IOWA CITY, IOWA — Iowa Nice. After spending parts of Friday inside Kinnick Stadium, walking the massive and bucolic University of Iowa riverside campus, and hanging out downtown, that’s my biggest takeaway in advance of Saturday’s 6 p.m. local/7 p.m. Eastern game between the Hawkeyes and the Nittany Lions.
Forgot to feed the parking meter two blocks from campus? Got a ticket…for $0.00. Nice.
Headed to the middle of the field inside Kinnick Stadium mid-morning? A facility guy drives his cart over…not to yell at us (we have press passes), but to welcome us and give a bit of the lowdown. Nice guy.
“Us,” BTW,” are my traveling partners, Nolan Collery and Jack Rachinsky, who are calling the game between unranked and disappointed Penn State (3-3, 0-2 B10) and unranked and this-is-who-we-are Iowa (4-2, 2-1) for Penn State student radio station CommRadio. (Listen to their live call of the game on Saturday here.)
Taking a look at Iowa’s journ school and comm departments? Tatum, a film major from Minneapolis, walks over and offers to give a tour of the building and its studios. Couldn’t be nicer.
Grabbing lunch at The Airliner, voted the best college bar/restaurant in America, recommended by our new pal Greg Morris — Iowa football’s equipment manager of 44 years? Then getting a free order of chicken wings from our server, Angelina, a comm senior from Chicago. Hmmm, nice and tasty.
And, best of all, walking through the bowels of Kinnick, and getting a smiling “hi” from Greg, an Iowa legend, who recently retired after running after a key piece of the behind-the-scenes football show for Hawkeye head coaches, the late Hayden Fry and current boss Kirk Ferentz? What an incredibly nice streak of good luck.
That quick, friendly gesture turned into a 20-minute history lesson on Iowa football and a personal tour from Greg of Iowa’s infamous pink visiting locker room, implemented in 1979 by Fry, a Hawkeye icon to soothe and maybe fluster opponents who travel to Kinnick. The pink urinals? Hilariously nice.
“Those are the only two head coaches I ever worked for,” said Morris, an Iowa native who came to the university in 1979 and never left. “As great as they were as coaches, they were and are even better people. They have changed the University of Iowa, especially Hayden, though Kirk is more like Hayden than he’ll admit. Hayden created the Hawkeye logo and challenged the entire university to get better. And it did. I recently talked with the retired head of the English department, and he said that because of Hayden, education at the University of Iowa is much better.”
Morris spoke with justifiable and understated pride of a former Iowa football manager, who wanted to quit college with one semester to go. “I told him, ‘If you quit when you’re 22, you’ll quit when you’re 44 and you’ll quit when you’re 66,” Morris said. The manager stayed, completed his final dozen credits, and got his Iowa degree in industrial engineering. Decades later, that manager — Michael Fiddelke, Iowa Class of 1999 — will be the next CEO for Target. Nice job. “That’s what it’s all about,” said Morris.
Morris is Iowa football and Iowa City. He knows that Ferentz is the longest-tenured head coach at any FBS school (27 years) and is a Pittsburgh guy. And Morris knows that Ferentz knows another Pittsburgh guy, Terry Smith, Penn State’s interim head coach.
“I hear Terry is a good guy,” Morris said. It takes one to know one.
Morris still works part-time for Iowa athletics; on Saturday inside Kinnick, he’ll help the Penn State equipment crew. He also works at The Airliner on South Clinton Street (Iowa’s version of College Ave.), which separates downtown Iowa City and campus. His lunchtime pick was spot-on, and our server said that Greg “does whatever has to be done for anyone, and he helps out everybody.”
Iowa Nice.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT THE GAME
Tatum, our journ department tour guide: “What I’m hearing from all my friends is that Penn State is going to obliterate us.”
The guy at the next table at the outside cafe at St. Burch Tavern, where we stopped for a mid-afternoon cold drink a block from campus: “Who do I think is going to win? Well, I’m an Iowa alum and my son goes here. A 12-12 tie.”
The waiter at St. Burch, a University of Iowa senior who next semester is headed to Wisconsin for grad school (Iowa won 37-0 at Wisconsin last week): “Iowa will win. We have a head coach. And we didn’t lose to UCLA. It’ll be a classic Big Ten smash-up.”
The two women students at the cash register at the Iowa Book Store: No. 1: “I don’t think Iowa is going to win.” No. 2: “Do you want me to be real with you? I agree with her.”
From The Daily Iowan Pregame tabloid, where all seven of their writers and advisors picked Iowa to beat Penn State: The toughest one-liner? “I love when the circus comes to town.” The rest of the commentary:
