September 15, 1979. It’s widely viewed as the day when the culture of Iowa football had a dramatic shift.
But before we dive into what happened on that day, we need to back up a little bit and talk about what happened before that day. Well, more than just a little bit. 19 years to be exact. You see, prior to 1979, Iowa football had not had a winning season since 1961. It’s what historians frequently refer to the “19-year drought”. No football coach in their right mind would ever accept a job to be Iowa’s head coach. No one, that is, except for some wild mustang from Texas who was the head coach at SMU named Haden Fry.
Hayden graduated from Baylor University with a degree in psychology. He knew that he had to change the team’s identity and mindset to believe that they could win games.
He contacted the Pittsburg Steelers and received permission to completely redesign Iowa’s uniforms to look identical to theirs, so they would feel like winners, and carry themselves with a professional attitude. He worked with Bill Colbert, a creative arts executive from Cedar Rapids, to develop the Tigerhawk logo. He introduced “The Swarm”, the tradition of players locking hands and jogging onto the field together in a slow, unified wave. This was designed to present a unified front, projecting absolute solidarity and control to both the fans and the opposing team. Lastly, he ordered the visitor’s locker room to be painted pink, to have a calming, pacifying effect on their behavior.
In Hayden Fry’s very first game coaching the Hawkeyes on September 8, 1979, Iowa came out on fire and built a massive 26-3 halftime lead against Indiana at Kinnick Stadium. In an infamous stunt, Indiana’s head coach, Lee Corso, raged at his players in the halftime locker room. He then told them that if they didn’t want to play hard they shouldn’t even bother to go back onto the field and then literally walked out of the room midway through halftime. The players were shocked and ashamed, and responded. Indiana stormed back to within 23-26, then completed the stunning reversal with a 66-yard touchdown pass with just 58 seconds remaining to win, 30-26.
The next week, on September 15, 1979, Iowa traveled to Norman, Oklahoma to take on the No. 3 Sooners who were a five-touchdown favorite. Iowa shocked the stadium by leading 6-0 in the first quarter and stayed within a single point, 7-6, at halftime. Ultimately, Oklahoma pulled away, winning the game by a final score of 21-6.
When a reporter opened the post-game press conference by suggesting to Hayden that the team had played a “pretty good game” against such a massive powerhouse, Fry bristled and delivered the legendary quote that forever killed the “moral victory” mindset at Iowa, “First, we got our butts kicked… Losing is losing and we didn’t play well. These kids have been babied and pampered so much when they lose that it makes me sick. Losing and looking good is a bunch of crap.”
The culture had become so accustomed to losing that staying close to a top ranked team like Oklahoma was considered a success. Fry recognized this psychological trap immediately and used the press conference to draw a hard line in the sand, proving that under his leadership, only actual wins would ever be acceptable. This change in mindset replaced the program’s longstanding inferiority complex with an expectation of winning.
Because the team had stayed surprisingly competitive with the No. 3 team in the country, many of the players had entered the locker room after the game feeling proud of themselves. They expected their new coach to give them an encouraging, “proud of your effort” speech. Instead, Fry walked in like a whirlwind, slammed the door, famously telling his players that, “if I see one single man with a smile on his face, I’m going to bust him in the mouth.”
Despite the harshness of the threat, the players didn’t resent Fry. They bought into his swagger entirely. Players later noted that his intense human connection outside of those angry moments made them fiercely loyal. They became terrified not of his anger, but of letting him down.
Fry’s calculated explosion worked perfectly. Two weeks later, the Hawkeyes beat Iowa State convincingly with a final score of 30-14, marking Fry’s very first victory over the Cyclones, proving to the roster that the era of accepting honorable losses was officially over.
Iowa finished the 1979 season 5-6 overall (4-4 in Big Ten conference play), and in 1980 finished 4-7 overall (4-4 in Big Ten conference play). Though Fry’s first two years at Iowa were losing seasons, they laid the foundation by bringing the team to a highly competitive .500 mark within the Big Ten.
The 1981 team went 8-4 overall, won a share of the Big Ten Championship, and earned Iowa’s first Rose Bowl berth in 23 years.
