Here in Iowa City, there’s nothing quite as popular as Iowa Football.
Since 1889, the Hawkeyes have taken to the football field, and over these last 130+ years, there have been five football coaches who stand head-and-shoulders above all the others. On this page, allow us to introduce you to Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Forest “Evy” Evashevski, Hayden Fry, and Kirk Ferentz.
One owns the highest winning percentage in school history. Four won multiple Big Ten Conference championships and have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. One, of course, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame when he retires, yet there’s one, while he never won a conference title, or took the Hawks to a bowl game, did coach Iowa’s only Heisman Trophy winner, leading one of the Hawkeye’s most memorable teams. But, before we get to those stories, let’s go back to the very beginning…
On September 26, 1889, State University of Iowa (SUI) student – Martin Sampson – called a meeting on campus regarding the organization of a University football team, and it was this suggestion that earned Sampson the title of coach and captain of the new Hawkeye squad! In the following days, Iowa sent out a challenge to any team in the state of Iowa for a game of football. The one team to accept Iowa’s challenge was Iowa College in Grinnell. So, with the game date set for November 16, 1889 the preparations for the first collegiate football game played west of Mississippi River began.
Over the first three years of its existence (1889 to 1891), the Iowa Hawkeye football squad had no football coach, other than student leaders like Martin Sampson. But by 1892, things had changed. The game of football was growing in popularity, and it became quite obvious that if Iowa wanted to field a competitive squad, they would need a more qualified coach.
Over the next 24 years (1892-1916), Iowa had nine different football coaches, with only three (Alfred E. Bull, Alden Knipe, and Mark Catlin) leading the Hawkeyes to conference championships, and one (John Chalmers) pulling in a winning percentage of .750. More on these coaches a bit later.
In the meantime, in 1899, Iowa joined a new conference alliance: a fledgling league called The Western Conference – also known as The Big Nine. The alliance included nine prominent midwestern colleges: Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue, and Wisconsin. Michigan was tossed out of the league in 1907, replaced by Ohio State in 1912, and by 1916, the Wolverines were invited to rejoin the league – making the conference known, for the first time, as The Big Ten. It was that same year (1916) when Iowa’s new football coach started to make history…
Howard Jones was born on August 23, 1885 in Excello, Ohio. He played football for three seasons at Yale University (1905-1907). During his three years, the Yale Bulldogs never lost a game, going 28–0–2, claiming “mythical” national championships for all three seasons. After graduating in 1908, Jones became the head coach at Syracuse University, before returning to Yale as the head coach. He led Yale to a 10–0 record in 1909, a season in which Yale claims another “mythical” national championship. After the 1909 season, Jones served a one-year stint as head football coach at Ohio State University in 1910, leading the Buckeyes to a 6–1–3 record. Jones spent four of his next five years (1910-1915) in private business, returning only to coach Yale to a 5–2–3 record in 1913.
Reed Lane, a businessman on the Iowa Athletic Board, was a classmate of Jones when they both attended a Yale preparatory school. When Coach Jesse Hawley left SUI after the 1915 season, Iowa offered Jones a contract to become the Hawkeye’s 11th head football coach on the recommendation of Lane. Jones accepted a five-year contract at $4,500 annually, the longest commitment and most money ever offered to a coach at Iowa at the time.
Jones’ first two years were highlighted by a 67–0 loss to Minnesota in 1916 and a 47–0 loss to Nebraska in 1917. Jones vowed he would never lose by such scores again, and he did not. In 1918, Iowa defeated Minnesota for the first time in school history. It would be the first of five straight wins over the Golden Gophers for Jones, and three over Nebraska.
World War I altered the college football landscape, and eligibility rules were relaxed in the Big Ten Conference in 1918. When Iowa’s athletic director left to serve in the war, Jones was appointed to that position as well. In a scenario similar to the COVID-era (2020), Iowa’s game with Coe College in 1918 was played with no fans in the stands, as public officials feared the Spanish flu epidemic. In 1918 and 1919, Iowa fell just short of the Big Ten title, with losses to Illinois costing the Hawkeyes the crown in both seasons. In 1920, Iowa had the top two scorers in the Big Ten and finished with a 5–2 record. Still, Iowa had not won a conference title in 21 years.
