JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
I put together some notes and quotes for the 8/20 Nile Kinnick Museum kick off event I participated in at ADM high school...some interesting stuff in here:
Nile Clarke Kinnick 5-8 170 | 1939 Heisman | Phi Beta Kappa (3.4 as undergrad) | Last master of drop kicking field goals and extra points | Son of Governor George W. Clarke (1913-1917) | It took the Great Depression to force the Kinnick's to leave Adel and move to Omaha
Not the fastest back, not the best punter “But if he could have run a 10 flat 100, the Big Ten would have banned him†Eddie Anderson
WWII DIARY: “I flew up in the clouds today—tall, voluminous cumulus clouds,†he wrote in his World War II diary. “They were like snow-covered mountains, range after range of them. I felt like an alpine adventurer, climbing up their canyons, winding my way between their peaks—a billowy fastness, a celestial citadel.â€
HEISMAN SPEECH: Whitney Martin of the Associated Press described the scene, “Seven hundred men and women rose and cheered and whistled…You realized the ovation wasn’t alone for Nile Kinnick, the outstanding college football player of the year. It was also for Nile Kinnick, typifying everything admirable in American youth.†Wrote Bill Cunnignham of the Boston Post, “This country’s O.K. as long as it produces Nile Kinnicks. The football part is incidental.â€
1939: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz & Mr Smith Goes to Washington all released, the worst of the Great Depression was in the rear view mirror...but it was also the year where Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and Kinnick confided in friends that he feared the United States would be drawn into another World War, something no one wanted to believe.
KINNICK TIMING: Between 1930 and 1938, Iowa won only 22 games, and in five of those seasons the Hawkeyes did not beat a single Big Ten opponent. The teams coached by the unfortunate Irl Tubbs in ’37 and ’38 were 2-13-1. The 1938 team was outscored 135-36 and did not score a touchdown in its last five games. Kinnick played the 1938 season on what was likely a broken ankle, but no one knew for sure because as a Christian Scientist, Kinnick would not allow the injury to be examined or treated.
SENIOR FORESHADOWING: Letter to Family: “For three years, nay for fifteen years, I have been preparing for this last year of football. I anticipate becoming the roughest, toughest all-around back yet to hit this conference.â€
HIRED EDDIE ANDERSEN for 1939 season, $10,000 per year three year deal...spring practices were so arduous that from an original turnout of 80 or more candidates, only 35 survived into the season. Of these only about 20 would play regularly, and 12 would play the full 60 minutes in at least one of the eight games.
OFFENSIVE LINE: 200-pounders were big..but due to injuries, Iowa’s offensive line averaged 191 pounds, 181 in the backfield....preseason picked last for Big Ten
1939 OPENER: South Dakota, the weakest opponent on a schedule that included Notre Dame and six Big Ten teams. The Hawkeyes won 41-0. Nile Jr. carried eight times for 110 yards and three touchdowns, one on a 65-yard run, passed for two more scores and drop-kicked five extra points. His 23 points scored were the most by an Iowa player since Oran (Nanny) Pape had scored 24 in 1928.
GAME TWO: Indiana, whom the Hawkeyes had not beaten since 1921. 94-degree heat at Iowa Stadium. Indiana had taken a 10-0 lead in the first half, but Iowa came back to win 32-29. Kinnick rushed for 103 yards on 19 carries; he ran for a touchdown and threw scoring passes of 25, 50 and 15 yards to Prasse. He set a school record that still stands by returning nine punts for 201 yards, an average of 22.3 yards. Kinnick also had 171 yards on kickoff returns and he quick-kicked for 73 yards. He played the entire 60 minutes.
Tait Cummins of The Cedar Rapids Gazette “A new gridiron star blazed across the Big Ten horizon here Saturday, a spectacular comet with brilliant touchdown tails which cleared away the shadows of despair which have hovered over Iowa’s big stadium for the last six years, and which completely eclipsed Indiana’s lesser constellation in a 32-29 game never equaled in Hawkeye history.â€
Game 5 against Purdue, Iowa won 4-0 on two safeties..8 Hawkeyes played the entire game, Anderson used just 14 players off his 26 man traveling squad.
