He can't see it, but he can feel its stare.

The hair on the back of his neck stands up. The horde parts and screams erupt from a nearby crowd.

It's coming for him.

A blur of purple and gold, streaking across the field, snarling as it bears down on him.

Panic hits.

"Get rid of the ball," he thinks.

By then it's too late.

He's lifted up before being pounded into the earth.

When the quarterback opens his eyes, hoping to awake from the nightmare, he realizes he can't.

This time, the monster is real.

Owen Koeppen is the kind of creature brewed in Frankenstein's laboratory. Six-foot-two, 235 pounds with speed that kills.

Carroll College's senior linebacker is the Monster in the Middle, their King of Crash, a legend in Nelson Stadium.

He's been named an NAIA All-American, the 2007 Defensive Player of the Year and even an NFL prospect.

Like all truly great monsters -- Dracula, Godzilla or the Incredible Hulk -- he's feared and revered: An anti-hero driven by a single goal.

In the case of Koeppen, to pound every offensive player into oblivion.

Yet, the raging beast fans see on the field is the alter-ego of a man with a much calmer demeanor.

Soft-spoken and caring, Koeppen often has kids clamoring up to him after games, hoping to get a glimpse of their football superhero.

He once heard a little boy call him the most intimidating man he'd ever seen.

"Outside of football, I'd be more afraid of the kid than he would be of me," Koeppen says.

"Off the field, he's just a guy," says Carroll head coach Mike Van Diest. "Some guys have a real presence about themselves and their ego gets in the way. That's not Owen."

Koeppen has always been an athlete, usually the biggest on the field.

Art and Arlene Brackebusch remember their grandson's first days of football. Koeppen was "drafted" by the worst team in Missoula's peewee football league.

"They had never won a game," says Arlene. "Owen played and in one game they gave Owen the ball.

"He's running, dragging tacklers all over. They made their first touchdown and they won their first game. That's how he started his football career."

It was, however, a sport that took a sideline to another activity: skiing.

From the age of 4, Koeppen has been donning a pair of boots and skis and burning down Montana's mountains.

With a fearless attitude and knack for speed, Koeppen eventually became a Junior Olympic champion, winning the 2001 Western Region Super-G.

Despite his reckless ways and success on the slopes, he never demanded attention.

"He doesn't really relish talking about his achievements, or really being interviewed," says Art Brackebusch.

When reporters wanted to speak to him, he simply says: "I do my talking on the hill."

After spending two years at Missoula Sentinel High School, Koeppen made a move from his hometown of Florence to Park City, Utah, the center of competitive skiing in the United States.

In 2002, however, his dreams of becoming a ski legend suddenly came to an end. At the age of 16, he collided with a snow-making machine on a training run. He fractured his pelvis and hip, an injury that required him to miss a year of training as he made his way around on crutches.

He returned to the violent sport of football -- where, ironically, he hasn't suffered any major injuries -- and was named an all-state player for Park City High his senior year. A good, allaround athlete, he even joined the track and field team and won the state 3A shot put championship.

His football skills were impressive enough to get offers from Big Sky schools, all part of the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA).

"Growing up around Missoula my dream school was really UM," he says.

But they didn't offer a full-ride scholarship, and he settled at Weber State in Ogden, Utah. Koeppen redshirted for the Wildcats under the tutelage of head coach Jerry Graybeal, but after the coach moved up to the athletic director office and Ron McBride took over the football program Koeppen's freshman year, he decided it was time to make a move as well.

He says the coaching change wasn't the biggest reason, though the man who had recruited him was suddenly gone.

"Mostly I was kind of homesick and wanted to be back in Montana," he says.

He thought about transferring to UM or another FCS program, but knew he would have to sit out a year of eligibility.

"(Carroll) was the closest thing to home, here in Helena. And all I kept hearing about was Carroll College winning national championships," he says.

Van Diest remembers meeting Koeppen when he visited in that spring. The coach quickly realized that Koeppen truly loved the game and was just looking for a place to play.

"You could see he just wanted to go some place where he was wanted, where he fit in," the coach says. "He wasn't looking for any favors or anything out of the ordinary."

He simply wanted the chance to compete.

After joining the squad during spring drills, Koeppen found a spot on the roster, sharing duties with then-senior Shane Cornelius at middle linebacker.