All that changed in 1921, when Iowa finished with a perfect 7–0 record and won the Big Ten title outright. The most notable win of the season was a 10–7 triumph over Notre Dame. This was Jones’ first meeting with Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne, and the win snapped a 20-game winning streak for Rockne and the Fighting Irish, which would be the longest winning streak of Rockne’s career. It was this win – featuring the rugged play of Iowa superstar – Duke Slater – that gave the Hawkeyes their first “mythical” national championship (as there was no official poll for such an award back then).
One of the criticisms fans had of the previous Iowa coach, Jess Hawley, was that he could not convince talented Iowa players to play at SUI. Jones succeeded in that respect; the 1921 Hawkeyes started 11 native Iowans. Despite the graduation of many key players, Iowa again posted a perfect 7–0 record in 1922, going 5–0 in the Big Ten, and capturing its second straight conference crown. This is the only time in Iowa football history when the Hawkeyes have won two consecutive conference titles!
The most notable win of the 1922 season was a victory over Yale, then coached by Howard’s brother, Tad Jones, and it was the first time a “western” team had ever defeated Yale in New Haven! All said, Iowa’s winning streak from 1920–1923 under Jones lasted 20 games and almost three full years.
Sadly, Howard Jones’s wife was not fond of Iowa City, so, in 1923, Jones demanded a new contract, which would allow him to coach and live in Iowa City only during football season. A conflict between Jones and the chairman of the Athletics Board at Iowa contributed to the tension, and Jones eventually resigned as head coach and athletic director at Iowa. Jones went on to coach successfully at both Duke and Southern California, accumulating a career record of 194–64–21, and a .733 winning percentage over 28 seasons. Jones died in Toluca Lake, California on July 27, 1941, at age 55, and was posthumously honored as a member of the College Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class of inductees in 1951.
Iowa City historian – Irving Weber – wrote about Howard Jones in 1989 – read more here.
Homecoming 1922 was a very wet & memorable day in Iowa City. Read more here.
Dr. Eddie Anderson was born on November 11, 1900 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, attending Mason City High School, before enrolling at the University of Notre Dame. In South Bend, Anderson played for Knute Rockne (1918 -1921) and was a teammate of George (“win one for the Gipper”) Gipp. As a senior, Anderson was named a consensus first team All-American and was the team captain of the 1921 Notre Dame football team. In his final three years at Notre Dame, the Irish had a record of 28–1 with Anderson’s only loss coming in Iowa City in 1921 at the hands of Coach Howard Jones & Duke Slater’s Hawkeyes, 10–7.
After graduating from Notre Dame, Anderson coached at Columbia College in Dubuque (1922-1924), compiling a 16–6–1 record with one undefeated season. During that time, he was considered for an assistant coaching position at Iowa, but Iowa coach Howard Jones rejected the idea. Anderson went on to serve as a player/coach for the Chicago Cardinals professional football team in the early 1920’s as well. That same year, Anderson enrolled at Rush Medical College in Chicago and while there, he coached football at DePaul University, compiling a 21–22–3 record from 1925 to 1931. After graduating from Rush, Anderson took a job as head football coach at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, where he built a record of 47–7–4 in six years (1933-1938), including undefeated seasons in 1935 and 1937. During that time, Anderson also served as the head of eye, ear, nose, and throat clinic at Boston’s Veterans Hospital!
Dr. Eddie Anderson was hired as the 15th head football coach at Iowa before the 1939 season. The Hawkeyes had a dismal two-year record of 2–13–1 (1937-38) under Coach Irl Tubbs, and finished among the worst three teams in the Big Ten Conference standings every year in the 1930’s except 1933. Anderson sought to change Iowa’s fortunes immediately, putting the 85 football players who showed up for spring practice through an intense workout – with only 37 players proving tough enough to earn football letters in 1939.
That toughness earned the 1939 Hawkeyes the nickname “The Ironmen“, and Anderson’s squad would go on to become one of the greatest – and most romanticized – teams in school history. Led by Nile Kinnick – the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner – the Hawkeyes put together a 6–1–1 record, the best overall record in the Big Ten, though Ohio State edged out the Hawks for the conference title. At the end of the season, Anderson was named national coach of the year by several organizations, with Jim Gallager of the Chicago Herald-American writing, “It’s doubtful if any coach in football history ever accomplished such an amazing renaissance as Eddie Anderson has worked at Iowa.”
