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OFFICIAL 2022-2023 COLLEGE FOOTBALL THREAD
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by Bobby Layne,
- Start date
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Yea, since he’s got on campus he’s been mentioned as one of the best athletes on the team. His two older brothers were LBs at Vandy
I think he’s due to transfer or for a position switch when Davis gets on campus, but we’ll see. I think he’d be perfect at H-Back.
I think the buzz for him to get wildcat reps is more wishful thinking than anything, JJ isn’t really going to have use his legs much this season outside like two games. The OL and running backs should be able to walk over most of the schedule.
If he ends up winning the backup job I’ll start believing the hype.
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dacomeup
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Did he forget that HE makes more money than his brother the pediatrician as well?
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Was going to say - haven't ever heard him complain about his salary and the money flowing into his program annually.
All these dudes are legit scum bags.
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For most of those kids, that will be the pinnacle of their earnings. Besides, the pediatrician has a much longer shelf life.
Policeman & serviceman in some cases, actually take bullets and also “save lives,” but they’re getting probably getting paid less, too. I really don’t understand his argument. That said, he should probably get jr to suit up and make those millions.
Policeman & serviceman in some cases, actually take bullets and also “save lives,” but they’re getting probably getting paid less, too. I really don’t understand his argument. That said, he should probably get jr to suit up and make those millions.
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Lol ASU doesn't play Oregon State this year
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Can we put a cap on the coaches' salaries too?
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Says the guy who monopolizes all the best players every year because there isn't a salary cap and is afraid to play a 9 game conference schedule, but wants extra consideration and credit each selection sunday "because SEC." What exactly is it that he wants to make equal?
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I don’t think it was ever previously reported but the reason Bill McGovern, UCLA’s DC, stepped away from the team mid season was because he was diagnosed with cancer
Sad news. Bill McGovern, UCLA's DC last season until his cancer diagnosis passed away from the disease today. He was 60 years old.
UCLA's McGovern, 60, dies after cancer diagnosis
Longtime college and NFL defensive coach Bill McGovern, who worked as UCLA's defensive coordinator last season, died after being diagnosed with cancer.
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RIP
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Prime already has that kind of pull?
Mario’s sobrino
aepps20
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Very sad to hear this. Cancer is such an evil disease that destroys lives and families. I hope that his loved ones can move forward and have access to the support they need during this very difficult and trying timeSad news. Bill McGovern, UCLA's DC last season until his cancer diagnosis passed away from the disease today. He was 60 years old.
UCLA's McGovern, 60, dies after cancer diagnosis
Longtime college and NFL defensive coach Bill McGovern, who worked as UCLA's defensive coordinator last season, died after being diagnosed with cancer.www.espn.com
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How is Nick Saban complaining about parity and spending when Alabama has the second largest recruiting budget in the nation and brought in one of the greatest recruiting classes in history class all season. It's amazing how he manufactures things to complain about.
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dacomeup
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For a job that he’s going to be trying to leverage into a bump up the first moment he can?
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How is MSU-UW not the prime time game in week 3? NBC needs to put their foot down.
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MOUNT PLEASANT, Iowa — Winds of change sweep across this idyllic southeast Iowa community of 9,000, where an Amtrak station separates an old-fashioned town square from a charming college campus.
But the hospitable temperature and blue skies in early May belie this picturesque slice of Americana. After 181 years, Iowa Wesleyan, the small Methodist institution of nearly 800 students located 30 miles west of Illinois and 35 miles north of Missouri, will shut down for good. With the school unable to pay a $26 million loan to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the property becomes part of the federal government.
A proud university inaugurated five years before Iowa became a state now is relegated to the history books.
“On May 31, that’s when it’s probably going to really hit me,” says Mike Hampton, a 1972 Wesleyan graduate who has worked in the athletic department since 1995. “My wife graduated from here. I graduated from here. … It’s in the two-digit numbers of relatives that graduated from here. It’s a sad state of affairs.”