Beat Notre Dame 7-6, Kinnick scored the touchdown and drop kicked the extra point. 16 punts for 731 yards, a 45.6 average. The number of punts and yardage totals remain school records. With two minutes to play, Kinnick punted from his own 34, the ball going out of bounds on the Notre Dame five. â€When I saw that ball sail over the safety’s head, I knew we had beaten Notre Dame.†Al Couppee says. “I have played in 147 football games, college, service and pro, but that was the single most exhilarating moment I’ve ever experienced in sports.†Kinnick’s teammates carried him from the field.
IRONMAN: Kinnick played in every minute of six straight games, but had to leave the last game, against Northwestern, in the third quarter with a separated shoulder. Game finished in 7-7 Tie...Anderson sat on the ball, thinking a tie would give them a title...but he was wrong and Ohio State won.
Involved in 107 of 130 points and 402 (consecutive) of 420 minutes..in those days if you left the game, you could not come back in until the start of the next quarter.
An Associated Press poll picked him as the nation’s top male athlete for 1939. He finished ahead of Joe DiMaggio, who merely hit .381 that year, and Jo Louis, who had KO’d all four challengers for his heavyweight championship. On June 3, 1940, he was awarded the John P. Laffey law scholarship. Kinnick was first in the balloting for college players in the 1940 College All-Star Game against the Green Bay Packers, and he was on the cover of the game program. In the game itself, on August 29, 1940, he passed for two touchdowns and drip-kicked four extra points in the All-Stars’ 45-28 loss to the NFL champions. And, with that, Kinnick’s football career came to a sudden end. He never played again, even though the NFL Brooklyn Dodgers drafted him and offered him $10,000, a princely sum then, to play in 1940. Dodger owners John (Shipwreck) Kelly and Dan Topping paid separate visits to Iowa, urging him to turn pro. Topping even brought along his wife of the moment, film and figure skating star Sonja Henie, for one meeting with Kinnick at the Jefferson Hotel in Iowa City. Kinnick asked Couppee, Prasse and Enich to come along and meet the glamorous couple. “My football career is over. Law is my first priority.â€
Marion, Iowa, Sentinel announced after the Iowa football season that it was endorsing Kinnick for President in 1956, the first election in which he would be eligible to run for the office.
Kinnick finished his first year of law school third in a class of 103, then enlisted in the Naval Air Corps Reserve. He was called to active duty three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. “May God give me the courage and ability to so conduct myself in every situation that my country, my family and my friends will be proud of me,†he wrote in one of the black notebooks he kept as a record of his war service.
Conditions in the South, which he witnessed while undergoing flight training in Florida, appalled him. “The inequities in human relationships are many,†he wrote, “but the lot of the Negro is one of the worst…Kicked from pillar to post, condemned, cussed, ridiculed, accorded no respect, permitted to no sense of human dignity. What can be done I don’t know…When this war is over the problem is apt top be more difficult than ever. May wisdom, justice, brotherly love guide our steps to the right solution.â€
On June 2 1943, at 8:30 am, Nile Kinnick took off in a Grumman F4F Wildcat Navy fighter plane on a routine training flight from the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Lexington, which was then sailing in the gulf of Paria in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela. Shortly before 10am, another pilot, Ensign Bill Reiter, noticed that Kinnick’s plane had an oil leak. He warned him of the trouble by radio and started to follow him back to the ship. About four miles from the carrier, the leak became much more serious. Kinnick could not land on the Lexington without endangering other planes on the deck, so he elected to ditch it in the water. â€He was calm and efficient throughout and made a perfect wheels-up landing in the water,†Reiter wrote the Kinnick family. Reiter saw Kinnick in the water free of the plane, so he flew back to the carrier to direct the rescue craft. When the vessels reached the crash site, there was no trace of either plane or pilot. 24. Brother Ben died 15 mos later as a Marine pilot shot down over the Pacific.