After two more average seasons (1940-1941), Iowa started the 1942 season with a 6–2 record and was in contention for the Big Ten title, but consecutive road conference losses at Minnesota and Michigan doomed Iowa’s chances. After that disappointing year, Anderson took a leave of absence to serve in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, returning to Iowa City after the war, coaching the Hawkeyes four more seasons (1946-1949). Sadly, Anderson was never able to recover the magic of the 1939 Ironmen season, so after two below-par seasons (1948-49), Anderson accepted a lucrative offer by Holy Cross, inviting him to return to Worcester, Massachusetts.
As we mentioned earlier, Dr. Anderson was a gifted doctor who also practiced medicine – on the side – at the SUI Hospital while coaching football. He had been studying urology under the Head of Urology at the hospital, and when Anderson returned to Iowa City in 1946, he was told that if he retired from coaching, he would be named the successor to Dr. Alcock. Anderson turned down the request and continued practicing medicine on a part-time basis.
After returning to Holy Cross, Anderson coached 15 more years (1950-1964), where he posted a record of 82–60–4. Throughout his career, the good doctor coached 39 seasons at four different schools and compiled a record of 201–128–15, becoming the fourth coach in college football history to reach 200 wins. After resigning at Holy Cross in 1964, Anderson was named the chief of outpatient services at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Rutland, Massachusetts, while also serving at a nearby school for mentally ill children. Anderson later moved to Clearwater, Florida, where died of a heart attack on April 24, 1974, at age 73.
Forest (Evy) Evasheski was born on February 18, 1918 in Detroit, Michigan. In grade school, he captained the basketball, baseball, soccer, and track teams, but at Northwestern High School in Detroit, he was not allowed on the football practice field in his sophomore or junior years because his football coaches felt that he was too small at just 128 pounds. As a senior, he had grown to 180 pounds and when his intramural football squad scrimmaged against the varsity football team, Evy led his team to an upset of the varsity squad. Soon after, his coaches invited him to join the senior team!
Eighteen months later, Evy enrolled at the University of Michigan where Coach Fritz Crisler wanted Evashevski on the field. Evy was moved from the center position to quarterback one week before his first varsity game, and in Crisler’s single-wing system, the quarterback position required mostly calling signals and blocking for the running back. Thus with Evy’s experience at blocking, combined with his intelligence of the game, he quickly became a star in Ann Arbor. He started at quarterback the entire year, and was an all-Big Ten Conference performer three straight seasons, playing from 1938 to 1940, and paving the way for halfback Tom Harmon, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1940.
The Wolverines were 20–4 from 1938 to 1940, with Crisler later calling Evashevski “the greatest quarterback I ever had.” Evy won the Big Ten Medal given to the school’s best senior student-athlete, was the baseball catcher, the senior class president, and an honor society member. Evy graduated with a sociology major and a psychology minor, and planned to take labor law at the University of Michigan Law School, but his plans were interrupted with the outbreak of World War II.
Evashevski coached Hamilton College to a 5–2 record in 1941 and served as an assistant coach for spring football at the University of Pittsburgh in 1942. Evy then enrolled at the Iowa Naval Pre-Flight School in Iowa City, teaching the students hand-to-hand combat and playing for the Pre-Flight Seahawks in 1942. After serving three years in the military (1943-1945), Evashevski returned to Ann Arbor with the plan to enroll at Michigan’s law school, but when offered an assistant coaching job at Syracuse (1946), he took it. One year later, Evy followed head coach Clarence Munn to Michigan State where he served as his assistant coach from 1947 to 1949. In 1950, Evashevski accepted a head coaching job in the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) at Washington State College in Pullman. There he compiled a 4–3–2 record (1950), and improved to 7–3 in 1951, the Cougars’ best record in two decades.
“People in the Midwest are my people and I wanted to be back among them…and, of course, I don’t have to tell you what I think of Big Ten football. It’s the best in the country.” With these words, Forest Evashevski left Washington State after the 1951 season to become the 19th head football coach at SUI. In 1952, Iowa football had only had three winning seasons in the previous 16 years, with no Big Ten Conference title for three decades. A United Press story named three football programs in 1952 with new coaches that would struggle to ever be competitive: Iowa, Indiana, and Pittsburgh. Iowa’s first two opponents in 1952 were Pittsburgh and Indiana, and Iowa lost to both, but Evashevski knew the Hawkeye program could be resurrected. When he came to Iowa, Evy was asked by a writer, “Do you think Iowa could ever really have a consistently winning team?” Evashevski snapped, “Why in the hell do you think I took the job?” Afterwards, a photographer noted, “I think that man truly believes he’s the savior of Iowa football.”