Of course it’s more than athletics that perishes with the school on May 31. Astronaut Peggy Whitson, a 1981 graduate, became the first female commander at the International Space Station in 2007. She wore purple Iowa Wesleyan Tigers socks on her three journeys and donated them to the school. Women’s college basketball in Iowa was born here in 1943, when Olan G. Ruble helped drive his players in station wagons from the East Coast to Texas.
“It was a really close-knit community where a lot of these professors stayed for 50 years for no pay and dedicated their lives to it,” says Jess Settles, a college basketball analyst for BTN and ESPN who coached the men’s basketball program for two seasons (2012-13). “It’s a huge blow to southeast Iowa to lose a campus like that.”
But when people recall Iowa Wesleyan’s legacy, it starts with its impact on college football as the birthplace of the most influential offensive trend in three decades, the “Air Raid.”
In a dingy basement beneath an old Iowa Wesleyan basketball gymnasium is where Hal Mumme and Mike Leach tested and perfected the fast-break offense that leveled football’s balance between size and speed.
But first, Mumme had to take a job nobody wanted. Two years removed from his job as UTEP’s offensive coordinator when the whole staff was fired, Mumme coached high school football and served as athletic director in Copperas Cove, Texas, years before Robert Griffin III starred there. Mumme ached for an opportunity to lead a college football program and wanted a wide-open offense like LaVell Edwards ran at BYU.
A winless campaign in 1988 didn’t sit well with Iowa Wesleyan President Robert Prins. He enlisted friend and then-Chicago Bears special teams coach Steve Kazor to find a new coach. Kazor tracked down Mumme, and after some banter over the school’s location, Mumme asked Kazor a few questions.
“I said, ‘Do they want to win?’” Mumme recalls. “He goes, ‘Yeah, I know the president. He really wants to win.’ And I said, ‘Well, how are they now?’ He goes, ‘They’re the worst team I’ve ever seen.’”
If Mumme was interested, Kazor said, he should send Prins a telegram. About a month later, Mumme was hired.
When Mumme arrived, two reporters attended his news conference. He called a meeting of returning players. He was told about 40 planned to return. Two showed up. Halfway through his speech, one walked out.
A few days later, Mumme swung by Mount Pleasant High to talk with football coach Bob Evans and recruit a few players, including star receiver Dana Holgorsen. Evans sent a student to bring Holgorsen to his office.
“About 20 minutes goes by and Dana never shows up,” Mumme says. “Bob calls the little girl in his office. ‘Did you go get Holgorsen?’ She goes, ‘Well, I tried. But he said he’d rather stay in English class than talk to Iowa Wesleyan.’”
Mumme had the same luck convincing coaches to join him. Only two resumes came in. When he described his pass-first offense with linemen in two-point stances and wide splits, line coaches laughed him off.
“Nobody would take it,” he says. “It paid $12,000. Even in 1989, that wasn’t very much money. So I decided that I’m just gonna hire the smartest guy I can find and teach him what I want.”
Leach had submitted one of the two resumes. Although he played rugby at BYU, Leach followed the football program closely. After several conversations, Leach and Mumme met in Provo to watch BYU spring practice together. It was there that Mumme decided to hire Leach.
“He was at the College of the Desert coaching defensive ends,” Mumme says. “He was only making $6,000 and he had to watch the rec gym at night. So teaching a couple of business law classes and getting $12,000 was a lot better deal. Then we hired Sharon (Leach) to be our football secretary so they could get two salaries. So it was a pretty good raise for him.”
A year later, Mumme hired assistant Mike Fanoga for $10,000 a year. Fanoga built a recruiting pipeline from American Samoa to Mount Pleasant. Among the first arrivals was Doug Elisaia, now Utah’s football strength coach. Epenesa “Eppy” Epenesa arrived a year later and became an NAIA All-American before transferring to Iowa. Epenesa met his wife, Stephanie, who played softball and volleyball at Iowa Wesleyan. Epenesa’s oldest son, A.J., led the Big Ten in sacks at Iowa and now plays for the Buffalo Bills.
