Iowa football ‘going to swarm to all the trophies’ in show of team unity

AMES — As the final seconds ticked off during Iowa football’s 20-13 win over Iowa State, the Hawkeyes did something different.

There was no singular player sprinting to the Cy-Hawk Trophy like there may have been in other years.

Instead, players gathered between the 30 and 40-yard lines and proceeded as a group to “swarm” to the trophy — like what Iowa does when it takes the field in a pack together while holding hands.

“We swarm in, we swarm out and we’re going to swarm to all the trophies,” defensive lineman Logan Lee said. “We know what that means to us. We know the work we’ve put in and it’s everybody together. It’s not any one person.”

Swarming, 25th-year head coach Kirk Ferentz said, is “just kind of what we do.”

“It’s in our DNA,” Ferentz said. ”I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but as long as I am, we’ll keep doing that.“

The replication of Iowa's pregame tradition for postgame trophy celebrations is not a totally foreign concept. Iowa swarmed to the trophy in a similar manner during the 2015 season as well.

The 2015 swarm to the Cy-Hawk Trophy was an especially powerful moment after what happened during the week. Former Hawkeye Tyler Sash, 27, had died in his Oskaloosa home.

“We’re a family, we’re one, solid unit,” then-Iowa running back Jordan Canzeri said after the 2015 win. “It’s been in our brains all offseason, finishing together, doing everything together, doing things right over time together. It was just a decision that popped into our minds, let’s do it.”

Reincorporating the swarm tradition into how the Hawkeyes take traveling trophies is a “good thing,” as Ferentz sees it.

“The biggest reason it’s good — it meant we won,” Ferentz said. “There was no swarming last year.”

Last year — which featured the 10-7 loss to Iowa State — was a sore subject.

“I held that grudge for a whole year,” running back Jaziun Patterson said.

It especially was a sore subject because of how Iowa State players celebrated with the Cy-Hawk Trophy.

After grabbing the trophy from the corner of Duke Slater Field, they took their celebration to Iowa’s sideline near where Iowa players exit the field.

“They didn’t quite swarm to the trophy,” Lee said. “So we’re always going to show that we are one team, one unit, and we’re going to do it together.”

It visibly aggravated Iowa players and coaches at the time, as coaches and teammates held their peers back from any further confrontation.

“A lot of guys remember all the stuff that went on postgame after they won,” defensive back Cooper DeJean said, “and held that in the back of their minds when we were preparing for this game.”

Of course, the Cyclones were not the first (and likely not the last) team to do something like that.

“I always flash back to 1981,” Ferentz said. “Thought they were pretty aggressive to come over and shake hands, and they had no intention. They just split us and got the big. So that’s just part of trophy stuff.”

The Hawkeyes now will have three of their four traveling trophies — the Cy-Hawk Trophy, Floyd of Rosedale Trophy and Heartland Trophy — in Iowa City while the Heroes Trophy still resides with Nebraska.

Of course, plans to swarm to future trophies are dependent on first winning those rivalry games. Iowa had plenty of trophy-swarming opportunities in 2015. Time will tell if that is the case in 2023.

“Anyone can buy a trophy case, but you can’t buy a trophy,” Ferentz said. “To have possession of it means you earned it.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com