I got
this article from my mom this morning and I was very excited that I wasn’t being asked to forward something to ten friends.
She sent it to me because one of the IU fans quoted in the article is someone who she worked with for years.
The part of the article that interested me, enough to write about IU football when I have yet to write about our first basketball game, was this:
Quote:
He said the current Hoosier team doesn’t have former coach Terry Hoeppner’s ability to motivate and draw excitement from fans.
“He just goaded you into unbiased enthusiasm,” Brad Snyder said. “I mean, you just wanted to believe you were going to win, because he had magic about him.”
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In my mind, that is the crux of the issue.
Under Hep, I was excited about our chances every game we played. He came in with such enthusiasm that he swept all of us up in it. So fierce was his passion that it extended after his death.
Bill Lynch is Eeyore to Terry Hoeppner’s Tigger.
Terry Hoeppner bounded into the room singing a song praising everything about IU football. And you wanted to join in on the song. Sadly, he bounded out of the room and into the clearing at the end of the path far too soon.
Bill Lynch does not inspire that reaction. He is someone you check in with every now and again to see if his house has fallen down or his tail has come off.
It’s not that Lynch is a bad coach, though based on his career record of 12 wins and 45,000 losses, that argument does have some legs.
He has no cult of personality and, sadly, you can’t fake that.
On the plus side, he’s also no Glamour Boy.
(For those non-Pooh Bear fans, here's the
headline reference)
Linear Mode