Epenesa first described his experience as culture shock. Then he fell in love with the community.
Mumme persuaded his old high school quarterback, Dustin Dewald, to head north. They cobbled together enough players to go 7-4 in their first year. He convinced a businessman from nearby Burlington, Iowa, to stage an NAIA postseason event called the Steamboat Bowl. The Tigers competed in it twice and won it in Mumme’s second year.
Entering Year 3, the Tigers welcomed back 18 starters, including Dewald, who had thrown for 7,627 yards in two seasons. Iowa Wesleyan moved up from NAIA Division II to NAIA Division I and became an independent. Its schedule included three NCAA Division II teams plus three NAIA playoff squads.
“We started looking for an edge, and like we usually did when we needed an edge, we would take a road trip to get the creative ideas going,” Mumme says. “So I told Mike, ‘Find somebody to recruit in Florida, and I’ll get us some airline tickets from Dr. Prins.’ And Mike being Mike, he finds a kicker in Key West.
“We only had enough money to get us to Orlando, which turned out to be a blessing.”
Leach and Mumme stopped to see the Orlando Thunder, then a World League of American Football member and led by longtime CFL coach Don Matthews.
“On the way out to practice I asked Coach Matthews, ‘What’s your best drill?’” Mumme says. “He goes, ‘Well, at the end of practice, we do what we call Bandit drill. That’s our two-minute offense.’
“I’d seen people do two-minute offenses before, but I’ve never seen it this well-organized and this fast. I mean, they literally were just running a play about every 15 seconds. I looked at Mike and I said, ‘That’s our edge.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna do that all the time, aren’t we?’ I go, ‘Yeah, we are.’”
After initially rebuffing Mumme, Holgorsen asked to transfer home and the coach enthusiastically welcomed him. Marc Hill, like Holgorsen, was a Mount Pleasant graduate and grew up next to the Mapleleaf Sports Complex, where both the high school and college played sports. Hill spurned walk-on opportunities at Iowa State and Wisconsin but wilted under a recruiting barrage from Mumme and Leach. At Iowa Wesleyan, Hill played linebacker and saw up close how the high-tempo offense impacted games and practices.
“They wanted it to be fun,” says Hill, now Kentucky’s deputy athletic director. “College sports were supposed to be fun. Practice was supposed to be fun. We’re not gonna grind you to death. We’re not going to run you to death … And because of it, we had a blast. I mean, it was always fun. Going for it on fourth down when it didn’t make any sense. It was just always a good time.”
In the season opener, Iowa Wesleyan hosted NCAA Division II Truman State, then known as Northeast Missouri State. The Tigers trailed 24-7 at halftime yet the locker room was fired up in an eventual comeback victory.
“I was kind of envisioning 48-14 and questioning my own sanity for inviting those guys to our place,” Mumme says. “But (my players) knew what I didn’t know. They knew that the other team was worn out already. We had played so fast and made them run so many plays. I think we ended up running about 90 or 95 plays that night.”
In addition to his job as offensive line coach and teaching business law, Leach was the football sports information director. He wrote stories and shipped them to The (Burlington) Hawk Eye or The Des Moines Register. The outlets would publish a box score with a recap but rarely what he wrote.
It frustrated Leach to no end.
“The big goal was to get in The Des Moines Register because if you got in that, you’d made it in Iowa,” Mumme says. “He was trying hard, and he couldn’t do it. So he comes into my office and he says, ‘Look, we need a name for our offense.’ I said, ‘Why do we need that? We say offense and they run on the field.’ He goes, ‘I’m not talking about for the players. I’m talking about my articles.’
“‘Oh, OK. What do you got in mind?’ He goes, ‘Well, I think we should call it “Air Raid.”’ ‘Sounds good to me, go for it.’”
That year, Iowa Wesleyan finished 10-2 and qualified for the NAIA Division I playoffs. Dewald threw for 4,418 yards, while running back Bruce Carter caught 125 passes and scored 112 points. All remain school records.
