The State House in Des Moines
37 States down, 13 to go. This coming Saturday, the football teams of the University of Iowa and Iowa State University play each other, at Iowa State in Ames.
Iowa opened its season yesterday by beating Wyoming 24-3, while Iowa State opened with a 42-24 win over Northern Iowa.
There is, of course, the chance that Rutgers and Iowa will face each other in the Big Ten Conference Championship Game. But who's kidding who? Rutgers will be lucky to win a single Conference game. That's why I'm doing the Iowa post now, as the 2 biggest sports teams in the State play each other this weekend.
Before You Go. Iowa weather is typical of the Midwest: Extremes of heat in the Summer, and of cold in the Winter. Being on the prairie, wind could be a problem, especially in cold weather.
If you're interested in going to this weekend's game, in Ames, the weather for the entire weekend is expected to be in the mid-70s in daylight, and the high 50s at night.
Iowa is in the Central Time Zone, 1 hour behind New York. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.
Tickets. For this game, you're probably out of luck, unless you can get something on a resale site. As for other games: Kinnick Stadium seats 70,585, and the Hawkeyes usually fill it or come close to it; while Trice Stadium seats 61,500, but usually tops out at around 50,000 for games other than UI-ISU.
At Iowa, throughout the stadium, both sidelines and ends, tickets are $45 close to the field, $25 further from it. At Iowa State, all tickets are $30.
Getting There. It's an even 1,000 miles from Times Square in Midtown Manhattan to Iowa City, and, for future reference for Rutgers games, 998 miles from High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey to Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. From Times Sqaure to Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, it's 1,125 miles.
Driving from New York (or New Jersey) to Iowa City is fairly simple: Just take Interstate 80 West, crossing New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. I-80 bypasses Chicago, although the temptation to make a rest stop there would be understandable.
If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 4 hours in Ohio, 2 hours and 30 minutes in Indiana, 2 hours and 45 minutes in Illinois, and 45 minutes in Iowa. That's 17 hours, and, with rest stops, probably around 24 hours.
To Ames, take Interstate 380 North when you get to Iowa City, then at Cedar Rapids, head West on U.S. Route 30. That's another 2 hours and 30 minutes, which means probably another rest stop, so we're talking about 27 hours total.
Amtrak does not go to Iowa City. Nor does it go to Ames. And unless you can get one of those El Cheapo Airlines commuter services, you're better off flying into Chicago (or maybe Des Moines) and renting a car than flying into Iowa City Municipal Airport or Ames Municipal Airport.
Incredibly, Greyhound (at the least, Greyhound after flying into Chicago) may be your best bet. New York to Iowa City, round-trip, is $424, but it can drop to $324 with advanced purchase.
Once In the City. The State of Iowa, admitted to the Union as the 29th State on December 28, 1846, was named for the Ioway tribe of Native Americans, and is home to 3.1 million people. Iowa City was founded in 1839, to move the State Capitol out of Burlington, on the Mississippi River, and closer to the center of the State. But in 1857, the Capitol was moved to Des Moines. The University, founded in 1847, a year after Statehood, remains. In addition to this main campus, the University maintains The Oakdale Campus, in nearby Coralville.
The State sales tax is 6 percent. Leading newspapers include the Des Moines Register, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, the Quad-City Times of Davenport, the Sioux City Journal, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, and the Ames Tribune. ZIP Codes in Iowa start with the digits 50, 51 and 52; for Iowa City, 52240; and for Ames, 50011. The Area Codes are 319 for Iowa City, and 515 for Ames.
Iowa City is centered on the Old Capitol Museum, with Iowa Avenue dividing streets into North and South, and Capitol Street dividing them into East and West. In Ames, Duff Avenue divides into East and West, and Lincoln Way into North and South. Neither Iowa City nor Ames has a freeway "beltway."
* Baseball: Al Reinhart, Wes Obermueller, Jim Sundberg and Cal Eldred. Also, broadcaster Milo Hamilton.
* Baskeball: Chuck Darling (1956 Olympic Gold Medalist), Don Nelson (also a legendary coach), "Downtown" Freddie Brown, his 1979 NBA Champion Seattle SuperSonics teammate John Johnson, Brad Lohaus, B.J. Armstrong, Acie Earl.
* Olympic Gold Medalists: George Saling, hurdling, 1932; Wally Ris, swimming, 1948; twin brothers Ed and Lou Banach, Randall Lewis, wrestling, 1984; Tom Brands, wrestling, 1996; Anthuan Maybank, sprinting, 1996.
Iowa graduates in other fields include:
* Business: Paul P. Harris, founder of the Rotary Club International.
* Politics, representing Iowa unless otherwise stated: Governors Leo Hoegh, John Burke (North Dakota), Kay Orr (Nebraska), Terry Branstad; Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota; and House Majority Whip David Bonior of Michigan. Also, pollster George Gallup.
* Literature: Mildred Benson, a.k.a. Nancy Drew creator Carolyn Keene; Wallace Stegner, Josephine Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, John Irving, James Alan McPherson, W.P. Kinsella, Michael Cunningham, Joe Haldeman, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Rita Dove, Jane Smiley, Tracy Kidder, David Drake, Marilynne Robinson, Andre Dubus, Robert Hass, and Charles Gaines, who not only wrote Pumping Iron, but invented paintball.
* Journalism: Marquis Childs, Paul Conrad, Tom Brokaw.
* Entertainment: Actors Macdonald Carey, Jean Seberg, Greg Morris, Lara Parker, Gene Wilder, Tom Arnold, Terry O'Quinn, Ashton Kutcher and Brandon Routh; TV producer Barry Kemp; director Nicholas Meyer; screenwriter Diablo Cody; singer Al Jarreau; and saxophonist David Sanborn.
* Science: James Van Allen.
Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm was founded in 1858, and became Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1898, and Iowa State University in 1959. Oddly, unlike a lot of "Agricultural and Mechanical" schools, including those that became "(State Name) State University," they were never known as "A&M," nor their teams as "the Aggies."
