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AFM Magazine


Leading the Charge

Miami of Ohio's Terry Hoeppner takes command of the college coaching landscape
by: Richard Scott
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Every college football head coaching job is tough in its own way. Every job presents its own trials, its own pressures. For Miami (Ohio) coach Terry Hoeppner, some of the most unique and heavy challenges in the history of college football surround him and try to stare him down every day.

Every college football head coach has an office, too. None of them are like Hoeppner’s office complex. His place of work is more like a museum, a monument to the greatness that is Miami’s “Cradle of Coaches,” with pictures of former Miami coaches Sid Gillman, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Ara Parseghian, John Pont and Bill Mallory constantly looking over Hoeppner’s shoulder.

Hoeppner always figured he knew what it was all about until he actually moved into that office in January, 1999, becoming Miami’s 31st head football coach.

“I had been there 13 years as an assistant coach, so you’d think that would make the transition from assistant to head coach a little smoother, and it probably did a little, but in reality everything changed overnight,” Hoeppner says. “I became the head coach and all of a sudden the faces on my wall – Sid Gillman, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Ara Parseghian, Bill Mallory and John Pont – those guys are looking at you everyday.

“For a long time I’d go back and check to see if my name was really on the door, that it wasn’t a dream. It motivates you. It’s quite a history to live up to.”

To be honest, Hoeppner never thought he’d have to live up to that history. After brief stops with two NFL teams and two years of playing professional football in the old World Football League, he was happy as a high school coach. Then he was happy coaching at his alma mater, Franklin (Ind.) College. Then he was happy as a Miami assistant, the first eight years coaching the secondary, the next five as a defensive coordinator.

“I appreciate this job so much,” Hoeppner says. “I always say if I can become the head coach at Miami, anyone can do anything. I mean that in all sincerity. I thought I was going to be a high school coach, and I was happy doing that. Then I went to my alma mater, and I thought that’s what I would do. Then I got the chance to come to Miami 18 years ago and I told them ‘I’m not leaving. You’re going to have make me the head coach someday.’ And they did.

“But to be honest, I never really thought much about being the head coach. I was always busy enjoying doing what I was doing.”

As much as Hoeppner enjoyed what he was doing back then, it’s safe to say he’s never enjoyed a season as much as the one the RedHawks recently completed. With strong leadership from a committed group of seniors and juniors, Miami won 13 consecutive games, set a school single-season record with 13 victories, finished 13-1 with a No. 14 national ranking and won both the Mid-American Conference championship and the GMAC Bowl.

Now it’s time to add one more feat to that list of accomplishments. Hoeppner is Schutt Sports Division I-A Coch of the Year presented by American Football Monthly.

“I never ever dreamed about this, so I appreciate it even more,” Hoeppner says. “It’s been a special year. It’s been one of those dream seasons where we’ve avoided injuries, and everything has come together so well. Every championship team says they have great chemistry, but I think we’re the personification of it. I think this team is what it looks like. It’s easier to point to than define, but our guys have defined it.”

That chemistry, as well as Miami’s success, has been no accident. It’s so easy to look at Miami and immediately assume that the RedHawks’ success is mostly based on the talents and skills of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who passed for 4,777 yards and 37 touchdowns, including 367 yards and four touchdowns in the GMAC Bowl, before deciding to pass up his senior season and enter the 2004 NFL draft and a shot at being one of the first three quarterbacks selected in the draft.

Anyone who assumes Miami’s success rested on the talented shoulders of Roethlisberger is missing the big picture. The big picture has been in the painting stages since Hoeppner replaced Randy Walker when Walker left for Northwestern in 1999.

Like any coach, Hoeppner had his own ideas of how to run a program. Miami won with a hard-nosed running game before Hoeppner took over, but Hoeppner knew for the RedHawks to reach the next level and compete for the championship in the rapidly improving MAC they would need to be more balanced on offense and more dangerous in the passing game.

Around the same time, a talented athlete named Roethlisberger came to Miami’s summer camp to prepare for his first season as a high school quarterback. Roethlisberger had played receiver in high school because the head coach’s son played quarterback, but Hoeppner fell in love with the kid’s raw skills at camp and offered him a scholarship. Other schools tried to get involved with Roethlisberger’s recruiting that season, but it was too late. He signed with the RedHawks and gave Miami the kind of quarterback it needed to make a more balanced offense work.

