Miller Time Bowling with Pat Angerer

This is a repost and maybe a re-post of a re-repost. Anyway, if you have something good, milk it, right?

I used to do (and would love to strike up again, but ship probably has sailed) home interviews with seniors. Off the top of my head, Bruce Nelson, Mike Klinkenborg, Albert Young, Matt Roth and Pat Angerer.

Here's that piece on Angerer. This ran before the 2009 season, which turned out pretty well.

If I sat in my basement and drank all of my beer, I could not make this stuff up. Make sure to click the video, too. It's Angerer in a few minutes perfectly summing up his ride at Iowa.

Get this man in broadcasting, stat!

BETTENDORF - A pair of black sweat socks went flying out the window at a busy intersection in Bettendorf.

This is the true story of four friends ... who bowl together ... and have their bowling observed by a reporter ... to find out what happens when the bowling stops being polite ... and starts getting real.

Three blocks from Miller Time Bowling, it's too real for Tom Langford. His socks ended up in the ditch.

'Take one of my socks,” Pat Angerer said. 'Put it on your lead foot. It's better than nothing.”

Four high school friends proceed to bowl away a lazy summer Sunday. Why bowling?

'It keeps us out of trouble,” Angerer said.

These are four young men staring adulthood in the face. Langford, 23, is helping out coaching the Minnesota State linebackers after missing out on a bid for a sixth year of eligibility. John Davis, 22, is in the Army and working toward special forces. Greg Reckman, 22, is a criminal justice major at Iowa State.

You know Angerer, 22. He's the Iowa Hawkeyes' all-Big Ten middle linebacker. At Miller Time Bowling, he's somewhat recognizable in a Bettendorf T-shirt.

In the lane to the left, a kids' birthday party sings and bowls. To the right, some very good bowlers spin strikes. The Angerer crew makes noise. There's the 'psych outs,” some slapping and a few downright heckles.

'Greg, you're scaring the kids,” Angerer says just above the din of the pins.

Back at home

This is in direct contrast to the foursome's behavior at the Angerer residence, a cozy home on a nice, quiet street in Bettendorf.

Cliff Angerer answers the door. He's about 5-foot-6, bald with a gray beard and a block 'I” tattoo with a Herky logo on one forearm. Mary Angerer welcomes the boys into the kitchen, where they sit and talk while Pat conducts an interview in the family room.

The walls are covered with family photos. Mary had four children - Johnny, Nate, Chris and Meagan - with her first husband before he died. Their last names are Willey and they're older than Pat. That didn't stop the rough play. Once, when Chris was training for mixed martial arts, he whupped up on Pat ... in the backyard ... on a trampoline.

'He probably put me in every submission they have,” Angerer laughed. 'We'd get DVDs from Family Video and go in the backyard and practice on a trampoline.”

Chris is 6-foot-8 and six years older than Pat.

Wait, trampoline?

'Yeah,” Pat laughs. 'Like that made it any safer.”

Pat is the youngest of Mary Angerer's five children.

Pat, you see, is the miracle baby. (Future 'psych out” material for the bowling league, right there.)

Miracle baby

'I met Cliff and we had a little miracle and that was Patrick,” Mary said. 'We thought we were finished. And I remember the day we found out we were going to have a boy.”

Cliff had been to an Iowa basketball game with a friend. He got home and they all thought, 'it'd be so neat to have a kid who would play football for Iowa.”

'And then we got the call,” Mary said. 'At the time, I was 39 and they (doctors) were checking to make sure everything was OK. I had a test in Iowa City. They called and said it was a boy.”

This is Cliff's retirement. He worked 38 years at Alcoa. Now, with a part-time job cutting fairways at Glynns Creek, his job is to follow his Iowa football playing son.

'It feels, it feels ...” said Cliff, whose license plates read 'PA43LB.” 'Well, a proud dad, you might as well put it. That's probably every dad's dream, especially if you live in Iowa. I've been a Hawkeye fan all my life. Dreamed of having a son play. It's amazing.”

It started with 'they called and said it was a boy.”

'You knew he'd be something crazy because he was wild and kicking all the way,” Mary Angerer said.

'Something crazy” is a personality fans gravitate to.

Turning it around

After compiling just one tackle his sophomore year, Angerer pulled himself back from the brink of depth chart anonymity. His rotten sophomore year has been well chronicled. He lost twenty-something pounds during a summer bout with mononucleosis and never found his physical stride.

