Iowa football podcast: Making the definitive Nile Kinnick documentary

Iowa actor, writer and producer Scott Siepker is the guest on this week's Hawk Off The Press podcast, discussing his new film “Kinnick: The Documentary.”

The documentary seeks to tell the definitive story of the Iowa football legend, including his playing career and life ambitions. You can watch it on Vimeo.

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Here is part of our conversation:

John Steppe: How does somebody decide, ‘hey, I want to do a documentary about Nile Kinnick’?

Scott Siepker: Well first, I grew up in real small-town Iowa, so I’ve known the name Nile Kinnick essentially my entire life. I didn’t know too much growing up. I knew the things most people know, won the Heisman Trophy, gave a great speech, and then maybe there are a few auxiliary facts that maybe some know. But that’s kind of what you know about Nile growing up, at least in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Then, when they rededicated the stadium in 2006 and put the bronze statue up, I think that put Nile once again into the forefront of Iowans’ consciousness. And heck, even the Big Ten Conference, who has his image on the coin that starts every Big Ten game.

Then there’s a little bit more that people start to look into and know, but for the most part I still think Heisman Trophy, great speech, wow he was a really good football player, probably have heard about the Notre Dame touchdown, but for the most part he’s kind of this icon. Being an Iowan, I wanted to know more about Nile and what would happen if we actually got to know who he was, instead of just a few bullet points on a piece of paper.

So about 10 years ago, after Iowa Nice came out, I was thinking about ideas, like how do we follow up this amazing luck that we just had with the Iowa Nice video? Thought about a documentary on Nile Kinnick and Jack Trice. At the time we just weren’t ready as a film troupe to make a feature length film. So that idea morphed into what would become Hawkeye Nice and Cyclone Nice. Those videos got picked up by ESPN and they eventually asked us to do original college football comedy content for them for two years, which we did.

It was really about six years ago that we started actually filming this documentary, which originally was called “Halls of Heroes” and had Jack in it as well. We found out fairly quickly on we have too much material to fit all of their stories into one film, so we ended up splitting them up and deciding to go with Kinnick first.

The long-winded answer is I wanted to do this because, honestly, as you get to know Nile, it’s kind of impossible to me that nobody’s done a documentary like this on him. It almost seems nonsensical not to go after it. However, if I did know how difficult it was to make a historical documentary, I probably never would have started on this road. But luckily sometimes naivete is the greatest gift we can ever have.

Steppe: A lot of people know the iconic parts of Nile Kinnick. He won the Heisman Trophy, he had the speech, that kind of thing. But what was he like, really, as a player?

Scott Siepker: Well as a player, he was outstanding. Back then, freshmen weren’t allowed to play. So his freshman year he just watched from the sidelines, but even in freshman practice the coaches knew they had something special.

He was just so toolsy, I guess to borrow a modern phrase. He could do everything. His sophomore year, when he actually got to be out there, he made third-team All-American, which is extraordinary because the team only won one game that year. He led the nation in punting that year. He ended up injuring himself his junior year, so it wasn’t a great, stellar season, but by the time his senior year rolls around he was in his prime and he proved himself to be the best player in the entire country that year, which is saying something when you have teams like Notre Dame, Michigan, all these teams in just the Midwest that were powers. The University of Minnesota was the power at the time. They had won something like three out of five national championships going into the late ‘30s.

Nile was able to rise above them all, so much so that the Associated Press named Nile Kinnick the Male Athlete of the Year in 1939. That’s all male athletes, including Joe DiMaggio, who hit .381 that season, including Joe Lewis, who knocked out four people defending his heavyweight championship.

I think we have forgotten just how big of a deal Nile Kinnick was in 1939. He was legitimately one of the most famous people in the country. His stock was rising. He was competing with people like Shirley Temple, as one commentator said at the time, as America’s favorite personality. That’s incredible! It’s an incredible story, what Nile was able to do.

Then to turn away professional football and return to law, just be like, ‘you know, I’ve achieved what I’ve wanted to on the gridiron, now it’s time for me to move on.’ But also, just what type of athlete was he? When he went to Iowa, he started off playing baseball and basketball, along with football. He dropped those sequentially through his years just to focus on his studies and football, but that’s how good of an athlete he was. All around. On the football field, he was great at passing the ball, great at running the ball, great at punting the ball, great at drop kicking the ball. Oh, also, he still holds Iowa’s season interception record that Desmond King just tied a couple years ago. So yeah, Nile Kinnick could do it all.

Steppe: When he gave the Heisman speech and had the line about rather warring on the gridiron than warring in Europe for World War II, how important was that in society?

Siepker: That’s really his moment where he crossed over into kind of a much bigger pop culture — it was such a big moment.

One of the things I’m most proud about this documentary is we don’t just cover Nile. We give context for what was happening in geopolitics and national politics. How Nile rose out of that situation, that zeitgeist, all of that stuff matters to his story. So we take time in the documentary to explain what’s going on in World War II, how it compares to World War I, who he was talking to when he gave that speech.

He really was just supposed to get up at the Heisman speech and thank his teammates, his coaches, the committee who voted for him and then, OK that was enough. But he didn’t. He made, essentially, a political statement. So Nile was really one of those people, if he was around today as an athlete, would not be sticking to sports. I think that’s an important lesson to take away and one of the reasons why he rose to such fame in that moment, in 1939, just after that speech.

He was talking about World War II, but to World War I veterans in that room that day, who were going to decide if Nile’s generation was going to go and fight in the second world war. It just took some stones to do that, to be honest.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com