Cole Fisher, engineering major and linebacker

The kind of happy Cole Fisher was that September day at Kinnick Stadium when he took off his helmet and saw his mom and dad, and everyone cheered and smiled and, oh boy, getting kind of dusty in here - you can't patent that.

It wasn't a moment that can be appraised as simply 'happy.” It was an odds beater, and not in a piano-key tinkling, teary-eyed, greeting card way.

The 2015 Iowa Hawkeyes (11-0, 7-0 Big Ten) is a driven group whose mission today is topple Nebraska (5-6, 3-4), win back the Heroes Trophy and finish Iowa's first perfect season in the modern era. Fisher has had a front-row seat for this, with 92 tackles in his first season as starting weakside linebacker.

Fisher, an Omaha, Neb., native, walked out with the other seniors last weekend. He gave his mom, Cathy, a rose. He gave his dad, Todd, a bear hug. The Hawkeyes beat Purdue and then the seniors had their picture taken with the West Division trophy in the locker room afterward.

Fisher almost missed all of this. He almost made that senior walk last season. In a way, Fisher was almost too smart and too driven to get this far in football.

'I actually was sat down and kind of had a talk last year about ... we're going to see how this year goes,” Fisher said, 'and based on that, we'll see if we shouldn't just try to get you graduated.”

So, that's the 'talk talk,” the 'thanks, but we need a little more return out of the scholarship investment” talk.

'Yes, I had the talk talk,” Fisher said. 'That was kind of the time it hit home. It wasn't necessarily that they (Iowa coaches) wanted me out, but they wanted to make it very clear ... It hits home and ‘Wow, this might be over here pretty soon.'”

School was the culprit. Fisher is a civil engineering major with an elective focus area in structural engineering. That major is as difficult and as time consuming as it sounds.

Fisher excelled and took the deep dive into his major. He was named academic all-Big Ten three consecutive seasons. Because of school obligations, Fisher missed a ton of meetings or found himself trying to catch up on information while he was on the practice field.

'Last year was the worst year, that's when I missed the most time (with football),” Fisher said. Last year was the year Fisher took back-to-back 18-hour semesters that were all in engineering. A majority of the UI's engineering classes are scheduled in the afternoon, which was when the Hawkeyes were practicing last season.

How many days was Fisher able to dedicate yourself wholly to football?

'No days of the week,” Fisher said. 'I would miss meetings every single day, to be honest. What I would have to do is go in around noon with (linebackers coach Jim Reid) coach Reid and try to get meetings in then. The coaches had just finished with their meetings, so all of the information was new and could change before practice started. I would go do that, go to class, come back for maybe 20 minutes of meetings and then go back to class and then finally go to practice.”

So, to recap so far, Fisher could do football to his utmost because he was locked into a heavy academic load and engaged in an extremely complex major. He was basically working too hard in school to work hard enough to do football at the level he wanted. This sounds wrong, and, yes, it was extremely frustrating.

'I think, maybe, that the way he processes information might be a little bit of a hindrance,” Todd Fisher said. 'With an engineering mind, you go from this step to this step to this step. Unfortunately, that's great in theory, but it doesn't work on a football field.”

Fisher's support system always was there for him.

When college football teams recruit players, they're really recruiting families. Moms and dads and brothers and sisters often are an unheralded understructure in this game, which, on the college level, is so intertwined with life. Fisher was uniquely gifted in this regard.

Todd Fisher was a defensive back at Nebraska from 1981-85. Sean Fisher, Cole's older brother, was a linebacker at Nebraska from 2009-12. Cole's dad and brother knew the path and they had world-worn words for him when the bottom-line question was how badly did he still want to play football?

'I think that's a fair question for a coach to ask,” Todd Fisher said. 'I said you ultimately have to decide if you want to do this or not. I said you can't do it part way. You have to be all-in or not-in. Quitting is easy. Anyone can figure out how to quit something. I said sticking something out and finishing something, I think you'll find that to be a better outcome for your life, rather than giving into the fact that, sure, this is little hard and maybe I just call it good.