As it turned, the photographer was right. Over his nine years of coaching at Iowa, Evy accumulated an amazing 52-27-4 record, a .607 winning percentage, three Big Ten Conference championships (1956, 1958 & 1960), two Rose Bowl Championships (1957 & 1959), and one National Championship (1958). Read more here.
After retiring as Iowa’s most successful head football coach after the 1960 season, Evashevski took over as the SUI Athletic Director – a position he held until 1970. In all honesty, Evy was too proud and self-absorbed to share the limelight with the two head football coaches he hired to succeed him: Jerry Burns (1961) and Ray Nagel (1966). And when it was found out that Evy was interfering, behind the scenes, with Coach Nagel’s leadership, he was fired, leaving Iowa City as a disgraced hero. Over the the next decade, Iowa football struggled to survive, but when Coach Hayden Fry arrived in 1979, bringing success back to the program, many of the old wounds were healed, and Evy was restored by many into the iconic position he now holds in Iowa Football history. Forest Evashevski was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000, and passed away on October 30, 2009, age 91, in Petoskey, Michigan.
Hayden Fry was born in Eastland, Texas on February 28, 1929. Fry was descended from one of the Texas First Families; his great-great-grandfather fought beside General Sam Houston in the Texas War of Independence against Santa Anna in the battle of San Jacinto and in the Mexican War. Fry’s family moved to Odessa, Texas, when he was in third grade, and at age 14, Fry lost his father to a heart attack, and family friends observed that it was at that time when Fry transformed from being a shy child into the head of his household. At Odessa High School, Fry earned all-state honors as quarterback and led his team to the Texas state high school championship in 1946.
Fry went on to play at Baylor University (1947 -1950) and the Bears had a 26–13–2 record during Fry’s four years there. He graduated from Baylor with a degree in psychology in 1951 and became an American history teacher and assistant football coach at Odessa High School for a year (1951), before joining the U.S. Marine Corps (1952-1955). In 1955, Hayden returned to Odessa as a teacher and assistant football coach, and the following season, Fry took his first head coaching job. So, at age 26, Fry was coaching at the high school he had led to the state title less than 10 years earlier!
After the 1958 season, the new head football coach at Baylor hired Fry as an assistant coach. He spent two years at Baylor coaching defensive backs, and in 1961, Fry left Baylor to become an assistant coach at Arkansas under Frank Broyles. After one year at Arkansas, Southern Methodist University tabbed Hayden as their next head football coach for the 1962 season, where he won the conference coach of the year award in his first season. In 1963, SMU opened the season with a 27–16 loss to a Michigan team coached by Bump Elliott, Fry’s future boss at Iowa. At SMU, Fry compiled a 49–66–1 record in 11 seasons, including the school’s only three winning seasons since the late 1940’s. In 1973, Fry was hired as the coach and athletic director at North Texas State where he turned the football program around, compiling a 40–23–3 record over six seasons from 1973 to 1978.
Hayden Fry was hired as Iowa’s 24th head football coach after the 1978 season. Fry had never been to Iowa, but he knew and liked Bump Elliott, who, by this time, was the U of I Athletic Director. The Hawkeyes, at the time, had struggled through 17 straight non-winning seasons, but Fry was impressed at the fan support for a program that had struggled for so long. With his “scratch where it itches” mind-set, Fry immediately turned his attention to transforming a losing attitude in Iowa City into a winning one, beginning with a number of new traditions. First, he hired a marketing group to create the Tiger Hawk, a logo to represent the University of Iowa’s athletic programs, and since both the Hawkeyes & the Pittsburgh Steelers shared the same colors of Black and Gold, Fry gained permission from the pro team, the dominant NFL franchise of the time, to overhaul Iowa’s uniforms in the Steelers’ image.
