Finding Treasure: The uncovering of Nile Kinnick's 1939 Walter Camp Trophy

Finding Treasure: Part 1

Have you ever imagined finding buried treasure? Whether it's in your backyard or with a metal detector on the beach. Or what about when you do some spring cleaning? You clean stuff out from corners of the basement and you find things you didn't even remember you had. We have all wanted to find a chest of gold now and then.

Well, what if one day you found something you really never knew you had and never even knew how it got there? And, what if it was a piece of Iowa Hawkeye Football history?

During his time at Iowa, graduate assistant Josh Larsen worked within the Iowa Athletics Department and assisted with National Iowa Varsity Club events. One morning, Josh was searching through the basement of Carver Hawkeye Arena for items for an upcoming Iowa event.

In Carver there are many storage areas and on this day Josh was lucky enough to pick this certain one. He started searching through boxes within the storage area and he quickly noticed certain boxes marked: Memorabilia.

These were boxes that were sent to the Iowa Athletics Department by past Iowa letter winners or families of letter winners who wanted to donate items to the Iowa Hall of Fame. With the opening of the HOF only months away, Josh decided to go through some boxes and do a good deed as a loyal Hawkeye fan and Iowa student by sorting through the boxes and taking items out to the HOF.

Josh sorted through some smaller boxes but soon opened a large box that had numerous old programs from Iowa football and basketball games of years past. Below the programs and under inches of dust, Josh noticed a trophy in literally a dozen or more pieces. He remembers thinking “that's a cool trophy but in bad shape” and he wondered what it commemorated.

He removed the dust from the base of the trophy to discover a silver nameplate that read: 1939 Walter Camp Award, Nile Kinnick.

Kinnick won the award as part of his 1939 campaign that lives in Iowa Hawkeye legend. The Hawkeye “Iron Men” defeated #3 Notre Dame that year as Kinnick won the Walter Camp, Davey O'Brien and Heisman trophies that year. To this day, Iowa plays Kinnick's Heisman acceptance speech before kickoff of every home football game.

Josh remembers dusting a little more to make sure he read the nameplate correctly and then got a huge smile on his face as he knew this was something he would remember the rest of his life. Josh realized this was something that needed to be at the Hall of Fame.

He quickly finished up going through the boxes and headed out to the HOF where he immediately went up to the office of Dale Arens to show him what he had found. Dale asked Josh where he found it and took over the trophy from that time.

To this day, Josh is not 100% sure where the trophy came from prior to his discovery in the closets of Carver Hawkeye Arena but it is one of his fondest memories and he was ecstatic to read about the restoration of the trophy and its many pieces.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the series: The Restoration of Nile Kinnick's 1939 Walter Camp Trophy

Joseph Larsen

Community Contributor