Hawkeyes spring football once was overshadowed by war and everything else

Once upon a time, few paid attention to college football spring practices.

There weren’t steady streams of news stories about the coming of spring football, spring football itself, or spring football’s aftermath. There was no 24/7/365 news cycle for college football, or anything in sports for that matter. When something was in season, it was in season. When it wasn’t, it wasn’t.

An offseason. What a concept.

On April 2, 1943, The Gazette printed a wire service story about the start of the University of Iowa’s spring practices. It began:

Six men, two of them letterwinners, reported to acting Head Football Coach Jim Harris as the 1943 Iowa spring football squad. Faced Friday with more problems than has ever faced a coach at Iowa, Harris starts his career with determination. “If we start with six, we’ll keep going with six,” said Harris. “But I’m sure we’ll pick up some more men as we go along.”

One of the 39 men extended invitations to participate missed the opening practice because he had an exam to attend. Another was held out because he had a cold. One was a participant at Iowa’s baseball practice.

Yet another had an excuse with more gravity. He was soon to be inducted into the U.S. Army in the midst of World War II. Ah yes, the war.

Interim coach Harris had been declared physically unfit for military duty by Iowa City doctors. So he went to Des Moines the following week to meet with Army medics and was approved for limited service, and soon was sworn into the Army.

Eighty years later, major-college football is a military industrial complex of its own. Every high school kid who commits to play at Iowa is news. Every Iowa player likely to become an NFL draftee has his potential landing spots predicted to pieces by news outlets.

To knock Hawkeye football off the cover of an April sports section here almost requires a lightning bolt, like the Iowa women’s basketball team reaching the national-title game.

(Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic. Are the Hawkeye women basketballers now as popular or even more popular than their school’s footballers? Discuss.)

Times do change. Fifty years ago today, the Gazette sports section had nary a word about Hawkeye football. There were pro baseball and basketball roundups, but the first page of our April 19, 1973 sports section also included these items:

Camanche won the annual Beaver Relays track title in Wilton.

Cedar Rapids Washington High’s junior varsity baseball team was hitless in its season-opener but still got a 2-1 win over Cedar Rapids Jefferson.

Carol Pence shot a 43 to lead Washington over Cedar Rapids Regis in a girls’ golf dual meet.

Doug Winders rolled a 735 series at the May City bowling lanes.

Steve Durr connected on 46 of 50 targets to win the Izaak Walton League trap shoot.

The 1973 Iowa football team wasn’t mentioned in that day’s Gazette. Its spring game was the Saturday before. Fullback Phil Hayman rushed 22 times for 164 yards in front of a crowd of 4,300.

Hayman had 20 carries for 87 yards and had five catches for 72 yards over Iowa’s first three games. He missed the rest of the season because he suffered a fracture in the first vertebra of his neck in a game against Penn State. He was in a body cast for several weeks afterward.

He was a three-time 1,000-yard rusher and high school All-American at Des Moines Lincoln. To this day, Lincoln football names a Phil Hayman Most Valuable Player after the season.

Hayman had been recruited by heavyweights like Nebraska and UCLA. Which means dozens of stories would have been written about him before he touched a football in Iowa City had he come along 50 years later.

Not making a fuss about the 1973 Hawkeyes that April turned out to be a good editorial choice. They went 0-11 and remain the only Iowa football team to go through an entire season without a victory.

Saturday, the 2023 Iowa football team’s final spring practice is open to the public. You will be able to read all about it in this newspaper and its website. It’s a very big deal.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com