Finish your beer; defend the Rock

Forget about last season? \nI already forgot my class schedule, but I still can't get the Hoosiers' 2005 season out of my mind. \nTo the new freshmen who found out IU had a football team when they looked across the street from Briscoe, I impart two widgets of wisdom: First, go to Nick's English Hut. They really don't care if you have a fake I.D. \nSecond, 12 seasons have passed since the Hoosiers last played in a bowl game. You were probably born in 1987. So do the math. (Without a calculator.)\nThus, 2006 begins bowl-bare season No. 13. A season that IU coach Terry Hoeppner inaugurates with one word: dispatch. \nDispatch: to hasten, be quick. It is an expeditious performance of promptness or speed. That is the message Hoeppner sends to his players. \nDispatch is also what Hoeppner has embraced as his team's strength to its many shortcomings. This season the Hoosiers have speed. Football, in many cases, is a game of size instead of speed. IU, in many cases, watches both size and speed run it over year after year. \nThis is where irony rears its head. If the Hoosiers have success this season, it will be on the speed of its players. And yet, Western Michigan, the Hoosiers' opponent for Saturday's game, might be equipped with a quicker and lighter team. \nThe biggest battle Saturday will be IU's wide receivers entrenched against the Broncos' defensive backfield. IU junior quarterback Blake Powers' precision and poise throwing balls into No Man's Land will either secure or scare the Hoosiers early on. Meanwhile, the Broncos' defensive backfield is unified with underclassmen. The lynch pin that holds them together is fifth-year senior free safety Jimmie Vincent. Vincent will have his hands full not with the ball, but directing traffic against the Hoosiers' receiving corps. He will be trying to keep the young defensive backfield intact as the cream and crimson merge in and out of his lanes. \nWhat is most important, my fellow Hoosiers, is that you come to the game. No wait. What is most important is that you enter the stadium. Believe me: There is a difference. \nSaturday's game begins at 6 p.m., which is literally a night and day change compared to the early-bird specials entertained weekly at Memorial Stadium during Big Ten conference play. Six freakin' p.m.! Imagine the possibilities! You can wake up at your usual time (everyone knows Friday is the weakest night of the collegiate three-day weekend), roll out of bed and into the stadium. Furthermore, you can tailgate to your heart's desire, and when your analog watch looks like a straight line (and nothing else around you does) you know it's game time. \nBut your journey is not over. Like Indiana Jones and his quest for the Holy Grail, you must undertake an adventure few have finished successfully. You must leave the familiar shelter of your friends, walk down a small hill, over 17th Street, through a parking lot patrolled by parents and police until finally you have reached your destination: the Rock. Be true and be careful because with one of the lowest home attendances at football games in all of the Big Ten, many Hoosiers have tried and failed to frequent Memorial Stadium. \nYou, the student, have only two responsibilities for Saturday: Finish your beer. Defend the Rock. \nThink you can handle that?