Iowa’s Rusty Feth is ‘epitome of grit’ on the field and ‘gentle giant,’ humorous leader off the field

IOWA CITY — Rusty Feth is quite the fan of Bigfoot.

Yes, Bigfoot.

No, the Iowa offensive lineman does not seriously believe Bigfoot is real (although he “wanted to” believe as a kid).

It’s enough of a fascination that he has a Bigfoot tattoo on his right forearm a couple inches above his wrist. He has many tattoos — including an owl, wolf, skull and dagger — but Bigfoot is “probably” his favorite.

“To think that people believe that there’s like an eight-foot giant Bigfoot walking around is kind of cool to me,” Feth said.

But Bigfoot is more than just a fictional character that is fun to have inked on his arm. It is a symbol of Feth’s journey to eventually becoming a Big Ten offensive lineman.

"The meaning of the Bigfoot is believe in yourself, even when people don’t believe in you,“ said Feth’s father, who also is named Rusty Feth. ”Nobody really believes in Bigfoot, but Bigfoot believes in himself. … The thing behind that is for him to believe in himself.“

A two-star recruit from the Cincinnati area, Feth — he is called “Little Rusty” to avoid confusion with his father — did not have the highest-profile recruitment. Reported offers included Miami (Ohio), Bowling Green and Brown.

Iowa offensive line coach George Barnett was at Miami (Ohio) at the time and recruited Little Rusty.

“He was Rusty’s first believer in high school,” said Sharon Feth, his mother.

Injuries were an obstacle for Feth when he was at Colerain High School in Cincinnati.

Feth suffered a foot injury in eighth grade and did not play freshman football, his high school coach Tom Bolden told The Gazette.

Feth was healthy and “had a really good sophomore season,” Bolden said. By junior season, recruiting interest was picking up.

“He was just so darn athletic,” Bolden said. “Such great hand-eye coordination, being such a good baseball player. Had such good feet, playing basketball and all that. … You knew he would be special.”

But then injury issues resurfaced as a senior. He tore the meniscus in his knee in the second game of the season. Had it not been for a lightning delay that postponed the game, Feth’s plan was to play through the pain. Then an MRI the next morning showed the meniscus tear.

Feth “did whatever he possibly could” to speed up the recovery process, his mother said.

“Coach, I can play,” Bolden said, remembering Feth lobbying only three weeks into his recovery.

Bolden unsurprisingly sided with the doctors. Then as the state championship game neared, Feth called his surgeon to try to get medically cleared.

“I’ll clear you, but you’re not playing the whole game,” Sharon said, remembering the doctor’s order.

Feth did not seem to pay much attention to the latter half of that sentence.

“He played that whole game,” Sharon said. “It was crazy. I was a nervous wreck. … I’m like, ‘Please don’t hurt yourself again.’”

Feth has not drawn attention to it, but even this year, his left ring finger is “currently pointing in the wrong direction,” his father said.

”It’s pretty disgusting to be honest with you,“ his father said. ”They asked if he wanted surgery during the season, and he said, ‘Well, how long would I be out?’ And they said, ‘Three days.’ He said, ‘I’ll wait til after. I don’t want to miss anything.’“

Bolden said Feth is a “a true example and an epitome of grit.”

As tough as Feth is on the field, he is not afraid to have fun off the field.

He had the nickname “Mr. September” when he played baseball — a sport he played until he was 15 — because of the time his team won a tournament. As the team took celebratory pictures, the humorous Feth laid down on the field as if he was a model.

“We wanted to do a funny calendar,” Big Rusty said of his son who was always one of the bigger kids in his class. “That goes into his funny way of being him.”

Feth’s massive red beard, which he started as a freshman in college when he decided he did not want to cut it anymore, has been one of his ways of expressing his personality.

“I can’t picture myself without it,” Feth said. “Maybe my wedding someday, I won’t have it, but other than that, there’s nothing that will make me cut it.”

The beard is his “alter ego” at this point, his father said.

“He’s nothing without the beard anymore,” his father Rusty said. “It’s like Superman and a cape.”

