13 is the optimist's number

IU football coach Terry Hoeppner has never had it so bad.\nAn optimist to top optimists, Hoeppner's tenure at IU has gone from sauntering down Main Street to quickly morphing into a climbing wall without handholds. \nWithin days of complaining of headaches on Dec. 24, 2005, Hoeppner found out he would need surgery to remove a tumor on his right temple. \nSix months later, Hoeppner sped back to the emergency room, only this time to see his longtime collegiate confidant Ben Roethlisberger. The Pittsburgh Steeler and newly minted Super Bowl champion quarterback had multiple facial fractures, a broken nose and an upper and lower jaw screwed in place alongside 2-inch titanium plates from a June 12 motorcycle accident.\nMay 22 provided Hoeppner with further frustrating headlines, only this time they were local. Sophomore wide receiver James Hardy, who led the Hoosiers with 61 catches for 893 yards and 10 touchdowns last season, was apprehended that Friday night and charged with two class A misdemeanors and domestic battery. He has since pleaded not guilty.\nThe sudden death of Northwestern football coach Randy Walker hit Hoeppner on June 30. Hoeppner enjoyed a 19-year tenure at Miami University of Ohio, where in 1990 Walker began as the head coach. Nine years later, after Walker spearheaded the program to a 10-1 record the season before, Hoeppner moved in and Walker moved out to Evanston, Ill. Then, on Aug. 7, Hoeppner's cat scratch up the wall of success came to a nail-screeching halt when he realized something was missing on the first day of football camp -- the Hoosiers' offensive line. Outside of left tackle Justin Frye and center Chris Mangiero, Hoeppner found himself on the lookout for new bodies to throw at the onslaught of lunging linemen and their blitzing backfield.\nThe Hoosiers' own offensive backfield dodged the proverbial bullet when redshirt freshman running back Demetrius McCray was nearly forced to sit out the season for not staying in his classes this summer. McCray's "school issue" has since been taken care of, he says. \nBut the football issues that face Hoeppner and the Hoosiers have been far from resolved. If the questions facing this team were put on paper, they would rival the LSATs. The only gimmies on this year's test are junior quarterback Blake Powers and his roundup of receivers, led by Hardy. \nIt's been 12 seasons since this football program fit into a pair of bowling shoes -- which makes this 2006 season No. 13 for IU. But even Hoeppner, the cockeyed optimist, finds luck and light in the black and bleak.\nHoeppner announced that there are 12 regular games on the Hoosiers' schedule this season. But Hoeppner doesn't want to win 12 games. He wants to win 13. And he wants that final game to be a bowl game.\nIt's a bold plan for a man who has never had it so bad. But even with the odds against him stacked as high as the expectations that fuel him, Hoeppner doesn't bat an eye.\n"The best players play. The future is now," Hoeppner said in a statement Aug. 2. "The potential for running backs, quarterbacks and receivers is there. But the offensive line is the final ingredient to make the cake taste good. The other ingredients won't work if the offensive line isn't working."\nThe last nine months have not tasted so good for Hoeppner. And yet now, according to him, Terry Hoeppner has never had it so good.