VIDEO: A Walk Down Iowa-Minnesota Memory Lane

In order to leave the stadium, I had to step over it because they dropped it in the concourse. I still laugh about the fact that the St. Cloud St game that night had to get moved because the couldn’t get it fixed in time.

It’s a shame his knee went twice. That guy was just incredible when healthy.

He came in the same year I started. One day, while I was still working in a drug store during weekends in high school, my Nebraska fan boss came running at me, screaming how he couldn’t believe Iowa had poached that Lewis kid away from Nebraska. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Got this one yesterday. (My new avi.)

that I only watched two Iowa games all season; the loss to ISU (seen largely in uneven chunks at a hotel bar) scheduled during my cousin’s wedding reception and the loss to USC which I witnessed in person.

I had to work on weekends that season and I remember my routine vividly now that I stopped and thought about it. I was a manager at Borders and I had brought three radios to work; 1 was in our stock room, 1 was in the cafe kitchen and 1 was in our back office. I would tune all 3 to 600 AM,WMT and then turn them way up to try and hear through the static (this was in Wheaton, IL after all). I would then make my “rounds” through the store at a furious pace so as to try and catch the next play/series as quickly as possible, making each radio a sort of check point. Getting in my way between points A & B was not a clinic in customer service “yeah, uh, your CD is over there somewhere berightback!”

 I remember the Penn State game was especially stressful in this regard as every time I arrived at a different radio the news got worse and worse. When we finally pulled that one out I emerged from the stock room and shouted “woooooooo! Iowa number 1, Rose Bowl baby!”. It was genuine if slightly premature exuberance that alarmed more than a few of our patrons (the stock room did open into the test prep section, after all) and amused my bookish and sports-illiterate colleagues. The phrase kind of became a rallying cry that I would announce at some point in the store every Saturday thereafter. By the end of the season, my coworkers were vicarious Iowa fans, sharing in my excitement if not my actual understanding of what was happening. I remember they all gave me a round of applause when they found out that I was heading down to the Orange Bowl.

I have no idea how I’d forgotten all of that.

I think I will use that as my new signature line.

Come on, Kyle. You know you want to be a closet Penn State fan. C’mon. Join us. Don’t fear.

That was the year we had 3 years between Minny and the orange bowl, right? That was just too long of a layoff. Bowl prep might also have been too lax (as suggested by the later policy revisions), but I think it was going to be tough to keep the team focused for that long. And then they went up against a magnificent Pete Carroll strategy to wear out the defense (end around, end around, end around, bomb to mike williams) that neutralized Iowa’s strengths.

My two bowl games have been the 91 Holiday Bowl and the 2003 Orange Bowl. The Holiday Bowl notable for Leroy Smith’s injury midway into the game and scott plate’s (?) miraculous interception to salvage a tie against BYU. And the rest of my family was at the 86 Rose Bowl (I was 8, and stayed with some relatives). It’s all sort of soured me on going to bowl games.

Kidding. That’s a hell of a game to pick for you first game. My wife (girlfriend at the time) got us season student tickets to that season since she was in her last year at Iowa. Went to all the home games and also to the game in Ann Arbor to witness the Michigan beatdown. Some really awesome memories from that year. Purdue game was so much fun.

Only want to play for the flashy uniforms

but he was absolutely robbed in 2003. He would have been the only two-time winner other than Janikowski. Plus, he was the only Groza winner with a TD run (fake FG versus OSU earlier in 2003).

They stalled inside the 10 in 99 in the last minute, lost a late lead in 00, crapped out in 06 and 10. Won in 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 07, 08, 09.

Wasn’t a huge Chandler fan – he was awful at Michigan State and his overthrow of a completely wide open Ochoa at Purdue doomed us that night – but he was strangely effective. He was basically a tank on scrambles.

Look at his stat line from the Wisconsin game a week after the Minnesota game – he had 3 turnovers, averaged 2.5 yards per completion (!), and yet he threw a TD, had some big scrambles, and Iowa won. The only game I think of where a QB played a similarly awful game and Iowa managed to win would be Jake’s 2007 game against Michigan State.

One of my fondest memories of playing in the Pep Band is you getting all riled up after a bad call. We sometimes worried you’d storm the court and beat the refs to death with your clarinet in a gory and harrowing scene.

To be honest, I sometimes wished that fate upon Ed Hightower.