Iowa football proved it was ‘not a fluke’ with 1982 bowl win over Tennessee

IOWA CITY — Bob Stoops had, of course, heard about how fast Willie Gault was before the 1982 Peach Bowl.

Stoops, Iowa’s starting strong safety at the time, then saw it firsthand. The Tennessee wide receiver sped right past free safety Ron Hawley so quickly Stoops “couldn’t believe it.”

“Fortunately the quarterback overthrew him, if that’s possible,” Stoops said. “I looked back at Ron going back into the huddle, and I said, ‘Dude, you got to back up … Deeper than you usually are.’”

Gault was kept quiet after Stoops’ in-game adjustment, as the former Olympic sprinter finished the 1982 football game with only one reception.

“Maybe that was the beginning of my coaching career,” said Stoops, a two-time national coach of the year and College Football Hall of Fame inductee, in a phone call with The Gazette.

Tennessee’s overthrow was part of what turned into a very fortunate day for the Hawkeyes as they pulled away with a 28-22 win that added a jolt to the program’s already-growing momentum in the early 1980s.

“Everything just kind of fell in place for us during that bowl game,” said Chuck Long, Iowa’s starting quarterback on that team.

It was Iowa’s first bowl win in since Forest Evashevski’s 1958 team won the Rose Bowl more than two decades earlier.

It also was Iowa’s second bowl appearance in a 24-year span. The other one was Iowa’s trip to the Rose Bowl following the 1981 season, which ended in a 28-0 blowout loss to Washington.

“Going to the Rose Bowl, winning the Big Ten in ’81 really jump-started us, but losing the game I thought took a little momentum away,” Stoops said.

Earning another major bowl berth at the end of the 1982 season and winning "gave us confidence,“ Long said, and showed ”the year before was not a fluke.“ The Hawkeyes finished No. 16 or higher in the Associated Press Poll in the following five seasons.

“We felt like we were going to be a top-echelon school in the Big Ten for many years to come under Hayden Fry,” Long said, looking back at the 1982 bowl win. “That was a significant victory.”

There was no shortage of talent on the Tennessee sideline. Thirteen players heard their names called in the next two years of the NFL Draft, including star players such as Gault, Reggie White and Mike Cofer.

“I am sure we were underdogs because they had a loaded team,” Long said.

Iowa, on the other hand, was relatively young. Many key players from the 1981 team, including Andre Tippett, had graduated.

“We didn’t have a bevy of seniors on that team,” Long said. “We still were a relatively young football team and that’s what made it that much sweeter.”

The momentum began to swing Iowa’s way when Long connected with David Moritz for a 57-yard touchdown to tie the game at 7-7.

“He was a really good route-runner,” Long said of Moritz. “They had really good speed in the secondary, and he just worked them over on the route. They got flat-footed, and all of a sudden, he was behind them.”

Iowa’s second touchdown — an 18-yard pass to then-wide receiver Ronnie Harmon — was perhaps even more impressive considering the touchdown was accidental.

“I was throwing the ball away in the back of the end zone, and Ronnie came out of nowhere and caught the ball,” Long said. “I couldn’t believe the play he made. … Everything was going right for us in that game.”

By halftime, the Hawkeyes had a comfortable 21-7 lead.

Tennessee mounted a comeback in the second half, cutting the lead down to six in the fourth quarter with a couple chances to potentially take the lead.

But Iowa’s defense made key stops to preserve the 28-22 lead. First, with Tennessee facing fourth-and-1 on the Iowa 6-yard line, James Erb brought down Tennessee quarterback Alan Cockrell to stanch what seemed to be a promising drive.

Then on Tennessee’s final drive, Iowa’s Straun Joseph delivered the game-clinching sack on fourth-and-25.

“I have never seen a defense rise up on the goal line and sack the quarterback like that,” Iowa Coach Hayden Fry said, according to Gazette columnist Gus Schrader’s article from the game. “We were very tough when we had to be.”

Long went 19-of-26 for 304 yards in the win, which broke a Peach Bowl record at the time. He had an especially impressive first half, going 14-of-17 for 231 yards and three touchdowns.

Long understandably “had ups and downs,” Stoops said, as a redshirt freshman starting at quarterback. His 1,678 passing yards in 1982 were his fewest in his four seasons as Iowa’s QB1.

“Hayden Fry was ahead of his time offensively, and he was so innovative, but I was still fighting as a starting quarterback just to get a grasp of it,” Long said. “That game, I finally did. I finally came out of that game and had a grasp of it.”

After Long’s eye-opening performance in Atlanta, Stoops kidded the young quarterback.

“You waited ’til my last game here to finally figure it out,” Stoops remembers saying to Long.

As Iowa prepares to play Tennessee again 41 years later in the Citrus Bowl, Stoops and Long have some familiarity with the coach on the Tennessee sidelines.

Volunteers head coach Josh Heupel transferred to Oklahoma and played quarterback for two years, including on the 2000 team that won the national championship.

Stoops was in his first two seasons as head coach at Oklahoma. Long took over as quarterbacks coach in 2000 after Mike Leach received the head coaching job at Texas Tech.

Long described Heupel as “meticulous” and a “very gifted offensive mind.”

As memorable as Heupel’s two seasons as Oklahoma’s quarterback was — he threw for almost 7,500 yards and was the Heisman runner-up in 2000 — his recruiting visit with the Sooners was especially memorable.

“All (Heupel and Leach) did was watch tape for two days,” Stoops said. “He didn’t care about anything else. Didn’t want to see any facilities. … Took time to eat, and that was about it.”

Heupel’s 2023 Tennessee team has no Willie Gault, but the Volunteers again have a prolific offense and again are favored against the Hawkeyes.

“It's going to be a big challenge for us,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said earlier this month. “We know that.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com