It is impossible to measure the impact Hayden Fry had on not just Hawkeye Football and its fans, the entire state of Iowa, and the sport of college football.
No coaches have the awe-striking tree of successful former assistants who were miracle workers for their own woebegone programs — Snyder, Alvarez, Stoops, McCarney, oh my — and none had a popular lead TV sitcom character named after them (Craig T. Nelson’s Hayden Fox in “Coach).
Tributes galore have poured for the icon, who on Tuesday night died at the age of 90 after a 21-year bout with cancer, which forced him to retire in 1998 after a transformational 20 years at Iowa’s helm, which included three Big Ten titles, three Rose Bowls, thousands of uplifted souls, and a colorful legacy well beyond the gridiron.
And even beyond Iowa’s borders.
I grew up across the border in Omaha bleeding Husker red, and naturally rather proud of Nebraska’s five national titles — three of them in four of my formidable teenage years of fandom in the 1990’s. Like many in the Cornhusker state, I bowed at the alter of Tom Osborne.
During that time, Fry and the neighboring Hawkeyes were a bit of an afterthought, somewhat because Iowa failed to achieve the roll-out-of-bed-and-win-9 games routine the way Nebraska did, and partly because they played in a different conference, which felt like another galaxy.
Before the Big Red joined the Big Ten and Iowa beating NU became an annual Black Friday tradition as it sadly is right now, part of poking fun at Iowa’s pride in hanging bowl game banners and having four fewer national titles than Nebraska was how celebrated Fry was — and his replacement Kirk Ferentz is — for merely posting winning seasons and the occasional major bowl appearance.
And then I moved into Hawkeye territory and actually even, gasp, befriended Iowa fans. And now my favorite team has experienced four depressing losing seasons the last five years and three coaches in the last six. Now, I get it.
It stinks to stink. And having a coach who leads you to smelling roses and makes damn sure you don’t get near that stench again is worth celebrating, and appreciating.
Turns out, although he coached in the Osborne era, Fry is somewhat a kindred spirit of Nebraska’s other iconic football coach, Bob Devaney, whose near-instant turning of Husker fortunes in 1962 led to a 40-year-old like me being born into consistent football success in December of 1978, a week before Fry came swashbuckling in from Texas to take over the Hawkeyes.
Like Devaney, the program Fry inherited had been a sad sack for nearly 20 years, with 17 consecutive nonwinning seasons and half-empty stadiums and cycles of several beaten-down coaches. Like Devaney, Fry was not a native son and bounded in with far more flare than the plain-speaking plains people were accustomed from a football coach.
Like Devaney, Fry used that charm to immediately connect with recruits and fans. He made them smile, made them laugh, made them optimistic.
Like Devaney, Fry made football fun. As gruff and tough as both of their exteriors showed on the sidelines and at practices, inside were free spirits, and inside the locker rooms after big wins was the genuine glee and affection only players who love their coaches show. Husker players would drag Devaney, in his full suit, into the showers, and turned them on for a victory shower. Fry had his gang sang and dance to the “Hokey Pokey.”
He thought outside the box before thinking outside the box was cool, former Iowa State head coach and Fry assistant Dan McCarney said on KXNO Radio in Des Moines on Wednesday.
Like Devaney, Fry was a master marketer. He changed the Hawkeyes’ colors to black and gold to model the Pittsburgh Steelers, the NFL powerhouse at the time, and their logo to the “Tigerhawk,” a symbol of power.
If anyone laughed about the new brand, the laughs stopped and the colors and symbol worn with pride when Fry led Iowa to a Co-Big Ten title in his third season in 1981. It was a nonconference win in the Sept. 12 season opener at Kinnick Stadium when Hawkeye fans of a certain age I know became Fry fanatics:
Iowa 10, Nebraska 7. The Huskers were rated No. 7 and would go on to play for the national championship. The Hawks went to their first Rose Bowl since 1959.
Hawks fans in Western Iowa especially enjoyed that win over NU. Having been relegated to watching local TV news from stations in Omaha every day and night of their lives, all they saw and heard about was Huskers, Huskers, Huskers. Which usually meant winning, winning, winning.
For a day, Iowa shut the Big Red down, and shut NU’s Western Iowa fans up.
Fry shared a special gift with his adversary that day — Devaney’s heir apparent Tom Osborne: An educational psychology degree. They both utilized it brilliantly while recruiting and inspiring their players, but Fry took it a step further by famously having the opponents’ locker room at Kinnick Stadium pink to put the other team in a perhaps lighter, weaker state of mind.
In 1985, another Iowa trip to the Rose Bowl, a season which included a No. 1 ranking for five weeks. During that time, Fry connected with fans the way a native son in Nebraska like Osborne would. In the midst of the droughts and farm crisis of the 80’s, Fry had his players wear a decal on their helmets — ANF, which stood for “America Needs Farmers.”
Fry retired after a 3-8 season in 1998 — the year after Osborne stepped down — having never captured the national titles and frequent national relevance Devaney did.
But just as well and far more importantly, he captured the hearts and confidence of an entire state.
Before those two outsiders swaggered into town, the thing their states were best known for was corn, and their football was futile.
It didn’t take long for both of them to turn football — winning football — into a sense of identity, source of pride, and way of life.
For that, Husker and Hawkeye fans alike should tip their cowboy hats to Hayden Fry.
Des Moines sports radio host and Hawkeye postgame host Travis Justice helped with this column via my interview with him about Fry. Click here to hear the podcast. You’ll enjoy it whether you wear scarlet and cream or black and gold.