Notable Iowa State athletes, outside of football, include:
* Baseball: Jim Walewander and Mike Myers.
* Basketball: Jeff Hornaceck, Kelvin Cato, Jamaal Tinsley.
* Olympic Gold Medalists, all in wrestling: Glen Brand, 1948; Dan Gable and Ben Peterson, 1972; Kevin Jackson, 1992; Cael Sanderson, 2004; and Jake Varner, 2012.
In other fields:
* Politics: Henry C. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture under Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge; his son, Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture and then Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt; Ezra Taft Benson, Mormon leader and Secretary of Agriculture under Dwight D. Eisenhower; Lauro Cavazos, Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; Governors John Edward Jones (Nevada), Bourke Hickelooper, Garry Carruthers (New Mexico) and Kim Reynolds; Senators Tom Harkin and Joni Ernst; and Lee Teng-hui, former President of Taiwan. Also, League of Women Voters founder Carrie Chapman Catt.
* Journalism: Hugh Sidey, Robert Bartley, Terry Anderson, Sally Jacobsen.
* Science: George Washington Carver, homogenized milk developer G. Malcolm Trout; computer pioneers John Atanasoff, Clifford Berry, Bob O. Evans and John Gustafson.
Going In. Iowa Stadium opened in 1929, and was renamed Kinnick Stadium for the school's greatest football legend in 1972. This makes it the only college football stadium named for a Heisman Trophy winner.
Typical of the Big Ten stadiums that went up in the 1910s and 1920s -- Ohio Stadium, Michigan Stadium, Ross-Ade Stadium at Purdue, Camp Randall Stadium at Wisconsin, Ryan Field at Northwestern, and the Memorial Stadiums of Illinois, Minnesota (now demolished), Indiana (now demolished) and Nebraska (not in the Big Ten until recently), is has a dark brick exterior with arches and columns.
It is at Melrose Avenue and Hawkins Drive. The official address is 825 Stadium Drive, about a mile across the Iowa River from downtown Iowa City. Campus bus service is provided from downtown.
TV producer Barry Kemp is a University of Iowa graduate, and so he did some filming at the school to establish location shots for the fictional Minnesota State University for his TV show Coach. This included the Iowa Memorial Union (the student union and a hotel, at 125 N. Madison Street, which stood in as the building housing the coaches' offices and locker rooms) and Kinnick Stadium.
He also named the main character, played by Craig T. Nelson, "Hayden Fox," after then-Iowa coach Hayden Fry. He also made Iowa's main rival, the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State's arch-rival, especially after UM wouldn't let ABC film on campus.
(Kemp also wrote the episode of Newhart that introduced this line, and the characters thereof: "Hi, I'm Larry, this is my brother Darrell, and this is my other brother Darrell.")
Iowa State opened Cyclone Stadium in 1975, renaming it Jack Trice Stadium in 1997. This makes it the only college football stadium, other than those at "historically black" schools, named for an African-American. "The Jack" is at 1798 S. 4th Street, about a mile southwest of downtown Ames. Bus 3.
The Cyclones may have better options. If you come no later than 30 minutes before kickoff, you can go to the Victory Bell concessions stands, behind Section A at the northwest corner and Section R at the northeast corner, you can get the Early Bird Bucket: 2 hot dogs, roasted peanuts, and a regular size soft drink, for $12.
They have Pizza Hut stands behind Sections, A, F and Q; Panera Bread at A, D, G, J, K, N, P and R (including each corner); and Johnsonville sausage stands at J and K (the southwest and southeast corners).
Team History Displays. The Football Writers Association awarded the 1958 National Championship to Iowa, coached by Forest Evashevski (for whom the street around the stadium is named), and quarterbacked by Randy Duncan. The Associated Press (AP, sportswriters) and United Press International (UPI, coaches) both awarded their National Championships to Louisiana State, and ranked Iowa Number 2.
Iowa has won 13 Conference Championship: 1896, 1900, 1907, 1921, 1922, 1956, 1958, 1960, 1981, 1985, 1990, 2002 and 2004. They won the Big Ten Conference Western Division in 2015, but lost the Championship Game to Michigan State. Kinnick Stadium has a Championship Plaza displaying these titles.
They've retired 2 numbers, and neither of the players they've honored played a single down in the NFL. Nile Kinnick, Number 24, was a halfback, and the winner of the school's only Heisman Trophy, in 1939. (Randy Duncan finished 2nd to Pete Dawkins of Army in 1958, and Chuck Long did so to Bo Jackson of Auburn in 1985.)
Including turning down big money to stay in school: The NFL version of the Brooklyn Dodgers drafted him, and offered him $10,000 for the 1940 season (about $176,000 in today's money), he, like 1935 All-America center Gerald Ford of Michigan, turned the NFL down to go to law school. (Didn't stop their contemporary Byron "Whizzer" White from doing both.)
He left law school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy -- 3 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He trained as a pilot, and, on June 2, 1943, his plane developed an oil leak, leaving him unable to return to the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington off the coast of Venezuela. He crashed into the Gulf of Paria, and his body was never found. He was not quite 25 years old, and there would not be another Heisman winner to die until Ernie Davis was felled by leukemia 20 years later.
They've also honored Number 62, guard Cal Jones, who in 1955 was named the 1st black player to win the Outland Trophy as "the nation's outstanding interior lineman." He was also the 1st black person featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, in 1954.
Neither ever played in the NFL. Jones was drafted by the Detroit Lions, but went instead to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League, which, unlike the NFL, paid black players the same as white ones. At the end of his 1st season, on December 9, 1956, having played in the CFL All-Star Game, he and 4 Saskatchewan Roughriders players were among those killed in a plane crash outside Vancouver. Iowa then dedicated their upcoming 1st Rose Bowl appearance to his memory, and they beat Oregon State.
His grandson, Edwin Harrison, played at the University of Colorado and for the CFL's Calgary Stampeders. He also played guard and wore Number 62.
Other Iowa football notables include 1920s tackle Duke Slater (one of the 1st major black football stars), 1940s safety Emlen Tunnell (a Hall-of-Famer for the Giants), 1950s defensive tackle Alex Karras (the future Lions star, sportscaster and actor joking, "I was only at Iowa for 2 terms: Truman's 2nd and Eisenhower's 1st), the aforementioned Heisman runners-up Duncan and Long, 1960s safety Paul Krause, 1960s running back Ed Podolak, 1980s defensive linemen Andre Tippett and Mark Bortz, 1980s running back Ronnie Harmon, 1980s linebacker Larry Station, and 2000s tight end Dallas Clark.
UPDATE: Not only has the field at Kinnick Stadium been named for Slater, but a sculpture replicating a famous photograph of him has been built into the outside wall.
Iowa State's football history is considerably less storied. They've won only 2 Conference Championships, in 1911 and 1912, in the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the league that would eventually become the Big Six, the Big Seven, the Big Eight, and the bulk of their current league, the Big Twelve. They shared the Big 12 North Division with Colorado in 2004, but because Colorado had a higher national ranking, they went to the Conference Championship Game (and lost to Oklahoma).
They have just 2 players in the College Football Hall of Fame: 1930s guard Ed Bock, who, like Kinnick, chose to not to play pro ball, and, in his case, it worked out, as he rose to become CEO of Monsanto; and running back Troy Davis, who in 1996 finished 2nd in the Heisman balloting to Danny Wuerffel of Florida, and played for the New Orleans Saints and, like Cal Jones, in the CFL.
They are 3-9 in bowl games, having not appeared in one until the 1971 Sun Bowl, and not winning one unil the 2000 Insight.com Bowl. They also won the 2004 Independence Bowl and the 2009 Insight Bowl. They came to New York for the 2011 Pinstripe Bowl, and lost to Rutgers. Their last bowl appearance was the 2012 Liberty Bowl, which they lost to Tulsa.
The stadium's namesake is Jack Trice, ISU's 1st black varsity athlete. On October 6, 1923, Iowa State played Minnesota in Minneapolis. Despite Minnesota having been a Union State in the Civil War (only 58 years earlier), and being about as Northern as you can get and still be in the U.S., he had to stay in a different hotel than his teammates.
Early in the game, he took a hit, and his chest hurt. He insisted he could continue, and was sent back in. Later, he made a tackle, and in the process was stepped on by 3 Minnesota players. He still claimed to be fine, but this time, he was sent to a hospital. The doctors diagnosed the initial injury as a broken collarbone, discharged him, and declared him fit to travel. They reached Ames the next day, but the day after, internal bleeding killed him. He was only 21.
There was speculation that the Minnesota players may have targeted him. Was it because he was black? Was it because he was already injured? Was it simply untrue? Whatever the truth was, Iowa State did not renew its contract to play Minnesota, and didn't play them again until 1989.
Despite having named their stadium after him, Iowa State has not retired his Number 37, nor that of any other player. Mackenro Alexander, a senior defensive back, wears 37 for them this season.
Statues of Kinnick and Trice stand outside their respective stadiums, each at the north end, showing him wearing street clothes and carrying textbooks, although Kinnick's has a football helmet at his feet. On the way into the stadium on gameday, the players will rub his helmet for good luck.
Iowa and Iowa State played each other nearly every season from 1894 to 1920, then again in 1933 and 1934, but then not again until 1977. That year, the Cy-Hawk Trophy was first presented. There have been 3 versions, and the current one features each school's bird mascot, Herky the Hawk and Cy the Cardinal. The Hawkeyes lead the rivalry, 42-22.
Ask longtime Iowa fans, and they'll say the Hawkeyes' real arch-rival isn't Iowa State, it's the University of Minnesota. The neighboring State's universities had been playing each other since 1891, and in 1934, things turned nasty over the rough treatment of yet another black player for one of the Iowa schools by Minnesota, Ozzie Simmons.
The rhetoric got really threatening for the 1935 game, and even the Governors got in on it, with Clyde Herring of Iowa saying the Iowa City crowd wouldn't stand for it. He got accused of inciting a riot by Minnesota's Attorney General, Harry Peterson. Peterson's boss, Governor Floyd Olson, decided to lighten the mood, with what is, as far as I can tell, the first friendly bet between politicians representing opposing teams, a Minnesota "prize hog" against one from Iowa. Herring took the bet.
There was no incident at the game, either on the field or in the stands. Simmons walked off the field, receiving handshakes rather than injuries from the Minnesota players. Minnesota won, 13-6, and won their 2nd straight National Championship.
Herring contacted Rosdale Farms outside Fort Dodge, Iowa, and sent the pig to Olson, naming it Floyd of Rosedale for Olson and the farm. Olson then commissioned a trophy to be given annually to the winner of the game, because a 98-pound trophy is easier to move than a several-hundred-pound pig.
Iowa has won the last 2 games, and 12 of the last 16, but still trails the overall rivalry, 62-46-2. Since the trophy (counting the original pig) was first awarded in 1934, Minnesota's lead is much slimmer, 42-38.
(Herring, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1936, but lost in 1942, and died in 1945. Olson, a member of the Farmer-Labor Party, a kind of Socialist party that Hubert Humphrey later merged with the State Democratic Party, wasn't so lucky: He was already dying of cancer at the time of the bet, and passed away 9 months later.)
Iowa also plays Wisconsin for the Heartland Trophy, which is topped not by a bronze pig, but by a brass bull. The Hawkeyes trail this rivalry, 45-43-2.
And they play Nebraska for the Heroes Trophy, which, by comparison, is just an ordinary brass football on top of a base. The Hawkeyes trail, 29-15-3.