“We recruited for an offense and defense like this,” Hoeppner says. “We recruited speed. Obviously we had one special player, you surround him with guys who are pretty good, and you add quality depth.”

While schemes and recruiting remain important factors in any program’s success, few teams win without a cohesive sense of direction and purpose that must start with the head coach and his staff. Hoeppner sought wisdom from a variety of credible sources, some in football, some outside.

“When I became a head coach, all of a sudden all my theories and ideas were put to the test,” Hoeppner says. “I’m a voracious reader and I usually have a couple of books going at the same time, a lot of them on leadership. That’s the hot topic to write a book about right now, whether it’s by Rick Pitino or Brian Billick or about Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee, I’ve learned a lot from other people’s successes.”

The more he researches the principles behind leadership vision and action, the more Hoeppner has come back to the military themes that have often worked so well for successful coaches, which includes Hayes. During his successful coaching career at Miami and Ohio State, Hayes often relied on military metaphors in his teaching.

Hoeppner has tried to avoid actually comparing the painful reality of war to the sport of football, but he came to see the common ground between the two.

“I always preface it by saying I hope this is as close to real war as any of us ever gets, but there are some parallels that we can draw from it,” Hoeppner says. “For example, we have to attack on a broad front, and that’s a military axiom.

“One Pentagon axiom I like to use is that the greatest plans never withstand contact with the enemy. That’s so true in football. You can have a plan, but then you can come back with the Bear Bryant slogan: ‘have a plan, work the plan and plan for the unexpected.’ All of our players can recite that one because that’s one of our basic principles.”

That lesson was especially important at the end of the 2002 season. Miami finished 7-5, 5-3 in the MAC, but lost to Marshall and Central Florida at the end of the season. The Marshall game was especially painful for the RedHawks who lost 36-34 in the final seconds and two post-game incidents led to the dismissal of one coach and the suspension of another.

Instead of spending the offseason brooding, the RedHawks went back to work with renewed purpose, knowing how close they had come to winning the MAC East and playing for the MAC championship.

“It was a tough way to end the season, and I had to do something to try and reunite this team,” Hoeppner says. “I knew the potential was there to be a really good football team. I didn’t know how good, but the potential was there anyway.”

At a time of the day when the Miami campus is still cloaked in darkness, the light went off in Hoeppner’s brain. During the early morning hours of January and February, the only people working on campus are usually the football players and the United States Marine R.O.T.C. students. The more Hoeppner got to know the local R.O.T.C. leaders, especially Major Joel Turk, the more he saw the similarities the two groups shared in terms of goals, vision and peer leadership.

Hoeppner and his coaches divided the entire team into smaller squads where players of different positions and diverse backgrounds and circumstances would be mixed together so players who normally didn’t work together would be forced to learn more about each other and become dependent on each other. For example, a starting senior offensive tackle might find himself in the same group with a starting junior wide receiver, a freshman defensive back, a backup punter and a walk-on linebacker, among others.

The nine squads, led by nine assistant coaches, were given military names, such as Alpha, Bravo, Echo, Delta, Foxtrot, Gulf, Tango, Zulu. The squads competed against each other throughout offseason drills, but members of each group were expected to hold each other accountable.

“This made them responsible for each other,” Hoeppner says. “Roll call was at a o’clock and your team better be there. In fact, all I would do was go to one member of the team and say ‘are we good to go?’ Everyone had to be there, and if they weren’t, it became a group problem and a three-fold competition: conditioning and strength, academics and citizenship. You were responsible to your squad and your team.”

Hoeppner also wanted to give his players and coaches an identity symbol, something they could wear as an indication of who they belonged to, what they stood for and what they had accomplished. He originally thought of a wristband, similar to the popular What Would Jesus Do bracelets. Through Turk’s assistance, the RedHawks instead received dog tags that read: Miami Football. W.I.N. That stands for What’s Important Now and serves to remind the RedHawks to set and keep their priorities in the right order.

“It was a symbol of togetherness: we might not be working together all the time, but no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you’re part of the team,” Hoeppner says.

A second dog tag reads: Miami Football, Tip Of The Spear. Those were given out throughout the offseason and the season for leadership. Some were given out during the bowl week when Hoeppner and his coaches saw the way some of the veteran players were handling their bowl responsibilities.

Hoeppner also took his own personal steps to become a better leader. When Turk invited Hoeppner to a Marine leadership workshop in July at the Marines Corps Base in Quantico, Va., Hoeppner was quick to jump on the opportunity and came back with more ideas on how to move and build his team with purpose.

“I’ve used the manual for leading Marines, and that became our textbook for leading training this season,” Hoeppner says. “We haven’t been perfect. We’ve had our share of selfish moments and stupid things, but those things happen when you have 100-something kids together. I’ve had to do my share, but it’s sure been a minimum this year. But what I have done is not let it go unnoticed. If anything happens I jump on it and stamp it out quick before it becomes a big fire. I think that’s contributed some to how we feel about each other.”

Hoeppner didn’t enter into the plan with a blind eye, either. This isn’t the 1950s, and many of today’s kids weren’t brought up with a respect for military discipline. Some of Miami’s veterans originally balked at the idea and later confessed to Hoeppner that they thought the plan would never work, but looking back they had to admit it became a positive for the team.

“Like a lot of things, sometimes younger people don’t appreciate these kinds of things until after the fact,” Hoeppner says. “Now they love those dog tags and they all wear them around. I even got rubber silencers for them. You don’t want the enemy to know you are coming.”

Obviously, not many college football analysts or teams outside the MAC knew where the RedHawks were coming from entering the season. They were generally picked to finish behind Marshall in the MAC East again, and a 21-3 loss to Iowa in the season opener, complete with four interceptions by Roethlisberger, didn’t exactly make Miami a hot team to watch in 2003.

“We had a pretty good offseason and summer, and that continued in the preseason,” Hoeppner says. “We thought we were ready to play, but Iowa beat us and we were disgusted with our performance. But after all we had done, all that hard work and team building, we lost and we had an open date before we played Northwestern. That became the test for us. How we responded to that loss was going to determine a lot about the season.”

With a 44-14 win at Northwestern, “that sort of validated what we thought about ourselves. Everyone needs their confidence restored when something bad happens to them, and that restored our confidence.”

The next week, the RedHawks won 41-21 at Colorado State, and they were officially rolling in the right direction.

The RedHawks went on to win 13 consecutive games after the Iowa loss, and even though Roethlisberger’s growth as a quarterback and leaders has played a huge role in Miami’s success, a number of critical factors emerged as keys to the RedHawks’ rise.

“Ben is unique, Ben is special ... Ben is anything anyone says good about him and a lot more. He’s such a talented individual. He’s the best basketball player on the team and when we play softball in the spring, the kids against the coaches, he’s the best player,” says Hoeppner, who actually owns a 6-0-1 record against Roethlisberger on the golf course.

“But for all he’s done for us, we’ve won as a team, for so many reasons.”

That’s true on both sides of the ball. For all the attention focused on Roethlisberger and the passing game, the RedHawks only passed 17 more times than they ran in 2003. Running backs Cal Murray and Mike Smith combined to rush for 1,628 yards and 27 touchdowns and senior offensive tackle Jacob Bell earned first-team all-conference honors.

On the other side of the ball, first-year defensive coordinator Pat Nadruzzi came in and brought back the base 4-3 similar to the defense that had brought Hoeppner so much success in his years as Miami’s defensive coordinator. The RedHawks responded by finishing the season leading the MAC in scoring defense, total defense, run defense, pass efficiency defense and takeaways. Defensive end Phil Smith and linebacker Terrell Jones both earned first-team all-conference honors. Another player, senior defensive end Will Stanley, emerged from a career marked by obscurity to become a dependable playmaker for the RedHawks.

More than anything, the players and coaches continued to grow together and improve throughout the season, improving with time and experience. As a testament to that growth and maturity, the RedHawks led Division I-A with seven road wins in 2003.

“They’ve really vested themselves in this team,” Hoeppner says. “They come to practice everyday better than any team I’ve ever seen. Everybody says they do that and everybody wants to do that, but it’s true that champions prepare to win. Plus the coaching staff did such a good job. We were a year more mature together on offense and really worked well together and the defense got a shot in the arm with a new defensive coordinator. It all just fell into place.”

When the season fell into place, so many things also fell into place for Hoeppner, including MAC coach of the year honors and a five-year contract extension.

“Terry Hoeppner and his staff have brought distinction, pride and enthusiasm to our university while developing future leaders in our communities,” Miami athletic director Brad Bates says. “Terry recruits quality students of character who happen to be good athletes. His program regularly performs community service, consistently participates in numerous public events and daily represents our great university.”