Mumme, Leach and several players left after the season for Valdosta (Ga.) State, where they coached from 1992 through 1996. Kentucky hired Mumme in 1997, and in 1999, quarterback Tim Couch became the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. Holgorsen followed them to Valdosta and now is head coach at Houston.
“It’s truly remarkable that literally what you watch in football today was invented in the petri dish basement at Iowa Wesleyan in the dump of all dumps,” Settles says. “I’d walk by there, and I’d think, ‘This is where these mad scientists and their whiteboard did it.’”
The good old days ended abruptly after Mumme and Leach left for Valdosta. Iowa Wesleyan employed replacement coaches in three consecutive years, including Kazor, and twice the Tigers recorded winning seasons. Then the football program fell apart. From 1995 onward, the Tigers were 59-227 with only one winning season at 6-4 in 2014.
MD Daniels, who now coaches receivers at Bethel (Tenn.) University, guided the Tigers to a 4-7 mark last fall, the program’s second-most wins since 1998. In early May, only three football assistants remained behind to help athletes in their transition to other schools and programs. In the same basement office, assistant Brett Guminsky still has formations diagrammed on that old Mumme-era whiteboard. Like any football coach, Guminsky wiped the board clean before allowing photos inside the office.
But this is when the nostalgia turns to heartbreak. The women’s basketball team had qualified for consecutive NAIA national tournaments under coach Steve Williamson. The football team was five practices into spring when employees were ordered to attend a March 28 meeting. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds denied the school’s last-ditch funding request and the Iowa Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees voted to close the school.
“My stomach just wrenched. Just turned upside down,” Hampton says. “The toughest part was walking down the steps of the chapel and seeing my team at the bottom of the steps. That’s when it really hit me. That, man, we’re closing.”
Coaches and administrators then found a new charge: helping their athletes find new schools.
“As soon as we sat down with all the coaches, reality set in,” says senior offensive lineman Miguel Flores, a Naperville, Ill., native who was 12 credits shy of graduation. “They were starting to tear up, choke up on their words. It was not very pleasant to hear that everything that we were working for was just taken away. There’s nothing left.”
There are other sports and other stories. Too many to name and too many will fade. One that stands out belongs to Edmund “Bub” Krieger. A week into football practice at Iowa, Krieger became homesick and transferred to Iowa Wesleyan, which was closer to the Mount Union family farm. Three years later, in 1940, Krieger was named the Iowa Conference’s first-team plunging back for a squad that finished 2-6-1. He turned down a contract from the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals to farm. That’s only partially his story.
He and his wife, Lugene (Lucky), had 10 daughters, some of whom competed in college athletics. Jan Krieger Kittle became an All-American women’s basketball player at Drake. Settles’ mother, Mary, played women’s basketball at Iowa Wesleyan. Even more prominent were Bub’s and Lucky’s athletic grandsons, highlighted by San Francisco 49ers Pro Bowl tight end George Kittle, former Los Angeles Rams tight end Henry Krieger-Coble, University of Iowa all-time home runs leader Brad Carlson and Settles, who scored 1,611 points for Iowa men’s basketball.
The Air Raid. Ruble’s caravan. Bub’s story, like all of the others, now pass on strictly as memories.
“It’s pretty devastating,” Settles says. “Obviously, the economic impact is massive. But just the tradition …”
“I’m afraid that all people are going to remember is the closure,” Williamson says. “I don’t think that’s the way that you should remember Iowa Wesleyan. There’s a lot of great history here.”
But the hospitable temperature and blue skies in early May belie this picturesque slice of Americana. After 181 years, Iowa Wesleyan, the small Methodist institution of nearly 800 students located 30 miles west of Illinois and 35 miles north of Missouri, will shut down for good. With the school unable to pay a $26 million loan to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the property becomes part of the federal government.
A proud university inaugurated five years before Iowa became a state now is relegated to the history books.
“On May 31, that’s when it’s probably going to really hit me,” says Mike Hampton, a 1972 Wesleyan graduate who has worked in the athletic department since 1995. “My wife graduated from here. I graduated from here. … It’s in the two-digit numbers of relatives that graduated from here. It’s a sad state of affairs.”