Since Iowa and Nebraska border each other, along the Missouri River, and have similar, rural-based, well-traveled, passionate fan bases, each in a State where there is no major league team and each is by far the State's most popular sports team, you would think this would be a big, long-standing rivalry, but because they were in different leagues until Nebraska joined the Big 10 in 2011, they only played each other 6 times between 1947 and 2010.
Aside from the Hawkeyes, Iowa State have a rivalry with one other school, Big 12 opponents Kansas State. They call it "Farmageddon," and they've met every season since 1917. The rivalry is close: ISU leads it 49-47-4. But it's getting closer: KSU has won it 9 straight times, and they'll host this year's game, too.
(UPDATE: Through the 2019 season, the Hawkeyes now lead the Cyclones 46-22, but trail Minnesota 62-50-2, trail Wisconsin 48-44-2, and trail Nebraska 29-19-3. The Cyclones lead Kansas State 51-49-4.)
Stuff. Neither Kinnick Stadium nor Trice Stadium has a big team store. If you want to get school memorabilia, your best bet is to go to each school's bookstore. The Iowa Hawk Shop is at the Iowa Memorial Union, at 125 N. Madison Street in Iowa City. The Iowa State University Book Store (they spell it as 2 words) is at 2229 Lincoln Way in Ames.
There is a definitive book about each school's program, although the Hawkeyes' version could use an update. In 2006, the Cedar Rapids Gazette published Greatest Moments in Iowa Hawkeyes Football History. Earlier this year, Ryan Sloth published Iowa State Cyclones Football A to Z.
There is a DVD produced in 2007 titled Legends of the Iowa Hawkeyes, but no similar video for Iowa State.
During the Game. If you act like a guest who respects your host's house, your safety will not be an issue in either Iowa City or Ames.
One thing I like about Iowa is that their uniforms resemble those of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and while the Steelers changed the font of their numbers in 1996, the Hawkeyes kept theirs, making them look more like the old Steel Curtain than the current Steeler squad does.
The Iowa players enter the field to "Back In Black" by AC/DC, and then the band will play "The Iowa Fight Song." Then they play a part of the recording of Nile Kinnick's Heisman Trophy acceptance speech, before moving on to the National Anthem and the Alma Mater:
I thank God that I was born to the gridirons of the Middle West, and not to the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the football players of this country would rather fight for the Heisman Trophy than for the Croix de Guerre.
(Kinnick, of course, went on to enlist before Pearl Harbor anyway.)
The Hawkeye Marching Band is led by 2 prestigious positions: The Drum Major, and the Golden Girl, 1 of only 2 full-tuition scholarships in the country available to baton twirlers. The Golden Girl is so prestigious, 3 of them have gone on to be Miss Iowa, and 1 of them Miss Indiana, in the Miss America Pageant.
Iowa is the Hawkeye State, a name attributed to the 1830s Sauk leader, Chief Black Hawk, whose name is also the origin of that of the Chicago hockey team. "Hawkeye" was also the nickname of Natty Bumppo, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. (Which also gave Benjamin Franklin Pierce of M*A*S*H his nickname.) An early Iowa newspaper called the local troops fighting in the Black Hawk War "Hawkeyes," and as with the attribution of "Blue Hens" to Delaware and "Tar Heels" to North Carolina during the American Revolution, the name stuck.
Thus, Iowa's mascot is Herky the Hawk, who has appeared in costumed form since 1948. When Hayden Fry arrived as head coach in 1979, he began using the "Tigerhawk" logo for Iowa's helmet design, and Herky was thus redesigned.
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It was in 1985, following the Farm Aid concert, that Iowa began sticking a circle above the Tigerhawk's crest, yellow with black letters, ANF, meaning America Needs Farmers. That year, with Chuck Long quarterbacking, Iowa was ranked Number 1 and beat Number 2 Michigan at Kinnick Stadium, on the way to winning the Big 10, but lost the Rose Bowl to UCLA, blowing the National Championship.
Between the 3rd and 4th quarters, the Hawkeye Marching Band plays the Beatles' "Hey Jude." They have done so since the song was new in 1968, which must have been a shock to all those conservative Iowa farm folk. After the game, if Iowa wins, the Band plays "The Hawkeye Victory Polka," a variant of "In Heaven, There Is No Beer." (Refrain: "That's why we drink it here.") This has been problematic, given that most college students are under age 21, but attempts to ban it have failed.
In 1895, Iowa suffered a lot of tornadoes, or cyclones. In September, Iowa Agricultural College, as ISU was then known, was calling their teams the Cardinals, after their school color, cardinal red. They went to Chicago and beat Northwestern 36-0, and the Chicago Tribune's headline was "Struck By a Cyclone: It comes from Iowa, and devastates Evanston town."
The team has been the Cyclones ever since. But how do you represent a cyclone/tornado as a mascot? Rather than answer that question, ISU went with their color, named the bird after cyclones, and created Cy the Cardinal.
Ironically, in 2005, a real tornado delayed a game between Iowa State and Colorado, and when it passed, and the fans filed back into Trice Stadium, they were so riled up that they spurred the Cyclones on to an upset win. Since then, a tornado siren has been activated after ISU touchdowns.
Like Rutgers, Iowa State has a cannon that they fire off as the team takes the field before the game, at each half's kickoff, after every Iowa State kickoff, and after a home win. Also after a home win, a Victory Bell has been rung. It is in the stadium's north end, and was at their previous stadium, Clyde Williams Field. Like the Hawkeyes, their fight song has a very generic title, "The Iowa State Fight Song."
After the Game. There's not much to eat around Trice Stadium. You may have to go back to downtown Ames. There isn't much more around Kinnick Stadium, although a restaurant named Stella is at 1006 Melrose Avenue, just outside the stadium's southwest corner. Again, for a variety of choices, you'll have to go downtown, back across the Iowa River.
The Hamburg Inn #2 is a diner, said to be "legendary" and to have great, well, hamburgers. 214 N. Linn Street, downtown. However, not only has the famed Tuck's Place, 2 doors down at 210 N. Linn, closed for good, but so has its replacement, I.C. Ugly's.