Nile Clarke Kinnick 5-8 170 | 1939 Heisman | Phi Beta Kappa (3.4 as undergrad) | Last master of drop kicking field goals and extra points | Son of Governor George W. Clarke (1913-1917) | It took the Great Depression to force the Kinnick's to leave Adel and move to Omaha
Not the fastest back, not the best punter “But if he could have run a 10 flat 100, the Big Ten would have banned him†Eddie Anderson
WWII DIARY: “I flew up in the clouds today—tall, voluminous cumulus clouds,†he wrote in his World War II diary. “They were like snow-covered mountains, range after range of them. I felt like an alpine adventurer, climbing up their canyons, winding my way between their peaks—a billowy fastness, a celestial citadel.â€
HEISMAN SPEECH: Whitney Martin of the Associated Press described the scene, “Seven hundred men and women rose and cheered and whistled…You realized the ovation wasn’t alone for Nile Kinnick, the outstanding college football player of the year. It was also for Nile Kinnick, typifying everything admirable in American youth.†Wrote Bill Cunnignham of the Boston Post, “This country’s O.K. as long as it produces Nile Kinnicks. The football part is incidental.â€
1939: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz & Mr Smith Goes to Washington all released, the worst of the Great Depression was in the rear view mirror...but it was also the year where Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and Kinnick confided in friends that he feared the United States would be drawn into another World War, something no one wanted to believe.
KINNICK TIMING: Between 1930 and 1938, Iowa won only 22 games, and in five of those seasons the Hawkeyes did not beat a single Big Ten opponent. The teams coached by the unfortunate Irl Tubbs in ’37 and ’38 were 2-13-1. The 1938 team was outscored 135-36 and did not score a touchdown in its last five games. Kinnick played the 1938 season on what was likely a broken ankle, but no one knew for sure because as a Christian Scientist, Kinnick would not allow the injury to be examined or treated.
SENIOR FORESHADOWING: Letter to Family: “For three years, nay for fifteen years, I have been preparing for this last year of football. I anticipate becoming the roughest, toughest all-around back yet to hit this conference.â€
HIRED EDDIE ANDERSEN for 1939 season, $10,000 per year three year deal...spring practices were so arduous that from an original turnout of 80 or more candidates, only 35 survived into the season. Of these only about 20 would play regularly, and 12 would play the full 60 minutes in at least one of the eight games.
OFFENSIVE LINE: 200-pounders were big..but due to injuries, Iowa’s offensive line averaged 191 pounds, 181 in the backfield....preseason picked last for Big Ten
1939 OPENER: South Dakota, the weakest opponent on a schedule that included Notre Dame and six Big Ten teams. The Hawkeyes won 41-0. Nile Jr. carried eight times for 110 yards and three touchdowns, one on a 65-yard run, passed for two more scores and drop-kicked five extra points. His 23 points scored were the most by an Iowa player since Oran (Nanny) Pape had scored 24 in 1928.
GAME TWO: Indiana, whom the Hawkeyes had not beaten since 1921. 94-degree heat at Iowa Stadium. Indiana had taken a 10-0 lead in the first half, but Iowa came back to win 32-29. Kinnick rushed for 103 yards on 19 carries; he ran for a touchdown and threw scoring passes of 25, 50 and 15 yards to Prasse. He set a school record that still stands by returning nine punts for 201 yards, an average of 22.3 yards. Kinnick also had 171 yards on kickoff returns and he quick-kicked for 73 yards. He played the entire 60 minutes.
Tait Cummins of The Cedar Rapids Gazette “A new gridiron star blazed across the Big Ten horizon here Saturday, a spectacular comet with brilliant touchdown tails which cleared away the shadows of despair which have hovered over Iowa’s big stadium for the last six years, and which completely eclipsed Indiana’s lesser constellation in a 32-29 game never equaled in Hawkeye history.â€
Game 5 against Purdue, Iowa won 4-0 on two safeties..8 Hawkeyes played the entire game, Anderson used just 14 players off his 26 man traveling squad.