Feth is confident that others, whether they will admit it or not, are a fan of the beard.

“If you ask (George Barnett), he’ll say no, but I think deep-down he is,” Feth said of the fellow redhead, “because he wishes he could grow this.”

The beard even has its own shirts. Feth has sold shirts via name, image and likeness with his red beard displayed prominently and “FETH 60” underneath it.

“When I just thought of something that I would put on a T-shirt, I just thought of my big, ugly beard,” Feth said.

The Big Rusty and Little Rusty nicknames themselves carry some irony considering Little Rusty is a 6-foot-3, 310-pound offensive lineman.

“Somehow, I’m Big Rusty still,” Feth’s not-as-big father said.

  Buy Photo

When Feth entered the transfer portal after four years at Miami (Ohio), he was certainly not under the radar anymore.

He entered the portal on a Monday, and a Virginia staffer was in his house that evening. Purdue, UCLA, West Virginia and Cincinnati were among the other schools to pursue Feth.

But when Barnett — the same coach who recruited him to Miami (Ohio) a few years earlier — called, "it was a wrap,“ Feth’s father said.

“Coach Barnett has been not only a coach, but a mentor,” said Feth’s father, or Big Rusty. “He’s been a friend of ours.”

As other schools centered their pitches around name, image and likeness funds, Barnett knew the Feth family well enough to give NIL “not even a mention” in his pitch.

“We could (not) care less,” Big Rusty said. “It was super refreshing to not even have the conversation.”

Little Rusty was one of Iowa’s last additions via the transfer portal — he committed in late January — and has turned out to be one of the most effective additions.

“You hear all the negatives about NIL, and there's plenty of them,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “But I look at some of the guys that have come in here and done a great job. He's been a stabilizer. He's a veteran guy.”

Feth, Barnett said, “changed our room that day he decided to come” to Iowa.

“The big mistake made is he went back (to Miami for the spring),” Barnett said. “He wasn’t here. So he scared the hell out of everybody, and everybody’s like, ‘Hey, we got to get to work here. We just saw this dude. This guy’s played a lot of football.’ … Everybody upped their investment.”

Barnett has recently seen Feth “hit his stride” on the field at Iowa as well.

“You're starting to see a little bit of his attitude when he plays,” Barnett said. “I think that’s what was missing a little bit early.”

Feth has allowed one sack in his 141 pass-blocking snaps this season, per Pro Football Focus.

PFF gives Feth a 98.1 pass blocking efficiency rating, which is second-highest among Iowa offensive lineman with at least 20 pass-blocking snaps.

His June enrollment put him a couple months behind other portal additions, but he adjusted quickly.

“He's meshed extremely well and extremely quickly with his teammates,” Ferentz said.

  Buy Photo

Feth — his mother Sharon described him as a “gentle giant” — also has embraced the program’s connection to the University of Iowa’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

The Iowa Wave after the first quarter, which he first experienced from the opposing sideline in 2019, is “unbelievably cool.”

“I don’t even know if words can explain it,” Feth said. “I think everyone feels that same way — everyone in the stands, everyone down in the field.”

But Feth’s care for the kids across the street does not stop there.

The offensive lineman met Nathan McDonald, the kid captain for the Week 13 Nebraska game, at the Kids’ Day open practice in August.

“He felt such a connection,” his father said. “We’ve all kind of stayed in contact with each other. … They have a cool little bond. The fact that Rusty loves that — that’s kind of the soft side of Rusty.”

Feth bought a slew of his NIL shirts — the ones featuring his trademark beard prominently — for McDonald’s family.

As for Feth’s ink, he also has a tattoo on his leg that says “tough times never last.”

"You’re always going to get through it, no matter what,“ Feth said.

The former two-star recruit, as he stood in front of reporters a few days after his fourth start in an Iowa uniform, has been proof of that.

Not every tattoo carries as much symbolism for the 6-3 offensive lineman as Bigfoot, though.

“The owl is not the most intimidating animal,” Feth said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com