The leading bar showing European soccer in Iowa is Donnelly's Pub, at 110 E. College Street, in Iowa City.
Sidelights. Carver-Hawkeye Arena is at 1 Elliot Drive, about a 5-minute walk northwest of Kinnick Stadium. Since 1983, it has been home to Iowa basketball, but, more importantly, has been home to Iowa wrestling, which has been so successful, it makes John Wooden's UCLA basketball dynasty look like Rutgers football.
From 1975 to 2010, they won 23 National Championships. This included 9 straight from 1978 to 1986, under coach Dan Gable, himself once the greatest wrestler -- and I mean real wrestling -- in American history, including a Gold Medal at the 1972 Olympics. Oddly, his only loss was in his last collegiate match, denying him 4 straight individual National Championships. Even more ironically, he wrestled at... Iowa State. And it was Iowa State that denied Iowa the 10th straight title in 1987. That was their 8th National Championship, including the 1969, '70 and '72 titles that Gable helped them win, but they have never won another.
Iowa has 6 minor-league baseball teams, all but 1 of them in Class A. The Triple-A team is the Iowa Cubs, who play (never mind the name) in the Pacific Coast League. They've won just 1 Pennant, in the old American Association, in 1993, despite the Great Mississippi River Flood of that year, and last made the Playoffs in 2008.
Their home is the 11,500-seat Principal Park, in Des Moines, where the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers meet. The address is 1 Line Drive, at SW 2nd Street. The previous ballpark on the site, Sec Taylor Stadium, stood from 1947 to 1991. It was home to the Western League's Des Moines Bruins, the Three-I League's (Illinois-Indiana-Iowa) Des Moines Demons (Pennant winners in 1954 and 1955), and the American Association's Iowa Oaks, a White Sox farm team, before they switched Chicago teams in 1981. Just 3 blocks away is Iowa's foremost museum, the Science Center of Iowa, at 401 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.
There is an independent team, the Sioux City Explorers, in the new version of the American Association. And there are 4 teams in the Class A Midwest League: The Burlington Bees, the Cedar Rapids Kernels, the Clinton LumberKings, and the Quad Cities River Bandits. The Bandits are famed for their ballpark, now named Modern Woodmen Park, next to the Centennial Bridge, connecting their city of Davenport, Iowa to Rock Island, Illinois. Under its previous name of John O'Donnell Stadium, the stadium got hit with the Great Flood of 1993, much worse than the Des Moines park did.
Iowa City is 223 miles from Chicago, 260 from St. Louis, 302 from Minneapolis, and 306 from Kansas City. According to a recent survey, 36 percent of people in the area are Cub fans, 16 percent St. Louis Cardinal fans, 9 percent White Sox fans, and the Twins and Royals don't register. Not surprisingly, the most popular teams in the other leagues are also the closest, the Chicago teams: The Bears in the NFL, the Bulls in the NBA, the Blackhawks in the NHL, and the Fire in MLS.
Iowa's greatest sports legends are the aforementioned Nile Kinnick and Jack Trice, and Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller. However, since Kinnick was lost at sea and never recovered, he has no official final resting place. And because Trice was from a town outside Cleveland, and Feller pitched his whole career in Cleveland, they're both buried in cemeteries near that city, not in Iowa.
The Beatles never performed live in Iowa, but Elvis did. In addition to his concert at Iowa State in 1976, he sang at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines on May 22, 1956; June 20, 1974; and June 23, 1977, on his last tour. 833 5th Avenue. The Wells Fargo Arena, home of the Iowa Wild, farm team of the Minnesota Wild, is across the street, at 733 3rd Street.
He also sang at the Municipal Auditorium in Sioux City on May 23, 1956. It is now known as the Long Lines Family Recreation Center (not an encouraging name), and stands at 401 Gordon Drive, on the Missouri River, across from South Sioux City, Nebraska.
Iowa has produced a President, but he was one of the least successful: Herbert Hoover. He was born at West Branch in 1874, and lived there until he was 11, when, orphaned, he was taken in by an uncle in Oregon.
Though he never lived in Iowa again, and lived on the Stanford University campus and in Washington, D.C. most of his pre-Presidency adult life, and at the Waldorf Towers in New York after his disastrous Presidency (1929-33), he decided to build his Presidential Library and Museum, and to be buried, at his birthplace. 210 Parkside Drive in West Branch, about 10 miles east of downtown Iowa City. Not accessible by public transportation.
The tallest building in the State of Iowa is the Principal Building, built in 1991 and standing 630 feet (the same height as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis), in downtown Des Moines at 801 Grand Street.
The only remotely successful TV show to be set in Iowa is American Pickers. No, the Hooterville shows -- CBS' rural 1960s sitcoms Petticoat Junction and Green Acres -- were not set in Iowa. Though there were hints that Hooterville was near Chicago and Omaha (which would make Iowa the best candidate), the lack of consistency in 20th Century TV shows meant that the location was all over the place, and other hints suggest it was in either Kentucky or North Carolina.
By far the most famous movie set or filmed in Iowa is the baseball fantasy Field of Dreams, based on W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe. The actual farm where it was filmed is in Iowa, in Dyersville, at 28995 Lansing Road.
It is 24 miles west of the nearest city of note, Dubuque; 77 miles northeast of Kinnick Stadium; 170 miles northeast of Des Moines; 200 miles northwest of Chicago. In fact, Milwaukee is slightly closer than Chicago, making it the closest major league city. "People will come," it was said, and they do, but it's by car: No public transit is available.
Other films set in Iowa include State Fair (2 versions, 1933 and 1945), The Pajama Game, The Music Man, Elvis' movies Double Trouble and The Trouble With Girls, Cold Turkey, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and the film version of Robert James Waller's novel The Bridges of Madison County.
Twister was set in Oklahoma, and the film version of Stephen King's Children of the Corn was set in Nebraska, but both were filmed in Iowa, which does have a lot of tornadoes and corn.
Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk was said by series creator Gene Roddenberry to have been born on March 22, 2233, in Riverside, Iowa, population just under 1,000. The town has accepted and promoted this, and has set up a "Future Birthplace" on 1st Street, between Washburn and Glasgow. It's about 14 miles south of Iowa City, but, again, forget about taking public transport. Maybe Scotty can beam you there.
No Trek TV show or movie depicted Kirk's Iowa hometown until the 2009 J.J. Abrams abomination. This movie was so bad! (How bad was it?) It was so bad, it seemed to suggest that the Grand Canyon was in Iowa. Note to Abrams: Not only is Iowa prairie, not desert and mountains, but the Grand Canyon is in Arizona, you idiot! And there's no way the starship USS Enterprise would have been built there, or anywhere on the ground. It was built in space, at the San Francisco Yards, in synchronous orbit over the Earth, over San Francisco, where Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy are. (Within the lore of the real show and films, of course.)
Another notable fictional character from Iowa, from Ottumwa in the southeastern corner of the State, was Corporal Walter Eugene O'Reilly, a.k.a. "Radar," the company clerk at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War. Gary Burghoff was the only actor from the film version of M*A*S*H (1970) to also play the role on TV (doing so from 1972 to 1979).
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Iowa has no major league sports, and just the 1 Triple-A (or other-sports equivalent) team. And Iowa's and Iowa State's basketball and wrestling teams just aren't as big. College football is it in Iowa, and what an "it" it is.
They have just 2 players in the College Football Hall of Fame: 1930s guard Ed Bock, who, like Kinnick, chose to not to play pro ball, and, in his case, it worked out, as he rose to become CEO of Monsanto; and running back Troy Davis, who in 1996 finished 2nd in the Heisman balloting to Danny Wuerffel of Florida, and played for the New Orleans Saints and, like Cal Jones, in the CFL.
They are 3-9 in bowl games, having not appeared in one until the 1971 Sun Bowl, and not winning one unil the 2000 Insight.com Bowl. They also won the 2004 Independence Bowl and the 2009 Insight Bowl. They came to New York for the 2011 Pinstripe Bowl, and lost to Rutgers. Their last bowl appearance was the 2012 Liberty Bowl, which they lost to Tulsa.
The stadium's namesake is Jack Trice, ISU's 1st black varsity athlete. On October 6, 1923, Iowa State played Minnesota in Minneapolis. Despite Minnesota having been a Union State in the Civil War (only 58 years earlier), and being about as Northern as you can get and still be in the U.S., he had to stay in a different hotel than his teammates.
Plaque at the stadium
There was speculation that the Minnesota players may have targeted him. Was it because he was black? Was it because he was already injured? Was it simply untrue? Whatever the truth was, Iowa State did not renew its contract to play Minnesota, and didn't play them again until 1989.
Despite having named their stadium after him, Iowa State has not retired his Number 37, nor that of any other player. Mackenro Alexander, a senior defensive back, wears 37 for them this season.
Statues of Kinnick and Trice stand outside their respective stadiums, each at the north end, showing him wearing street clothes and carrying textbooks, although Kinnick's has a football helmet at his feet. On the way into the stadium on gameday, the players will rub his helmet for good luck.
Kinnick and Trice in bronze
Iowa and Iowa State played each other nearly every season from 1894 to 1920, then again in 1933 and 1934, but then not again until 1977. That year, the Cy-Hawk Trophy was first presented. There have been 3 versions, and the current one features each school's bird mascot, Herky the Hawk and Cy the Cardinal. The Hawkeyes lead the rivalry, 42-22.
The rhetoric got really threatening for the 1935 game, and even the Governors got in on it, with Clyde Herring of Iowa saying the Iowa City crowd wouldn't stand for it. He got accused of inciting a riot by Minnesota's Attorney General, Harry Peterson. Peterson's boss, Governor Floyd Olson, decided to lighten the mood, with what is, as far as I can tell, the first friendly bet between politicians representing opposing teams, a Minnesota "prize hog" against one from Iowa. Herring took the bet.
There was no incident at the game, either on the field or in the stands. Simmons walked off the field, receiving handshakes rather than injuries from the Minnesota players. Minnesota won, 13-6, and won their 2nd straight National Championship.
Herring contacted Rosdale Farms outside Fort Dodge, Iowa, and sent the pig to Olson, naming it Floyd of Rosedale for Olson and the farm. Olson then commissioned a trophy to be given annually to the winner of the game, because a 98-pound trophy is easier to move than a several-hundred-pound pig.
Governor Clyde Herring of Iowa (left)
and Governor Floyd Olson of Minnesota,
with the original Floyd of Rosedale, 1935
Iowa has won the last 2 games, and 12 of the last 16, but still trails the overall rivalry, 62-46-2. Since the trophy (counting the original pig) was first awarded in 1934, Minnesota's lead is much slimmer, 42-38.
Iowa also plays Wisconsin for the Heartland Trophy, which is topped not by a bronze pig, but by a brass bull. The Hawkeyes trail this rivalry, 45-43-2.
Aside from the Hawkeyes, Iowa State have a rivalry with one other school, Big 12 opponents Kansas State. They call it "Farmageddon," and they've met every season since 1917. The rivalry is close: ISU leads it 49-47-4. But it's getting closer: KSU has won it 9 straight times, and they'll host this year's game, too.
(UPDATE: Through the 2019 season, the Hawkeyes now lead the Cyclones 46-22, but trail Minnesota 62-50-2, trail Wisconsin 48-44-2, and trail Nebraska 29-19-3. The Cyclones lead Kansas State 51-49-4.)
Stuff. Neither Kinnick Stadium nor Trice Stadium has a big team store. If you want to get school memorabilia, your best bet is to go to each school's bookstore. The Iowa Hawk Shop is at the Iowa Memorial Union, at 125 N. Madison Street in Iowa City. The Iowa State University Book Store (they spell it as 2 words) is at 2229 Lincoln Way in Ames.
