Iowa's undefeated football teams, forgotten?

Hawknick

Hawknick

Banned
Why is there so little written about Iowa's 4 undefeated football teams of 99,00, 21,22? Is the university sore about Jones going USC and Williams going to Iowa State? Or is the shadow of Kinnick so large that it just overwhelmed anything that happened at Iowa Field?
 
Well, it was an awfully long time ago -- but you are right, those were truly great teams. The Jones teams in 1921 and 1922 were juggernauts that beat everyone, and had some great players, including Duke Slater and Aubrey Devine.

The great victory was over an undefeated Knute Rockne Notre Dame team, 10-7, at old Iowa Field.

Eddie Anderson, the great coach of the 1939 Ironmen, played on that great Notre Dame team.

Ironically, Iowa's next victory over Notre Dame was in 1939, 7-6, with Kinnick scoring the only Iowa touchdown and punting 15 times for a 49 yard average!!!

Iowa really has some great football history from the first half of the 20th century.
 
I think the main reason is that everyone who followed those teams died 50 years ago

Honestly i would like to know more
 
eyekwah said:
Is there still a marker where old Iowa Field was? There was one near EPB.
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I don't think there is, but there should be being that it is just a parking lot now. For a while it was Hawkeye Village, I trailer community for students.

For the poster that posted and wanted to know more about the teams. Here is a good page about the 1921 team, the most dominant team in hawkeye football history. Yeah the Gordon Locke run was one of the biggest plays in Hawkeye football history. Slater blocked the guys, and Locke broke an Eddie Anderson tackle.

Wapedia - Wiki: 1921 Iowa Hawkeyes football team

I sure wish they could have kept Jones as coach, they lost him by refusing to give him time off in the summer. Silly reasons like that made us lose a coaching great.

The 1899 and 1900 teams were led by it's great back Clyde Williams. They outscored their opponents by ridiculous numbers, and did not give up a touchdown either year! The coach was Alden Knipe Alden Knipe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Those games were played before bleachers were constructed at Iowa Field. Fans would go in and stand. The next year Williams was ruled to be ineligible, and he would go on to be a coaching legend at ISU.

I just wish there was more out there about these teams, and these legends. I have tried to find as much as a I could over the year, found a few books and websites. But most fans now have hardly even heard of these teams, they deserve more.
 
And in 1900 they were had accepted an invite to the Rose Bowl, but the game never happened due to problems in organizing the game. This would have been the first ever Rose Bowl. What ashame having to wait 56 years to to bureaucratic night mares.
 
The best source possible is a book written by Dick Lamb and Bert McGrane called "75 Years with the Fighting Hawkeyes". It covers 1888-1963 and really provides everything you would ever want to know about those years.

Some tidbits:

Iowa won Big Ten titles in 1900, 21, 22, 56, 58 and 60.

The team also finished in the Top 10 in 1939 and 1953.

Iowa won a National Championship in 1958, as recognized by College Football Data Warehouse (a great source for football history).

Old Iowa Field sat about 28000 and was located at the current site of the English Philosophy building.

Kinnick Stadium hosted its first game in 1928.

The 1953 tied undefeated, #1 Notre Dame in South Bend in the infamous "fainting game" (Evashevski, our coach, forever after called them the Fainting Irish and absolutely slaughtered them in 56, 57, 58 and 60!).

Alden Knipe, the coach of the 1900 Big Ten Champs, was a famous Opera singer and retired from coaching to write children's books (he was very successful).
 
Great info Chosenchildren, I will be sure to check that book out. I read the Hawkeye Heroes Myths and Lore book, but not that one. Oh by the way I went to school with the children of the the chief chosen child from 1974, Rob Fick. I want to find videos of the 1974 games against UCLA and Illinois so bad!

As far as Iowa Field goes I always read that at it's max in the 20s it held 25,000 but it did have tons of temporary seating, so it could have been 28,000. There was seating above the railroad tracks and even above the river! I would have loved to have been watched a game there. People even climbed on top of the nearby roofs, telephone poles, and watched from the 2 nearby bridges. 1920s football there must have been a real thrill.
 
That was before they even had a top 25 ap poll. That was so long ago that football was a very very different game. Im not even sure if the NCAA recognizes accomplishments before 1934.
 
I don't know about the NCAA, but the Big Ten recognizes all football championships, starting in 1899.

Iowa has won or shared 11 Big Ten football championships:

1900, 21, 22, 56, 58, 60, 81, 85, 90, 02, 04.

Iowa has captured 13 bowl championships.

Iowa has one national championship (1958).

Let's win some more championships!
 
The Lamb-McGrane book has some excellent, clear photos of old Iowa field in the 1920s that could be blown up and framed.

Maury Kent was a long-time University photographer -- his photographs are probably stored away somewhere in University archives.
 
ChosenChildren said:
The Lamb-McGrane book has some excellent, clear photos of old Iowa field in the 1920s that could be blown up and framed.

Maury Kent was a long-time University photographer -- his photographs are probably stored away somewhere in University archives.
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Here is one of his better pictures of Iowa Field.

getimage.exe
 
now I can show my son were the old field was during the ride back to Hancher after the game.

Thanks!

My son gave me a book called The Vault for Christmas
 
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