Some moments are designed for pure bliss, so grand and undisputedly spectacular a snapshot of existence that analysis and debate are futile, instead giving way to celebration and unanimous acknowledgement of a job well done or life well lived. Anything involving legendary University of Iowa football Coach Hayden Fry should be one of those "sheer joy" moments. After all, the sharp-witted Texan with the pencil mustache and coaching tree that breaches generations carved an indelible legacy in his near-20 year career at the Hawkeye helm, winning three Big Ten titles, establishing numerous traditions, and, most importantly, resurrecting a previously moribund program which saw infant Iowans morph into adults without ever witnessing a winning season from the team that perpetually captivates a state without a major professional sports franchise.
Fry, named head coach in 1979, revamped an entire culture, recruited NFL-caliber talent to that OTHER state in the corn belt, challenged the one-two hierarchy of OSU/Michigan dominance, and reached prestigious bowl games year-after-year with 8-10 win seasons when most thought it couldn't be done at Iowa. As a fan of Hawkeye football, his accomplishments cannot be overstated — although Ferentz has taken Iowa to new heights, Fry laid the foundation to make sure sure the Kinnick faithful didn't enter the new century feeling like Gophers or Hoosiers.
So nobody's mouth creaked open in surprise this week as rumblings emerged suggesting not only that 82-year-old Coach Fry will be present this Friday the 5th of August in Iowa City as the Kirk Ferentz-led Hawkeyes kick off the 2011 season with fall practice, but also that a statue honoring the Hall of Famer will be unveiled along with the first ground broken toward a new indoor practice facility (speculation courtesy of The Cedar Rapids Gazette's Marc Morehouse). It's a blatant insult to the phrase "no-brainer" to argue that Fry deserves to be ensconced in the familiar saintly bronze of remembrance, somehow the most fitting tribute to all our sporting legends as they shift from lifetime scrutiny to public worship. But if the moment is so special because it's so simple, then why can't I stop thinking about a time that only my Grandfather can still recall with hazy movie reel memory, a time when Vietnam wasn't in the textbooks, Big Ass Turkey Legs would have inspired frowns, and Ol' Forest Evashevski still scowled his way down the sidelines of Kinnick Stadium?
For those who weren't alive at the time — this should cover all Internet users — Evashevski was Iowa's Hayden Fry before the Hawkeyes needed Fry as a savior. Evy was the Hawkeye coach from 1952-60, winning three Big Ten titles, two Rose Bowls, and Iowa's lone claimed national championship in 1959. But my rather benign concerns don't stem from his unprecedented success, a comparison of his legacy with Fry's, or whether or not the Iowa administration should build a statue in his honor (they should). My interest is in what could have been if Evy, who died in 2009, hadn't left coaching so soon.
After a difficult 5-4 season in 1959 highlighted by a spat with athletic director Paul Brechler, it became clear that the arrogant Evy, a quintessential mad genius, wanted to have the AD's job as well as be the head coach. The Board of Athletics gave him a choice instead — Evy, reportedly citing health concerns to his wife, chose the AD job. So after a 1960 season that saw Evy win the Hawkeyes' lone Big Ten title for more than two decades, he took over as AD, and set in place a punchline-worthy streak of losing that stretched until the Messiah from Odessa arrived in Iowa City 19 years later.
Evy's 10-year tenure as athletic director was an unabashed lesson in failure, from his head coaching hires to alleged off-the-field schemes to undermine those same men, boost his own ego, and, some say, gather player approval to his side for an assumed return to the role of head coach. The charges against Evy paint a man blinded by power, choked with chutzpah, and who was startlingly ambitious, with back room politics and tactics that would garner a very public NCAA investigation in the modern college football landscape.
It's a story Hawkeye historians don't often cite, choosing instead to remember the Rose Bowl championships, but one that becomes uglier the more one peels back the layers — starting with his reported strong-arming of Jerry Burns, his first hire and former assistant, by denying him basic recruiting necessities and reducing the football budget down to the bare minimum. Without the resources, Burns didn't have a chance. After one barely-winning season, Burns faltered for the next four and received his pink slip — word had seeped out from Kinnick's brick walls, however, that Evy's Draconian leadership was impossible to work under, and the Hawkeyes were on the fast track to becoming a coaching graveyard with as much relevance as their cardinal-colored neighbors to the west. After Burns was fired, the Iowa job had lost its last shard of luster and Evy was forced to hire ho-hum Ray Nagel from the University of Utah after multiple candidates refused the job. The relationship between coach and AD, which can crudely be described as an ego-fueled, adolescent dick-measuring contest enacted by grown men, only got worse with Nagel. Evy allegedly tried to instigate a player rebellion by tapping one of the star player's roommates, causing two players to quit the team in protest of Nagel, and sparks practically flew from both men's tongues after Nagel's offensive line coach was supposedly dismissed for "disloyalty." In addition, authorities accused the Iowa program of filling out "padded expense accounts," inciting a back-and-forth battle of words between the two men where Nagel accused Evy of showing him how to fill out the accounts, implying that Evy WANTED Nagel to get in trouble. Evy was relieved of his duties by the Board of Directors, earned a harsh letter from the State Attorney General in the process, and, just like that, the man responsible for Iowa's only national championship was gone for good.
