps up one of the players who was from Michigan asks another Michigan native if we should have passed such-and-such in that order.
The other guy says, "We shouldn't be anywhere near those towns."
We had been going the wrong way for about 3 hours. I think we had been driving east and a little bit north instead of going straight south or something ridiculous.

Hoeppner is our coach representative on that bus as I think almost all the other coaches rode the first bus.

He is about ready to kill this bus-driver and his face is all red with rage but he's trying to contain himself.

He also needs this guy to get us back home and now it's looking like we just turned a 7 or 8-hour ride into a 13-hour one.

So he buys the guy a big thermos of coffee and they work out the directions to get back.
We left CMU at 5pm or so and by 2am the bus-driver is really struggling. Also has to keep pulling over to pee because of all the coffee he's drinking.

Hoeppner is really tired but he doesn't dare sleep because this driver keeps half-nodding off at the wheel.
So Hoeppner decides he needs to lean forward and be conversational and very friendly with the driver into the back of his ear to help keep him awake.
"So...you have a family? Where'd ya grow up?" stuff like that.

Kind of funny his efforts to be a nice guy to this driver so that he wouldn't drive off the road all the while clearly wanting to strangle him with his own bare hands.