Next, Fry had the team “swarm” onto the field together as they left the locker room, holding hands in a show of solidarity. He also had the visitors’ locker room painted pink. Fry, a psychology major at Baylor, knew that pink is occasionally used in jails and mental institutions to relax and pacify the residents, and Fry claimed that it might have the same effect on the visiting team. Principally, though, Fry hoped that the unusual color would distract and fluster the opposing players and coaches. Visiting Big 10 coaches, particularly Bo Schembechler of Michigan, would occasionally try to cover the pink walls with paper to shield their players from the color, but for the most part, Bo’s attempts were futile, especially on October 19, 1985 when #1 Iowa took on #2 Michigan in Kinnick Stadium. You can read the details here.
Hayden Fry coached two decades at Iowa, more than twice as long as any other coach before him. Fry had a 143–89–6 record in Iowa City, giving him the most wins in school history until he was passed by his successor – Kirk Ferentz – in 2018. Hayden led the Hawkeyes to 14 bowl games; three Big Ten titles (one outright, two shared), and three Rose Bowl appearances. Several of Fry’s former assistants, such as Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin and Bill Snyder at Kansas State, followed Fry’s example in resurrecting other struggling football programs. Hayden moved back to Texas after his retirement in December 1998, and, sadly, passed away on December 17, 2019 (age 90) in Dallas, Texas. Fryfest – an annual celebration of everything Hawkeye – was created in 2009 to honor the legacy of Coach Fry, and has now grown into a massive one-day gathering of Hawkeye fans scheduled the Friday before Iowa’s opening home football game. Read more here.
Kirk Ferentz was born in Royal Oak, Michigan on August 1, 1955. Ferentz played high school football at Upper St. Clair High School near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was a standout linebacker and fullback, playing under Joe Moore, eventual offensive line coach at Pitt and Notre Dame. In 1973, Ferentz committed to play football at the University of Connecticut, where he played four years as a football captain and an academic all-Yankee Conference linebacker.
Ferentz spent the 1978 and 1979 seasons as defensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Worcester Academy, working under head coach Ken O’Keefe. After Worcester, Ferentz spent the 1980 season as a graduate assistant at the University of Pittsburgh, assisting his high school coach, Joe Moore, with the offensive line. The 1980 Pittsburgh Panthers football team, coached by Jackie Sherrill, finished with an 11–1 record and a number two national ranking.
The next season, Ferentz joined Hayden Fry‘s staff at the University of Iowa, coaching the Hawkeyes’ offensive line. Here in Iowa City, Kirk worked under Fry and offensive coordinator Bill Snyder, and alongside assistant coaches Barry Alvarez, Dan McCarney, and Don Patterson. In 1981, Ferentz’s first season, the Hawkeyes achieved their first winning season since 1961 and their first Rose Bowl since 1958. In Ferentz’s time as an assistant at Iowa (1981-1989), the Hawkeyes would win the Big Ten again in 1985, holding the No. 1 national ranking for five weeks, and appear in eight bowl games, including two Rose Bowl appearances and two Holiday Bowl appearances.
From 1990 to 1998, Ferentz was the head football coach at the University of Maine, and was also an assistant coach with the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL), working some of those years alongside Coach Bill Belichick.
On December 2, 1998, Kirk Ferentz was hired as Iowa’s 25th head football coach to replace the retiring Hayden Fry. Fry, a legendary coach at Iowa, had been privately battling prostate cancer while his 1998 team had finished the season 3–8, with losses in each of their three rivalry games. Working with a depleted roster, Kirk’s teams struggled during his first two seasons with a combined 4–19 record, but after two years of rebuilding, the Hawkeyes earned their first bowl bid of the Ferentz era in the 2001 season, finishing the season 7–5 (4–4 in Big Ten play). The Hawkeyes beat Texas Tech in the Alamo Bowl, 19–16, in Ferentz’s first bowl game appearance. The 2002 season would prove to be memorable for Ferentz and the Hawkeyes as the team completed the regular season with an 11–1 record, finishing as co-conference champions with national champion Ohio State.
Ferentz notched his 100th career win at Iowa with a double-overtime victory over the Michigan State Spartans in East Lansing on October 13, 2012. He became the all-time wins leader in school history, (144) with a victory over Northern Illinois on September 1, 2018, and has led Iowa to 20 bowl games (as of 2023), more bowls than any other Iowa coach. Later that season, Ferentz recorded his 150th Iowa career win with a blowout triumph over Big Ten foe Illinois on November 17, 2018. When Joe Paterno was fired from Penn State in 2011, Ferentz became the dean of Big Ten football coaches, as the longest tenured coach in the respective sport. With the retirement of Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer after the 2015 season, Ferentz became tied with Bob Stoops for the longest tenured head coach at the FBS level, but with the sudden retirement of Stoops in June 2017, Ferentz staked his exclusive claim to that title. Ferentz recorded his 200th Iowa win with a victory over Washington on October 12, 2024, and this win also moved him solely into second place in victories as a Big Ten coach.