As excited as Miami administrators and fans might be to have Hoeppner, it doesn’t take a historian to know that Miami’s “Cradle of Coaches” distinction carries a double-edge sword. All of those coaches went on to become successful coaches at other schools, and Bates is hoping Hoeppner will finally become the coach who stays at Miami for an extended period.

“Being the Cradle of Coaches is a source of pride for us,” says Bates, who played defensive back for Schembechler at Michigan. “But the fact that we’re the cradle means that they didn’t stay. We want to be more than just the cradle.

I think that what we’ve accomplished and the fact that we’ve re-signed Terry shows that we’re not just a cradle anymore. We’re a destination.”

Hoeppner has been fortunate because Bates has made the job more and more desirable with tangible support, including aggressive planning and building. The athletic department added new turf last summer, and its red end zones and coaches boxes make Miami’s field as attractive as any in the nation. There’s still a lot of work left to do and budgets and resources are always going to be an issue for any MAC program, but every step of progress, including the five-year extension, is another reason to stay.

Hoeppner has already been contacted about other jobs, and this year’s success is likely to lead to more opportunities with other programs. However, this is one Miami coach who might have a hard time leaving the cradle. He may be a healthy, young, energetic 56-year-old, but the older a man gets the harder it is to pick up and start over, especially for a coach who’s lived in Oxford for the past 18 years. Hoeppner’s staff is comprised mostly of young coaches with young families, and he admits he would have second and third thoughts about uprooting so many families to chase another job.

Quality of life is also a high priority for Hoeppner and his wife Jane, and with their three children (and four grandchildren) sharing roots with the university and the general area, the Hoeppners are in no rush to leave.

“I’ve always been able to operate in the present very well,” Hoeppner says. “I really enjoy what I’m doing. I know there are a lot of things beyond to control so I don’t spend any time planning and scheming. I’m not a telephone guy. I’ve never been a network guy. I’ve been here 18 years. ...

“When our defensive coordinator, Pat Nadruzzi, came here he asked me ‘What are you doing? Are you staying here? Is this your retirement job or are we going to the next job?’ I told him ‘Pat, I want this to become the next job.’ That’s been my mantra.”
Cradle of Coaches
Miami University is known as the “Cradle of Coaches” ... this list represents just some of the coaching stars Miami has produced:

Bill Arnsparger (Miami player 1948-49, assistant 1950)
Coordinator of Miami Dolphins’ “No-Name” Defense, NY Giants coach

Paul Brown (player 1928-29)
Ohio State coach (1942 national title), Cleveland Browns coach (four AAFC titles and three NFL titles), Cincinnati Bengals coach and owner

Weeb Ewbank (player 1927)
Baltimore Colts coach (NFL titles in `58, ‘59), coach of the N.Y. Jets (Super Bowl III title)

Sid Gillman (assistant 1943, head coach 1944-47)
Father of the modern-day passing game L.A.-San Diego Chargers coach (AFL title in `63)

Woody Hayes (head coach 1949-50)
Ohio State coach (six national titles)

Bill Mallory (player 1954-56, head coach 1969-73)
Indiana coach (bowl victories in 1988, ‘91.)

Ara Parseghian (player 1946-47, assistant 1950, head coach 1951-55)
Notre Dame coach (national title in 1973).

John Pont (player 1949-51, assistant 1953-55, head coach 1956-62)
Indiana coach (Big Ten title in ‘67 and Rose Bowl)

Bo Schembechler (player 1949-50, head coach 1963-68)
Michigan coach (13 Big Ten titles)

Jim Tressel (assistant coach 1979-80)
Ohio State coach (2002 national title)

The Hoeppner File
1970-72 Eastbrook HS (Marion, IN) Head Coach
1974 Pinson Valley HS (Pinson Valley, AL) Assistant Coach
1975 Hueyton HS (Hueyton, AL) Assistant Coach
1976-79 Mullins HS (Mullins, SC) Head Coach/AD
1979 East Noble HS (Kendallville, IN) Head Coach
1980-86 Franklin College Defensive Coordinator
1986 Miami of Ohio Linebackers
1987-93 Miami of Ohio Defensive Backs
1993-95 Miami of Ohio Assistant Head Coach/ Defensive Backs
1995-98 Miami of Ohio Assistant Head Coach/ Defensive Coordinator
1999-pr. Miami of Ohio Head Coach





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