Of course it’s more than athletics that perishes with the school on May 31. Astronaut Peggy Whitson, a 1981 graduate, became the first female commander at the International Space Station in 2007. She wore purple Iowa Wesleyan Tigers socks on her three journeys and donated them to the school. Women’s college basketball in Iowa was born here in 1943, when Olan G. Ruble helped drive his players in station wagons from the East Coast to Texas.
“It was a really close-knit community where a lot of these professors stayed for 50 years for no pay and dedicated their lives to it,” says Jess Settles, a college basketball analyst for BTN and ESPN who coached the men’s basketball program for two seasons (2012-13). “It’s a huge blow to southeast Iowa to lose a campus like that.”
But when people recall Iowa Wesleyan’s legacy, it starts with its impact on college football as the birthplace of the most influential offensive trend in three decades, the “Air Raid.”
In a dingy basement beneath an old Iowa Wesleyan basketball gymnasium is where Hal Mumme and Mike Leach tested and perfected the fast-break offense that leveled football’s balance between size and speed.
But first, Mumme had to take a job nobody wanted. Two years removed from his job as UTEP’s offensive coordinator when the whole staff was fired, Mumme coached high school football and served as athletic director in Copperas Cove, Texas, years before Robert Griffin III starred there. Mumme ached for an opportunity to lead a college football program and wanted a wide-open offense like LaVell Edwards ran at BYU.
A winless campaign in 1988 didn’t sit well with Iowa Wesleyan President Robert Prins. He enlisted friend and then-Chicago Bears special teams coach Steve Kazor to find a new coach. Kazor tracked down Mumme, and after some banter over the school’s location, Mumme asked Kazor a few questions.
“I said, ‘Do they want to win?’” Mumme recalls. “He goes, ‘Yeah, I know the president. He really wants to win.’ And I said, ‘Well, how are they now?’ He goes, ‘They’re the worst team I’ve ever seen.’”
If Mumme was interested, Kazor said, he should send Prins a telegram. About a month later, Mumme was hired.
When Mumme arrived, two reporters attended his news conference. He called a meeting of returning players. He was told about 40 planned to return. Two showed up. Halfway through his speech, one walked out.
A few days later, Mumme swung by Mount Pleasant High to talk with football coach Bob Evans and recruit a few players, including star receiver Dana Holgorsen. Evans sent a student to bring Holgorsen to his office.
“About 20 minutes goes by and Dana never shows up,” Mumme says. “Bob calls the little girl in his office. ‘Did you go get Holgorsen?’ She goes, ‘Well, I tried. But he said he’d rather stay in English class than talk to Iowa Wesleyan.’”
Mumme had the same luck convincing coaches to join him. Only two resumes came in. When he described his pass-first offense with linemen in two-point stances and wide splits, line coaches laughed him off.
“Nobody would take it,” he says. “It paid $12,000. Even in 1989, that wasn’t very much money. So I decided that I’m just gonna hire the smartest guy I can find and teach him what I want.”
Leach had submitted one of the two resumes. Although he played rugby at BYU, Leach followed the football program closely. After several conversations, Leach and Mumme met in Provo to watch BYU spring practice together. It was there that Mumme decided to hire Leach.
“He was at the College of the Desert coaching defensive ends,” Mumme says. “He was only making $6,000 and he had to watch the rec gym at night. So teaching a couple of business law classes and getting $12,000 was a lot better deal. Then we hired Sharon (Leach) to be our football secretary so they could get two salaries. So it was a pretty good raise for him.”
A year later, Mumme hired assistant Mike Fanoga for $10,000 a year. Fanoga built a recruiting pipeline from American Samoa to Mount Pleasant. Among the first arrivals was Doug Elisaia, now Utah’s football strength coach. Epenesa “Eppy” Epenesa arrived a year later and became an NAIA All-American before transferring to Iowa. Epenesa met his wife, Stephanie, who played softball and volleyball at Iowa Wesleyan. Epenesa’s oldest son, A.J., led the Big Ten in sacks at Iowa and now plays for the Buffalo Bills.
