POINT -- Hoo-Hoo-Hoo-Who?\nWhat do Penn State, Ohio State and a handful of Jews with dreidels have in common? Come late December, they will all be playing games. As for the 12th straight holiday season, the Hoosiers will be watching the games on television. \nAnd you know what? Hoosier fans' anger is justified. With a 4-1 record at the beginning of the season, the Hoosiers were rolling down the river of bowl expectations. They steamed into Big Ten play only to be pimp-slapped Ike Turner-style for the remainder of their season schedule. \nWhat added insult to domestic disturbance injury was that the games were not even close. The ugliness included road losses to Iowa by 17 points, Michigan by 27 and Michigan State by 31. And there were also home losses to Minnesota by 21 and to Purdue and Ohio State by 27, giving tailgating students an added incentive to have another egg and drain another keg instead of entering Memorial Stadium. \nWhat makes matters worse is that nothing, not even Listerine, could take the bad taste out of my mouth after the Purdue game. The Hoosiers ended the season barely hovering above a last place Illinois squad but remained cellar dwellers in a number of Big Ten categories. They were last in the conference in rushing yards, last in offensive yards and last in first downs per game. The only IU player that came close to dominating a category was James Hardy, who placed fourth in the Big Ten with 893 receiving yards. The Hoosiers did finish first in one category above all other teams in the Big Ten -- penalty yards. They accumulated 74 penalties totaling 605 yards. \nSure, coach Hoeppner had a daunting task trying to turn a 3-8 team from pretender to contender, but his arrival fooled us all into believing he was the second coming of Bill Mallory -- sadly enough, IU's last winning coach.
COUNTERPOINT -- \nHanging on to hope\nOK, enough criticism about the football team. This coming from a kid who couldn't earn a starting spot on his junior varsity high school football team -- as a senior. The only play he gets is at the top of this column ... or in dark, lonely moments of the night. \nDid anyone really expect the football team to transform so quickly? Rebuilding is a process. Why should we expect coach Hep, in his first year and without players that he recruited, to bring the program from horrible to Heisman? \nThe surefire answer that I have come to realize since Year One of having Hep (HA! ... having Hep) is that IU football is no longer a joke. Sure, we lose games ... like we always have. We can even miss bowl eligibility after a 4-1 start ... which we did. But hope sparked by Hep has helped the program build up momentum for the coming years. \nThe growth of a good program begins at the roots of deciding which players best work in a system. Those with athleticism, character and talent create a trunk in which everything else can grow upon. What has eluded the Hoosiers for so long is that the players who possess "trunk" qualities go to other schools. But this year, IU has had success. OK -- success can sometimes be measured by optimism, but that is the power of positive thinking. This year IU has turned a leaf on a losing attitude. That success will breed a new class of recruits who can achieve excellence. \nThen again, with great hope comes great expectations. It is easy to support a program with the former, but what happens when the latter are left unfulfilled? The hope is the Hoosiers in a bowl game. The expectation is the Hoosiers winning a Big Ten title. It has been a year open to optimism alongside an eye-opening punch to the gut delivered by the Big Ten. But in Hep we have hope, and hope in any form is a good thing.