'You know the rigors that are involved with it. I'm very proud he made that decision. In the end, all I can do is throw out suggestions. You can't force them to do anything. He's a 23-year-old man now. Sometimes, when you stick things out, there's a lot more out there than you might think.”

Sean Fisher finished a business administration/pre-medicine degree at Nebraska with a 4.0 GPA. He's in his third year at the Pritzker School of Medicine, the medical school at the University of Chicago.

His take on football is it's a big, cool, fun spectacle and then there's the rest of your life and you want that to be just as big and cool and fun and fulfilling.

'Being in the midst of it, I think you have a different perception of the game than you do on the backside of things,” Sean said. 'Certainly, I enjoyed my time playing, but for the vast majority of us, the game does come to an end. For the vast majority, you do need to think of life on the backside. Academics has provided me an opportunity to do the things I want to do.

'It's important to keep a level head and realize that both are important in their own respects. In those times, it's tough, because you put so much time into preparing for games and seasons and you want to see that work come to fruition, but I think for both of us there were years where it didn't necessarily feel that way.

'But I think once you get on the backside, you have a more tangible sense of what your work academically has provided.”

(By the way, the Fishers' oldest son, Ryan, is an architect in Omaha. The youngest, Clay, is a red-shirt freshman defensive back at South Dakota. Family time is fragmented, and so, no, it's not rah-rah football story time, it's ... 'We're a pretty lighthearted family,” Sean said. 'The conversation stays pretty light and we just have a good time hanging out with each other. No backyard football or playing video games, but just enjoying the little time we do have together.”)

The clouds started to part for Cole Fisher last December. This was after he had the 'talk talk.” Iowa prepared for its bowl game against Tennessee. Fisher worked at inside linebacker and the game suddenly slowed down. With no school to grind on, he was able to practice. Fisher connected with Reid, who's been coaching football since 1973 and who's seen it all. A mentoring bond was built and that was kind of the string that led Fisher out of the deep forest.

'He said, ‘As long as you stick with it and put in the work ...'” Fisher said. 'I was making the effort and doing as much as I could. He could see that, the other coaches could see that. I made a big stride in bowl prep and he made the point that this was the first time they could see this is how Cole could be when I wasn't so engaged in school.”

Fisher continued building momentum in spring practice. Still, he was behind a few veterans on the depth chart. And then this fall camp, with no summer school and an academic year ahead of him with just five credits (including a sophomore-level engineering class that he could only now get to because Iowa changed practices to mornings this year) ...

'Something about this camp. Everything just clicked and I haven't looked back since,” he said.

Everything is new this year for Fisher. He made his first career start. He made his first career everything. Go back to Iowa's 10-6 victory at Wisconsin in October. Fisher was right there with the Badgers tight end on the fourth-down stop that sealed it for Iowa.

And, wait, what was that? Was that a fist pump?

'He's not a huge emotion guy,” Todd Fisher said. 'He's not going to jump around. That's not his thing and not his style. We did get a couple of fist pumps out of him this year. That's a pretty big step for him.”

Walking out of the Hansen Performance Center after Purdue, Iowa assistant coach LeVar Woods, who coached Fisher for a couple seasons at linebacker, noticed something he hadn't seen much.

'He said, ‘I just love seeing that smile,'” Todd Fisher said. 'He wasn't very smiley for a couple of years there. It's fun seeing him have fun. That's the main thing.”

When Fisher won the starting job in camp, he was locked in, literally. It's all football in August for the Hawkeyes. The players get an hour and a half at night and then all they want to do is sleep. Along with that, Fisher never stopped looking over his shoulder. He wanted to make sure the job he just won stayed that way.

'I guess there wasn't really a point where I could call them and say, ‘Hey, I did it,'” he said.

It finally hit after the season opener against Illinois State on Sept. 5. Fisher emerged from the locker room and saw his parents faces. The big payoff here? He said, 'It was pretty cool.”

Fisher was accepted to graduate school at the UI in structural engineering. That still is his plan, at some point. But for right now, today and tomorrow and next week for the West Division champions, Fisher is living in the moment.

And he's happy and not circus clown, sitcom happy. This was more about life, and life's about something sterner. But also something better. Maybe a lot better.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com