Hawkeyes have had flip sides to Kadyn Proctor’s flip, so flipping out about it might be two-faced

Besides the fact it wouldn’t have been dignified …

There may have been another good reason why you didn’t hear Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz or recruiting director Tyler Barnes criticize Kadyn Proctor at their Wednesday Signing Day news conference.

To hear some tell it early in the week, Proctor’s decision to change his commitment from the Hawkeyes to Alabama did more to imperil the happiness of Iowans than the impending blizzard.

Five-star anythings in football are unicorns in Iowa. For Southeast Polk offensive lineman Proctor to flip so late in the recruiting game after verbally pledging to Iowa in June had a lot of Hawkeye fans flipping out.

It was amazing how many Hawkeye fans seemed to know so much about Proctor, his family, and how much money Alabama was funneling their way. Or were they assuming they knew? Or dare I say it, pretending?

Ferentz and Barnes, however, kept civil tongues and focused on the prep players who did sign national letters of intent to join Iowa next season. Which included Teegan Davis of Princeton, Ill., who switched his commitment from Eastern Illinois to Iowa this week.

The next gasp of outrage you hear about Davis’ flip will be the first.

I did a quick search-engine quest to locate Eastern Illinois fans besmirching Davis’ motives and character, and found nothing in my exhaustive 30 seconds of research. The school got a measure of revenge Wednesday, though, when its men’s basketball team won at Iowa as a 30-point underdog.

Davis got a late opportunity that appealed to him and seized it. As did Proctor, who had verbally committed to Iowa six months earlier, before the current Hawkeyes team made it even more apparent how much a blue-chip blocker was needed.

Iowa has lost other commitments over the years. Everyone has. Among Iowa’s most-memorable is Cedar Falls’ Ross Pierschbacher, another mega-offensive line recruit, who switched from Iowa to Alabama in 2013. Flippers stink.

Or do they? Freshman running back Kaleb Johnson certainly made a good first impression at Iowa, with 762 rushing yards this season. He committed to California in June 2021, switched to Iowa four months later. The Hawkeyes had never stopped recruiting him.

Former Hawkeyes Desmond King won the 2015 Jim Thorpe Award and was a first-team All-America cornerback. Former Hawkeye tackle Daviyon Nixon was the 2020 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year.

King flipped his commitment from Ball State to Iowa. Nixon discarded his commitment to Northern Illinois in favor of the Hawkeyes. Geno Stone, who like King is a former Hawkeye defensive back still employed in the NFL, shed his Kent State commitment to sign with Iowa.

As with nearly everything else, there is a class system in major-college football. If you flip from a Mid-American Conference program to one in the Big Ten, it’s understood and forgiven. It’s probably the same way Alabama fans look at taking a verbally committed player from Iowa.

Iowa isn’t Eastern Illinois. And it isn’t Alabama.

The best flip story in Hawkeyes history belongs to wide receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette.

Smith-Marsette committed to Rutgers on Dec. 11, 2016, then decommitted on Jan. 23, 2017. Six days later, he committed to Minnesota via Twitter, only to quickly delete the tweet. Three days after that, he signed with Iowa.

That’s just a prologue, however. In Smith-Marsette’s final home game at Iowa two years ago, he caught a 53-yard touchdown pass from Spencer Petras — who decommitted from Oregon State and signed with Iowa — in the third quarter of the Hawkeyes’ 28-7 win over Wisconsin.

It was Smith-Marsette’s second TD of the quarter. He celebrated by doing a front-flip into the end zone. Great flip, lousy landing. Smith-Marsette hurt an ankle and had to go to the locker room to get a walking boot.

"Do I regret the flip? No. Would I do it again? Yeah," Smith-Marsette said.

Two days later, he was named the Big Ten’s Offensive Player of the Week. Iowa’s subsequent games against Michigan and Missouri were canceled. So the Wisconsin game was Smith-Marsette’s last at Iowa.

He came to Iowa flipping and left the same way.

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