Koeppen had no problem fitting in with the rest of the guys, but his best friends were the ones who transferred in the same year from other larger programs. Players like senior linebackers Garret Garrels and Rick Young, who transfered from Wyoming and Utah State, respectively. Former nose tackle and now defensive line coach Will Hamilton came in from Sacramento State the same year.

"It definitely helped that we were all transfers and that we were all in the same boat," Garrels says about their friendship.

"We all had the same thing in common. We didn't know anybody else," Young says.

They got along with Koeppen, his competitive nature and his sense of humor.

While the guys joke around and tease each other, Koeppen's favorite comeback has become known as "The Repeater."

"He'll repeat what you says to him in a smart tone of voice," Garrels says.

The high-pitched voice he uses doesn't match the size of the man.

"I think that's why he pulls it off," Garrels says.

Koeppen welcomes many of the new recruits, even if it means he's crushing them on the field.

"He's always been really nice to me and helped me out," says sophomore running back John Camino. "He kind of took me under his wing during freshman year."

His good nature only goes so far.

Under the guidance of Van Diest and former linebackers coach Gary Cooper, a former Saints All-American, Koeppen began to tranform on the field.

He led the Saints in tackles in 2006, but alongside other all-conference linebackers, like Mike Schmidt and Seamus Molloy, he was a quiet worker, slowly developing into something much more sinister.

Football, as it turns out, became his elixir, turning Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde.

Saints senior linebacker Brandon Day remembers the hardest hit he's ever witnessed in football. It came in the 2006 quarterfinals of the NAIA playoffs, a game the Saints lost 14-7 to St. Xavier of Illinois. Still in the first half of a close game taking place a blizzard, Koeppen flung full-force into the Cougar's quarterback, Billy Yeo.

Koeppen drove through with his shoulders and planted Yeo into the ground.

"That was the hardest hit I think I've ever seen anyone endure," Day says. "I just remember going, 'Oh, he's done.' Right then I knew that kid wasn't coming back in."

To his credit, Yeo walked himself off the field, not always the case for a player mangled by Koeppen.

While the Saints haven't taken an official count, they're pretty sure their star linebacker has sent at least seven or eight quarterbacks permanently to the sidelines.

At the start of the 2008 season, he injured Azusa Pacific quarterback Aaron Strazicich early in the third quarter.

In 2006, he injured both of MSU-Northern quarterback Kyle Samson's ankles, one in each regular season game. Samson survived the onslaught, winning the Frontier Conference Offensive Player of the Year, and limping all the way.

Everyone can pick and choose their favorite Koeppen plays. Van Diest says he wants to produce a video at the end of the year. Not to display the carnage, but to show everyone how a linebacker should play the game.

Since stepping on the field at Nelson Stadium his sophomore year, Koeppen has continued to grow stronger and become even more dangerous.

He led the Saints in 2007 with 115 tackles, 13 for a loss, and 8.5 sacks. He also had one interception.

But that's not why he was chosen as an All-American. He's never led the nation in a single statistical category. His 63 total tackles this season is about half that of Northern's Stetson Koffman.

Instead, it's his way of producing the big hits when they're needed, and improving the play of the three starting linebackers alongside him, all who helped win a national title in 2007, the Saints' fifth in six years.

His senses have improved, and while he works from a playbook, he plays on instinct.

"He makes plays that I could never coach," Van Diest says. "It's better to let him do things naturally then tell him 'you've got to do this, and you've got to do that.' "

Day says that Koeppen knows when to break from a pass coverage to bring down a quarterback.

"He's a very genuine, very nice person," Day says. "On the field, he definitely gets the reputation of being mean just because of how hard he plays and how hard he hits. He definitely loves to hit people as hard as he can. That's very evident."

Koeppen can feel the transformation, like a werewolf underneath a full-moon sky.

"You can say it brings out the best, or almost the worst, in you," he says. "I can forget about everything else that's happening in my life and I can just go and play football with my teammates and have fun. When we're winning it's great, when we're losing we stick together and it's still a pretty good time."

Click here for complete coverage of the Carroll College Fighting Saints' 2008 football season, including extra stories and photos, videos, multimedia, interactive depth charts and more.