With bruises still fresh, Iowa football didn't instantaneously emerge from the darkness of Evy's AD tenure with a new beginning — in fact, under new AD Bump Elliot, the Hawkeyes were arguably worse in the 1970s. Frank Lauterbur amassed a Gene Chizik-esque 4 wins in three seasons, while chain-smoking, porn star resembling Bob Commings showed flashes of raising up his alma mater again, but could never get over that elusive 5-win plateau. It wasn't until Fry arrived from North Texas in '79 that the winds began to shift, and Iowa finally returned to the Rose Bowl in 1981. From then on, it's history, or at least consistent top-25 success with a shot at the Big Ten every 2-3 years.
But I can't help but feel a bit sad, inasmuch as sport can make a person sad, or maybe it's curious, when I think about what could have been Evashevski had remained coach and curtailed his power-hungry cravings. What if the University of Iowa never needed Hayden Fry, the hokey quote machine with thick southern drawl, rose-tinted aviators, tongue razor sharp and confident like an armadillo on the back roads of Texas just before it meets the wheel of an F-150? Fry, the man who gave the Hawkeyes the Swarm, the Tiger Hawk, the pink locker room, traditions that children grew up with already implanted in their vernacular as if they had existed forever. Fry is intrinsically connected with the University's identity, and always will be, despite never winning a Rose Bowl or National Championship — he returned pride and winning to the Hawkeyes when it seemed like such a thing could never be accomplished, the program too damaged, with too many geographical obstacles to overcome. He would be a legend in any coaching circle for the championships he won, the great coaches he produced (if you don't know the Hayden Fry coaching tree, then you don't know football), the cat-and-mouse game he played with the media setting the precedent for how every coach interacts with journalists today, the "exotic," innovative plays he introduced. But at Iowa, he is more than a legend — he was, indeed, a savior.
And I just can't help but wonder if Hawkeye fans would have missed that entire experience if Evashevski had coached another 5-10 years, preserving Iowa's lofty reputation into the future, or shoved his ambition and arrogance to the sidelines, allowing his successors to coach as athletic director. Some truth exists to the statement that we wouldn't know how to appreciate the good times if we didn't experience suffering — that all those hopeless losing years, when still-packed Kinnick crowds would cheer for 1st downs like it was the Panchero's Burrito Lift (sadly, a tradition Fry did not introduce), helped heroize Iowa's rise and frame Fry's legend after he took over, to show it WAS possible to win in the Hawkeye State. Iowans wouldn't know how meaningful and fun winning could be, sucking the marrow from each minor victory as they do today, if they hadn't experienced the losing too.
But what if Iowa had ridden the coattails of that '59 Rose Bowl win, becoming an established powerhouse program on par with, dare I say it, Nebraska, a program that obnoxiously brandishes its sterling national championship history as proof that sustained excellence is possible in a cold, homogenous state that doesn't produce much homegrown talent? Maybe Iowa wouldn't have to thrive in the lovable underdog role they seem to so fearlessly embrace, the "bully's of the Big Ten" as so many have dubbed them — and they could have been one of the big boys. Or maybe the Evashevski era was like so many others in Iowa's storied tradition, full of cyclical ups-and-downs, bound to yield a losing period eventually as the difficult circumstances of recruiting to the state would have reared their ugly heads. Who knows. But I am confident that the Evy era flamed out well before it should have, and if it didn't, we never would have experienced the joy of watching a program rise from the ashes again and develop a modern identity right before our eyes. Although Iowa fans claim to embrace their trite, worn-down duty of upsetting the top programs but never seeing their name etched alongside them, deep down inside I know they'd like to be counted among the traditional powers. But it's important we remember that after Evy was disgraced and forced from the helm of the program he built, the Iowa Hawkeyes could have easily gone into the modern age downtrodden and forgotten from history's annals, irrelevant and historically terrible like those infamous little brother Cyclones. But Hayden Fry made sure that didn't happen.
So this week, as we presumably honor the man who set the bar high once again for Hawkeye football, let us not dwell on the heights Iowa could have reached, but on the deep lows that Fry made sure we never touched.
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