Tarpinian: A hinking man at linebacker for the Hawkeyes

IOWA CITY - Jeff Tarpinian faces some giant foes this fall.

There's the massive Wisconsin offensive line, the challenge of learning the middle linebacker position, which is new to the fifth-year senior, and there's advanced tax and auditing.

This is the world of Jeff Tarpinian, Iowa's middle linebacker and an all-Big Ten accounting major.

Try to fit all that into one helmet. The 6-foot-3, 238-pound senior from Omaha, Neb., sees how it all fits together.

“Like anything in life, you have to work at it,” said Tarpinian, who broke his right hand in practice last week but could be available for the season opener. “Accounting is something I definitely have to work at. It's not something that just happens. Numbers can just come to some people, but I have to work at it.

“Football is definitely something I've had to work at. You can apply the work ethic to both.”

Make no mistake, the middle linebacker position at Iowa demands a cerebral player.

The “Mike” linebacker calls the huddle and relays the defense from the sidelines. He takes care of the front adjustments, which is what you see when a linebacker taps a D-lineman on the behind and moves him over a shade or two. Sometimes, the middle linebacker directs a call for the secondary.

“Very cerebral,” linebackers coach Darrell Wilson said. “He sits in the meetings and you're looking at him and you're wondering if he's paying attention. He's not taking notes, but he's really absorbing everything. Very smart. Playing all three positions has helped him, too. He has a good feel for the whole defense.”

Tarpinian has the body and the experience for this. His resume starts at quarterback.

After a high school career as an option quarterback at Millard North High School - he was Gatorade player of the year in 2005 - Tarpinian started as a safety at Iowa. His sophomore season he was poised to take over at weakside but injured a hamstring in camp and could only watch as Jeremiha Hunter bloomed into a three-year starter. Last season, Tarpinian was the nickel package linebacker.

The resume is there, but the nuance needs to kick in. Believe it or not, there's nuance to middle linebacker.

One such detail is communication. The defensive call goes from coordinator Norm Parker's spot in the press box to Wilson's headphones to Tarpinian. This is a new element for Tarpinian.

“Coach Wilson got on me a little bit in spring when I switched to middle,” said Tarpinian, who has 50 career tackles. “Just the first play today he said, ‘Make sure you get up there. This is your defense, you've got to run things.'”

The metaphor Tarpinian went to was “breathing.”

“You definitely have to train yourself” to be more vocal, he said. “You've got to make it so all the calls and checks you make are like breathing. You don't want to be thinking on the field. You just want to play, react and be instinctive.”

Of course, it's football. The other part of middle linebacker is surviving and thriving in the pit. Wilson is confident Tarpinian will.

“He's a mature, physical linebacker that we need to play versus the run,” Wilson said. “Jeff has really grown into that position. He probably has the best hands, meaning getting off blocks. He just does such a good job with that. It's really been the perfect position for him right now.”

Wisconsin offensive linemen Gabe Carimi and John Moffitt are going to be brutal this fall. But will they be worse than advanced tax and auditing. Those are the last two classes that stand between Tarpinian and an accounting degree.

“I only have six hours left, so that's kind of nice,” he said. “They're going to be challenging. It's not like I'm going to be taking Ping-Pong and badminton. It's going to be pretty tough.”

But the real question is, would Wilson let Tarpinian do his taxes?

“Yeah, well ... I would,” Wilson said. “I wouldn't mind having him take care of my money. Maybe make me some more.”