Epenesa first described his experience as culture shock. Then he fell in love with the community.
Mumme persuaded his old high school quarterback, Dustin Dewald, to head north. They cobbled together enough players to go 7-4 in their first year. He convinced a businessman from nearby Burlington, Iowa, to stage an NAIA postseason event called the Steamboat Bowl. The Tigers competed in it twice and won it in Mumme’s second year.
Entering Year 3, the Tigers welcomed back 18 starters, including Dewald, who had thrown for 7,627 yards in two seasons. Iowa Wesleyan moved up from NAIA Division II to NAIA Division I and became an independent. Its schedule included three NCAA Division II teams plus three NAIA playoff squads.
“We started looking for an edge, and like we usually did when we needed an edge, we would take a road trip to get the creative ideas going,” Mumme says. “So I told Mike, ‘Find somebody to recruit in Florida, and I’ll get us some airline tickets from Dr. Prins.’ And Mike being Mike, he finds a kicker in Key West.
“We only had enough money to get us to Orlando, which turned out to be a blessing.”
Leach and Mumme stopped to see the Orlando Thunder, then a World League of American Football member and led by longtime CFL coach Don Matthews.
“On the way out to practice I asked Coach Matthews, ‘What’s your best drill?’” Mumme says. “He goes, ‘Well, at the end of practice, we do what we call Bandit drill. That’s our two-minute offense.’
“I’d seen people do two-minute offenses before, but I’ve never seen it this well-organized and this fast. I mean, they literally were just running a play about every 15 seconds. I looked at Mike and I said, ‘That’s our edge.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna do that all the time, aren’t we?’ I go, ‘Yeah, we are.’”
After initially rebuffing Mumme, Holgorsen asked to transfer home and the coach enthusiastically welcomed him. Marc Hill, like Holgorsen, was a Mount Pleasant graduate and grew up next to the Mapleleaf Sports Complex, where both the high school and college played sports. Hill spurned walk-on opportunities at Iowa State and Wisconsin but wilted under a recruiting barrage from Mumme and Leach. At Iowa Wesleyan, Hill played linebacker and saw up close how the high-tempo offense impacted games and practices.
“They wanted it to be fun,” says Hill, now Kentucky’s deputy athletic director. “College sports were supposed to be fun. Practice was supposed to be fun. We’re not gonna grind you to death. We’re not going to run you to death … And because of it, we had a blast. I mean, it was always fun. Going for it on fourth down when it didn’t make any sense. It was just always a good time.”
In the season opener, Iowa Wesleyan hosted NCAA Division II Truman State, then known as Northeast Missouri State. The Tigers trailed 24-7 at halftime yet the locker room was fired up in an eventual comeback victory.
“I was kind of envisioning 48-14 and questioning my own sanity for inviting those guys to our place,” Mumme says. “But (my players) knew what I didn’t know. They knew that the other team was worn out already. We had played so fast and made them run so many plays. I think we ended up running about 90 or 95 plays that night.”
In addition to his job as offensive line coach and teaching business law, Leach was the football sports information director. He wrote stories and shipped them to The (Burlington) Hawk Eye or The Des Moines Register. The outlets would publish a box score with a recap but rarely what he wrote.
It frustrated Leach to no end.
“The big goal was to get in The Des Moines Register because if you got in that, you’d made it in Iowa,” Mumme says. “He was trying hard, and he couldn’t do it. So he comes into my office and he says, ‘Look, we need a name for our offense.’ I said, ‘Why do we need that? We say offense and they run on the field.’ He goes, ‘I’m not talking about for the players. I’m talking about my articles.’
“‘Oh, OK. What do you got in mind?’ He goes, ‘Well, I think we should call it “Air Raid.”’ ‘Sounds good to me, go for it.’”