Beat Notre Dame 7-6, Kinnick scored the touchdown and drop kicked the extra point. 16 punts for 731 yards, a 45.6 average. The number of punts and yardage totals remain school records. With two minutes to play, Kinnick punted from his own 34, the ball going out of bounds on the Notre Dame five. â€When I saw that ball sail over the safety’s head, I knew we had beaten Notre Dame.†Al Couppee says. “I have played in 147 football games, college, service and pro, but that was the single most exhilarating moment I’ve ever experienced in sports.†Kinnick’s teammates carried him from the field.
IRONMAN: Kinnick played in every minute of six straight games, but had to leave the last game, against Northwestern, in the third quarter with a separated shoulder. Game finished in 7-7 Tie...Anderson sat on the ball, thinking a tie would give them a title...but he was wrong and Ohio State won.
Involved in 107 of 130 points and 402 (consecutive) of 420 minutes..in those days if you left the game, you could not come back in until the start of the next quarter.
An Associated Press poll picked him as the nation’s top male athlete for 1939. He finished ahead of Joe DiMaggio, who merely hit .381 that year, and Jo Louis, who had KO’d all four challengers for his heavyweight championship. On June 3, 1940, he was awarded the John P. Laffey law scholarship. Kinnick was first in the balloting for college players in the 1940 College All-Star Game against the Green Bay Packers, and he was on the cover of the game program. In the game itself, on August 29, 1940, he passed for two touchdowns and drip-kicked four extra points in the All-Stars’ 45-28 loss to the NFL champions. And, with that, Kinnick’s football career came to a sudden end. He never played again, even though the NFL Brooklyn Dodgers drafted him and offered him $10,000, a princely sum then, to play in 1940. Dodger owners John (Shipwreck) Kelly and Dan Topping paid separate visits to Iowa, urging him to turn pro. Topping even brought along his wife of the moment, film and figure skating star Sonja Henie, for one meeting with Kinnick at the Jefferson Hotel in Iowa City. Kinnick asked Couppee, Prasse and Enich to come along and meet the glamorous couple. “My football career is over. Law is my first priority.â€
Marion, Iowa, Sentinel announced after the Iowa football season that it was endorsing Kinnick for President in 1956, the first election in which he would be eligible to run for the office.
Kinnick finished his first year of law school third in a class of 103, then enlisted in the Naval Air Corps Reserve. He was called to active duty three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. “May God give me the courage and ability to so conduct myself in every situation that my country, my family and my friends will be proud of me,†he wrote in one of the black notebooks he kept as a record of his war service.
Conditions in the South, which he witnessed while undergoing flight training in Florida, appalled him. “The inequities in human relationships are many,†he wrote, “but the lot of the Negro is one of the worst…Kicked from pillar to post, condemned, cussed, ridiculed, accorded no respect, permitted to no sense of human dignity. What can be done I don’t know…When this war is over the problem is apt top be more difficult than ever. May wisdom, justice, brotherly love guide our steps to the right solution.â€
On June 2 1943, at 8:30 am, Nile Kinnick took off in a Grumman F4F Wildcat Navy fighter plane on a routine training flight from the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Lexington, which was then sailing in the gulf of Paria in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela. Shortly before 10am, another pilot, Ensign Bill Reiter, noticed that Kinnick’s plane had an oil leak. He warned him of the trouble by radio and started to follow him back to the ship. About four miles from the carrier, the leak became much more serious. Kinnick could not land on the Lexington without endangering other planes on the deck, so he elected to ditch it in the water. â€He was calm and efficient throughout and made a perfect wheels-up landing in the water,†Reiter wrote the Kinnick family. Reiter saw Kinnick in the water free of the plane, so he flew back to the carrier to direct the rescue craft. When the vessels reached the crash site, there was no trace of either plane or pilot. 24. Brother Ben died 15 mos later as a Marine pilot shot down over the Pacific.