Obviously, with 25 different football coaches over a 130+ year history, there are other notable men who have made their mark on the SUI football program. Here – based on the number of games coached, winning percentages, and conference championships – are the top five runners-up…
Alden Knipe – 1899-1902, 44 games coached at Iowa, 29-11-4 record, .705 winning percentage, One Western Conference championship – 1900. Knipe was also an accomplished singer and director of Iowa’s glee club. In 1901, Knipe became SUI’s first Director of Music.
John Chalmers – 1903-1905, 32 games coached at Iowa, 24-8-0 record, .750 winning percentage. Chalmers was also the head men’s basketball coach at SUI for one season (1904–1905), tallying a mark of 6–8, and the baseball coach for two seasons (1904–1905).
Mark Catlin Sr. – 1906-1908, 17 games coached at Iowa, 7-10-0 record, .412 winning percentage, One Western Conference championship – 1907. In 1908, Catlin acquired a live black bear named Burch when visiting his dad back in Wisconsin. Burch served as the mascot for the SUI Football team from 1908 to 1910. Read more here.
Burt Ingwersen – 1924-1931, 64 games games coached at Iowa, 33-27-4 record, .547 winning percentage. Iowa was suspended from athletic participation in the Big Ten, effective January 1, 1930, in the wake of a recruiting scandal that stretched back to the Howard Jones era. After agreeing to suspend current players who had been paid from an alumni slush fund and to fire the athletic director who was implicated in the scheme, Iowa was reinstated a month later. The loss of players greatly hampered Ingwersen’s coaching career at Iowa, and after going 1–6–1 in the 1931 season, scoring just seven points all year long, it was clear it would be a long time before Iowa would again be competitive within the conference. The one bright spot during this long stretch of losing in the 1930’s was the Hawkeye superstar – Ozzie Simmons. Read more here.
In closing, here’s a salute and a tip of the old hat to the 25 men who have coached the Iowa Hawkeye football teams from 1889 to the present (2024). Note, that our 15th coach – Dr. Eddie Anderson – served two separate stints (1939-1942 and 1946-1949) as head Hawkeye.
Read more here:
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PW – September 14, 2025
September 26, 1889 – SUI student – Martin Sampson – calls for a meeting regarding the organization of a University football team, and it is his suggestion that earns him the title of coach and captain of the new Hawkeye football squad!
November 16, 1889 – On a blustery afternoon on Grinnell Field in Grinnell, Iowa, Iowa College beats the Iowa Hawkeyes, 24-0 in the first collegiate football game played west of Mississippi River. This first Hawkeye squad is coached by student player & club organizer – Martin Sampson.
November 11, 1900 – Legendary Iowa Football Coach – Dr. Eddie Anderson – is born in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
February 18, 1918 – Legendary Iowa Football Coach – Forest “Evy” Evashevski – is born in Detroit, Michigan.
February 28, 1929 – Legendary Iowa Football Coach – Hayden Fry – is born in Eastland, Texas.
August 1, 1955 – Legendary Iowa Football Coach – Kirk Ferentz – is born in Royal Oak, Michigan.
September 1, 2018 – Kirk Ferentz achieves his 144th win with the Hawkeyes, passing former coach Hayden Fry for the most wins in Iowa football history.
September 13, 2025 – Kirk Ferentz becomes the winningest coach in Big Ten Conference history, surpassing Ohio State’s Woody Hayes’ 205 victories.
Kudos to the amazing resources below for the many quotes, photographs, etc. used on this page.
Iowa Hawkeyes football, Wikipedia
List of College Football Hall of Fame Coaches, Wikipedia
List of Iowa Hawkeyes head football coaches, Wikipedia
Iowa Hawkeyes Head Coaches, Hawkeyerecap.com
Iowa Hawkeyes School History, www.sports-reference.com
1892 Iowa Hawkeyes football team, Wikipedia
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