There is a definitive book about each school's program, although the Hawkeyes' version could use an update. In 2006, the Cedar Rapids Gazette published Greatest Moments in Iowa Hawkeyes Football History. Earlier this year, Ryan Sloth published Iowa State Cyclones Football A to Z.
There is a DVD produced in 2007 titled Legends of the Iowa Hawkeyes, but no similar video for Iowa State.
During the Game. If you act like a guest who respects your host's house, your safety will not be an issue in either Iowa City or Ames.
One thing I like about Iowa is that their uniforms resemble those of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and while the Steelers changed the font of their numbers in 1996, the Hawkeyes kept theirs, making them look more like the old Steel Curtain than the current Steeler squad does.
The Iowa players enter the field to "Back In Black" by AC/DC, and then the band will play "The Iowa Fight Song." Then they play a part of the recording of Nile Kinnick's Heisman Trophy acceptance speech, before moving on to the National Anthem and the Alma Mater:
I thank God that I was born to the gridirons of the Middle West, and not to the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the football players of this country would rather fight for the Heisman Trophy than for the Croix de Guerre.
(Kinnick, of course, went on to enlist before Pearl Harbor anyway.)
The Hawkeye Marching Band is led by 2 prestigious positions: The Drum Major, and the Golden Girl, 1 of only 2 full-tuition scholarships in the country available to baton twirlers. The Golden Girl is so prestigious, 3 of them have gone on to be Miss Iowa, and 1 of them Miss Indiana, in the Miss America Pageant.
The Golden Girl is nearly always a blonde,
although the costume is sometimes more black than yellow.
Iowa is the Hawkeye State, a name attributed to the 1830s Sauk leader, Chief Black Hawk, whose name is also the origin of that of the Chicago hockey team. "Hawkeye" was also the nickname of Natty Bumppo, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. (Which also gave Benjamin Franklin Pierce of M*A*S*H his nickname.) An early Iowa newspaper called the local troops fighting in the Black Hawk War "Hawkeyes," and as with the attribution of "Blue Hens" to Delaware and "Tar Heels" to North Carolina during the American Revolution, the name stuck.
Thus, Iowa's mascot is Herky the Hawk, who has appeared in costumed form since 1948. When Hayden Fry arrived as head coach in 1979, he began using the "Tigerhawk" logo for Iowa's helmet design, and Herky was thus redesigned.
In 1895, Iowa suffered a lot of tornadoes, or cyclones. In September, Iowa Agricultural College, as ISU was then known, was calling their teams the Cardinals, after their school color, cardinal red. They went to Chicago and beat Northwestern 36-0, and the Chicago Tribune's headline was "Struck By a Cyclone: It comes from Iowa, and devastates Evanston town."
The team has been the Cyclones ever since. But how do you represent a cyclone/tornado as a mascot? Rather than answer that question, ISU went with their color, named the bird after cyclones, and created Cy the Cardinal.
Like Rutgers, Iowa State has a cannon that they fire off as the team takes the field before the game, at each half's kickoff, after every Iowa State kickoff, and after a home win. Also after a home win, a Victory Bell has been rung. It is in the stadium's north end, and was at their previous stadium, Clyde Williams Field. Like the Hawkeyes, their fight song has a very generic title, "The Iowa State Fight Song."
UPDATE: After I posted this, a "new tradition" was added to Hawkeyes games: The Iowa Wave. Their fans turn to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital, facing Kinnick Stadium, at the end of the 1st quarter, to wave up to the kids receiving treatment at the hospital.
After the Game. There's not much to eat around Trice Stadium. You may have to go back to downtown Ames. There isn't much more around Kinnick Stadium, although a restaurant named Stella is at 1006 Melrose Avenue, just outside the stadium's southwest corner. Again, for a variety of choices, you'll have to go downtown, back across the Iowa River.
The Hamburg Inn #2 is a diner, said to be "legendary" and to have great, well, hamburgers. 214 N. Linn Street, downtown. However, not only has the famed Tuck's Place, 2 doors down at 210 N. Linn, closed for good, but so has its replacement, I.C. Ugly's.
The leading bar showing European soccer in Iowa is Donnelly's Pub, at 110 E. College Street, in Iowa City.
Sidelights. Carver-Hawkeye Arena is at 1 Elliot Drive, about a 5-minute walk northwest of Kinnick Stadium. Since 1983, it has been home to Iowa basketball, but, more importantly, has been home to Iowa wrestling, which has been so successful, it makes John Wooden's UCLA basketball dynasty look like Rutgers football.
From 1975 to 2010, they won 23 National Championships. This included 9 straight from 1978 to 1986, under coach Dan Gable, himself once the greatest wrestler -- and I mean real wrestling -- in American history, including a Gold Medal at the 1972 Olympics. Oddly, his only loss was in his last collegiate match, denying him 4 straight individual National Championships. Even more ironically, he wrestled at... Iowa State. And it was Iowa State that denied Iowa the 10th straight title in 1987. That was their 8th National Championship, including the 1969, '70 and '72 titles that Gable helped them win, but they have never won another.
Carver-Hawkeye Arena on a rainy day
Previously, Iowa used the Iowa Field House for basketball, wrestling, and other indoor sports. Their basketball team reached what we would now call the Final Four in 1955, 1956 and 1980. At Grand Avenue and Hospital Drive, separated from Kinnick Stadium by the University of Iowa Hospital.
Iowa State played football at Clyde Williams Field from 1914 to 1974. With the opening of the new stadium, it was demolished in 1978, and Martin and Eaton Residence Halls were built on the site. 135 Beyer Court, off the intersection of Lincoln Way and Sheldon Avenue.