That year, Iowa Wesleyan finished 10-2 and qualified for the NAIA Division I playoffs. Dewald threw for 4,418 yards, while running back Bruce Carter caught 125 passes and scored 112 points. All remain school records.
Mumme, Leach and several players left after the season for Valdosta (Ga.) State, where they coached from 1992 through 1996. Kentucky hired Mumme in 1997, and in 1999, quarterback Tim Couch became the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. Holgorsen followed them to Valdosta and now is head coach at Houston.
“It’s truly remarkable that literally what you watch in football today was invented in the petri dish basement at Iowa Wesleyan in the dump of all dumps,” Settles says. “I’d walk by there, and I’d think, ‘This is where these mad scientists and their whiteboard did it.’”
The good old days ended abruptly after Mumme and Leach left for Valdosta. Iowa Wesleyan employed replacement coaches in three consecutive years, including Kazor, and twice the Tigers recorded winning seasons. Then the football program fell apart. From 1995 onward, the Tigers were 59-227 with only one winning season at 6-4 in 2014.
MD Daniels, who now coaches receivers at Bethel (Tenn.) University, guided the Tigers to a 4-7 mark last fall, the program’s second-most wins since 1998. In early May, only three football assistants remained behind to help athletes in their transition to other schools and programs. In the same basement office, assistant Brett Guminsky still has formations diagrammed on that old Mumme-era whiteboard. Like any football coach, Guminsky wiped the board clean before allowing photos inside the office.
But this is when the nostalgia turns to heartbreak. The women’s basketball team had qualified for consecutive NAIA national tournaments under coach Steve Williamson. The football team was five practices into spring when employees were ordered to attend a March 28 meeting. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds denied the school’s last-ditch funding request and the Iowa Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees voted to close the school.
“My stomach just wrenched. Just turned upside down,” Hampton says. “The toughest part was walking down the steps of the chapel and seeing my team at the bottom of the steps. That’s when it really hit me. That, man, we’re closing.”
Coaches and administrators then found a new charge: helping their athletes find new schools.
“As soon as we sat down with all the coaches, reality set in,” says senior offensive lineman Miguel Flores, a Naperville, Ill., native who was 12 credits shy of graduation. “They were starting to tear up, choke up on their words. It was not very pleasant to hear that everything that we were working for was just taken away. There’s nothing left.”
There are other sports and other stories. Too many to name and too many will fade. One that stands out belongs to Edmund “Bub” Krieger. A week into football practice at Iowa, Krieger became homesick and transferred to Iowa Wesleyan, which was closer to the Mount Union family farm. Three years later, in 1940, Krieger was named the Iowa Conference’s first-team plunging back for a squad that finished 2-6-1. He turned down a contract from the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals to farm. That’s only partially his story.
He and his wife, Lugene (Lucky), had 10 daughters, some of whom competed in college athletics. Jan Krieger Kittle became an All-American women’s basketball player at Drake. Settles’ mother, Mary, played women’s basketball at Iowa Wesleyan. Even more prominent were Bub’s and Lucky’s athletic grandsons, highlighted by San Francisco 49ers Pro Bowl tight end George Kittle, former Los Angeles Rams tight end Henry Krieger-Coble, University of Iowa all-time home runs leader Brad Carlson and Settles, who scored 1,611 points for Iowa men’s basketball.
The Air Raid. Ruble’s caravan. Bub’s story, like all of the others, now pass on strictly as memories.
“It’s pretty devastating,” Settles says. “Obviously, the economic impact is massive. But just the tradition …”
“I’m afraid that all people are going to remember is the closure,” Williamson says. “I don’t think that’s the way that you should remember Iowa Wesleyan. There’s a lot of great history here.”
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I don't understand the pearl clutching from college football coaches. Every other sport (baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer) has been giving teenagers millions of dollars for decades yet college football coaches act as though there's no way teenagers can handle it.
The act is though college athletes are uniquely unqualified to handle money. Heck, at least they're in college getting education which is more than you can say for teenagers in the NBA, MLB or soccer leagues.
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