That was the year his good friend, Hawkeye teammate and roommate Alex Kanellis, had to retire because of concussions. This was coming off a scary freshman year when Mary Angerer beat back colon cancer. ('You were just praying, but she's a bad ass,” Angerer said.)

'That year was (bleepy), but I definitely needed it,” said Angerer, who led the Hawkeyes with 107 tackles and five interceptions last season. 'It put a lot of things into perspective. I don't take things for granted. It was definitely a blessing. God puts brick walls in front of you not to stop you, but for you to prove how much you want them.”

As a freshman, Angerer played in every game. Maybe that caught up to him. Remember, it's fun to be a football player off the field, too.

'Pat would be the first guy to tell you this, but he was the guy having the most fun downtown,” fellow linebacker A.J. Edds said. 'He finally figured out if he wanted to be a key guy on the team, on the field, he had to make some decisions on what was important to him.”

A dedicated Angerer showed up last fall.

'I said to myself, everything football,” he said. 'Eating, sleeping and everything. I was kind of a loser, but it's worth it.

'Coaches are investing a lot into us. They're paying for our school. They're giving us all kinds of money to live and pay rent, The least we can do is live right. We owe that to them.”

Angerer is living so 'right” now that he's sleeping in one of those high-altitude tents that pump oxygen into your body to aid healing. It was a $2,200 investment, but he says it's worth it.

Last fall, the invested Angerer shared the No. 1 middle linebacker spot with Jacody Coleman. Angerer took the job after Pitt.

A man crush and tats

That's when the 'Chuck Norris-fixation” of Angerer started on the Internet and in the media.

Do you feel the Chuck Norris thing from fans? 'Yeah, overrated,” Angerer laughed.

The man crush thing probably has something to do with the tattoos. Angerer has them all over. It started with his brother Chris tattooing wings under both arms. Chris bought the tattoo gun and those were his first.

The latest is an American flag waving in the wind with 'Pledge of Allegiance” written above it. It took three sittings at Rock Island's Sleeve Weasels.

Angerer isn't into any real deep meaning with his body art -- 'I think people try to justify why they want to get them, but when it boils down to it, I think they just want to get one.” But his brother Nate served in the Marines and did a tour in Somalia, just before the 'Black Hawk Down” period.

Angerer holds love of country close.

'I'm very thankful and blessed to live in this country,” he said. 'The men and women who fight for our freedom ... it's unbelievable. How can you not love and respect that?”

The other part of the Norris-fication is the MMA thing with Angerer.

MMA-ness?

The Quad Cities is an epicenter of MMA-ness. Pulling into the parking lot of Miller Time Bowling, there's a car touting an MMA club. The photographer for this piece, Louis Brems, is from the Quad Cities. He and Angerer talked it up, 'I don't want Fedor to be out of his time by the time they fight.”

Angerer has always been a fan of the sport. He wrestled (and played soccer) at Bettendorf High School. You can tell the idea piques his interest, but push comes to shove, he knows it would take an entirely different kind of training than football.

'I know to get good at that you have to absolutely master it. That takes a ton of time,” said Angerer, a 6-1, 235-pounder. 'Right now, I don't know if I could last five seconds with any of those guys. I'd maybe do it as a training thing.

'Those guys are the greatest athletes on the planet. I don't think I compare to any of those guys. They're studs.”

He wants to give the NFL his best shot, but that's not even in the back of his mind. Iowa football is everything. The schedule - with road games at Penn State and Ohio State - is tough, but Angerer calls it 'opportunity.”

And then he turns down the volume on any talk of individuality or hype.

'I've got to work my ass off this year. I haven't done anything,” Angerer said. 'There are a ton of linebackers who've played at Iowa who've done a lot more than I have. I'm not a big deal. I have a ton of things to fix and I'm not looking much beyond that.”

The tattooed, Chuck Norris, MMA and middle linebacker guy is actually very quiet and humble. He's dated the same woman (Mary Porter) since his sophomore year in high school.

He loves God, family and country. He holds his friends close.

Kind of close.

He got off the couch and walked toward the kitchen. He motioned to the table where Tom, Greg and John sat.

'Don't talk to them,” he said. 'They're (bleeps).”

The kitchen erupted in laughter. And then it was time to bowl.

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