Their home is the 11,500-seat Principal Park, in Des Moines, where the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers meet. The address is 1 Line Drive, at SW 2nd Street. The previous ballpark on the site, Sec Taylor Stadium, stood from 1947 to 1991. It was home to the Western League's Des Moines Bruins, the Three-I League's (Illinois-Indiana-Iowa) Des Moines Demons (Pennant winners in 1954 and 1955), and the American Association's Iowa Oaks, a White Sox farm team, before they switched Chicago teams in 1981. Just 3 blocks away is Iowa's foremost museum, the Science Center of Iowa, at 401 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway.
There is an independent team, the Sioux City Explorers, in the new version of the American Association. And there are 4 teams in the Class A Midwest League: The Burlington Bees, the Cedar Rapids Kernels, the Clinton LumberKings, and the Quad Cities River Bandits. The Bandits are famed for their ballpark, now named Modern Woodmen Park, next to the Centennial Bridge, connecting their city of Davenport, Iowa to Rock Island, Illinois. Under its previous name of John O'Donnell Stadium, the stadium got hit with the Great Flood of 1993, much worse than the Des Moines park did.
Iowa City is 223 miles from Chicago, 260 from St. Louis, 302 from Minneapolis, and 306 from Kansas City. According to a recent survey, 36 percent of people in the area are Cub fans, 16 percent St. Louis Cardinal fans, 9 percent White Sox fans, and the Twins and Royals don't register. Not surprisingly, the most popular teams in the other leagues are also the closest, the Chicago teams: The Bears in the NFL, the Bulls in the NBA, the Blackhawks in the NHL, and the Fire in MLS.
Iowa's greatest sports legends are the aforementioned Nile Kinnick and Jack Trice, and Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller. However, since Kinnick was lost at sea and never recovered, he has no official final resting place. And because Trice was from a town outside Cleveland, and Feller pitched his whole career in Cleveland, they're both buried in cemeteries near that city, not in Iowa.
The Beatles never performed live in Iowa, but Elvis did. In addition to his concert at Iowa State in 1976, he sang at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines on May 22, 1956; June 20, 1974; and June 23, 1977, on his last tour. 833 5th Avenue. The Wells Fargo Arena, home of the Iowa Wild, farm team of the Minnesota Wild, is across the street, at 733 3rd Street.
He also sang at the Municipal Auditorium in Sioux City on May 23, 1956. It is now known as the Long Lines Family Recreation Center (not an encouraging name), and stands at 401 Gordon Drive, on the Missouri River, across from South Sioux City, Nebraska.
Iowa has produced a President, but he was one of the least successful: Herbert Hoover. He was born at West Branch in 1874, and lived there until he was 11, when, orphaned, he was taken in by an uncle in Oregon.
Though he never lived in Iowa again, and lived on the Stanford University campus and in Washington, D.C. most of his pre-Presidency adult life, and at the Waldorf Towers in New York after his disastrous Presidency (1929-33), he decided to build his Presidential Library and Museum, and to be buried, at his birthplace. 210 Parkside Drive in West Branch, about 10 miles east of downtown Iowa City. Not accessible by public transportation.
The tallest building in the State of Iowa is the Principal Building, built in 1991 and standing 630 feet (the same height as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis), in downtown Des Moines at 801 Grand Street.
The only remotely successful TV show to be set in Iowa is American Pickers. No, the Hooterville shows -- CBS' rural 1960s sitcoms Petticoat Junction and Green Acres -- were not set in Iowa. Though there were hints that Hooterville was near Chicago and Omaha (which would make Iowa the best candidate), the lack of consistency in 20th Century TV shows meant that the location was all over the place, and other hints suggest it was in either Kentucky or North Carolina.
By far the most famous movie set or filmed in Iowa is the baseball fantasy Field of Dreams, based on W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe. The actual farm where it was filmed is in Iowa, in Dyersville, at 28995 Lansing Road.
It is 24 miles west of the nearest city of note, Dubuque; 77 miles northeast of Kinnick Stadium; 170 miles northeast of Des Moines; 200 miles northwest of Chicago. In fact, Milwaukee is slightly closer than Chicago, making it the closest major league city. "People will come," it was said, and they do, but it's by car: No public transit is available.
Other films set in Iowa include State Fair (2 versions, 1933 and 1945), The Pajama Game, The Music Man, Elvis' movies Double Trouble and The Trouble With Girls, Cold Turkey, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and the film version of Robert James Waller's novel The Bridges of Madison County.
Twister was set in Oklahoma, and the film version of Stephen King's Children of the Corn was set in Nebraska, but both were filmed in Iowa, which does have a lot of tornadoes and corn.
Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk was said by series creator Gene Roddenberry to have been born on March 22, 2233, in Riverside, Iowa, population just under 1,000. The town has accepted and promoted this, and has set up a "Future Birthplace" on 1st Street, between Washburn and Glasgow. It's about 14 miles south of Iowa City, but, again, forget about taking public transport. Maybe Scotty can beam you there.
No Trek TV show or movie depicted Kirk's Iowa hometown until the 2009 J.J. Abrams abomination. This movie was so bad! (How bad was it?) It was so bad, it seemed to suggest that the Grand Canyon was in Iowa. Note to Abrams: Not only is Iowa prairie, not desert and mountains, but the Grand Canyon is in Arizona, you idiot! And there's no way the starship USS Enterprise would have been built there, or anywhere on the ground. It was built in space, at the San Francisco Yards, in synchronous orbit over the Earth, over San Francisco, where Starfleet Headquarters and Starfleet Academy are. (Within the lore of the real show and films, of course.)
Another notable fictional character from Iowa, from Ottumwa in the southeastern corner of the State, was Corporal Walter Eugene O'Reilly, a.k.a. "Radar," the company clerk at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War. Gary Burghoff was the only actor from the film version of M*A*S*H (1970) to also play the role on TV (doing so from 1972 to 1979).
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Iowa has no major league sports, and just the 1 Triple-A (or other-sports equivalent) team. And Iowa's and Iowa State's basketball and wrestling teams just aren't as big. College football is it in Iowa, and what an "it" it is.
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