No Golden Gophers football series against rival schools has produced more ill will, tension and novelty over the years than Minnesota-Iowa.
The all-time series is in favor of Iowa, 63 wins 54 losses and two ties. The Hawkeyes, who have won 12 of the last 14 games, will try to build on that success Saturday at Huntington Bank Stadium. Iowa, 5-1 this season and 2-1 in Big Ten games, is about a 6-point favorite to win against Minnesota, 4-2 and 2-1.
Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck is 1-8 against Iowa, but the one victory in 2023 will forever be remembered in the colorful tome about the rivalry. Minnesota hung on in the fourth quarter for a 12-10 road win after Cooper DeJean’s punt return for the go-ahead Iowa score was negated after officials determined that prior to fielding the football, he signaled an illegal fair catch.
Iowa fans threw bottles, cans, and food onto the field to express their frustrations. The Minnesota bench was targeted with debris, forcing players to move out of their sideline area. Players and coaches were concerned about their safety.
Justin Gaard, sideline reporter on the Gopher radio network, put this up on X regarding the game: “This is year 13 on the sidelines. Trying to recall if fans anywhere have ever thrown so much stuff on the field like Iowa fans did tonight. I don’t remember it ever happening like that.”
Back at home after the game Fleck and wife Heather toasted Minnesota’s first win in Iowa City since 1999 by having a “teeny bit” of bourbon from a bottle the coach had been saving for a first victory over Iowa, having lost six straight since he became Gopher coach in 2017.
Former Gopher quarterback Tanner Morgan, a high school player in Kentucky, was in Fleck’s first recruiting class in 2017. “I mean, I learned about it (the rivalry) early on, as soon as I got to Minnesota,” he told Sports Headliners.
As the starting quarterback he remembers playing in Iowa City in 2019 when the Hawkeyes defeated a team that would go on to have an 11-2 record. He suffered a concussion during the 23-19 loss with the Gopher leader’s girlfriend (now wife) watching from the stands in Kinnick Stadium.
Morgan was on the coaching staff in 2023 when “people were throwing beer bottles and all those things.” No wonder Morgan said it was “extremely rewarding” to win that year (following six straight losses as a player) and after the game holding the pig “definitely meant a lot.”
The pig, of course, is the Floyd of Rosedale Trophy that goes annually to the winning team. The idea of a trophy was that of Minnesota governor Floyd B. Olson because of tensions between the two schools and states.
In 1935 both the Gophers and Hawkeyes were undefeated going into their game in Iowa City. The year before, according to the Gopher media guide, the Minnesota players had “roughed up” Iowa star Ozzie Simmons so badly he had to leave the game. As a prelude to the 1935 game, Iowa governor Clyde Herring said, “If the officials stand for any rough tactics like Minnesota used last year, I’m sure the crowd won’t.”
Olson responded, “Minnesota folks are excited over your statement about Iowa crowds lynching the Minnesota football team. I have assured them you are law abiding gentlemen and are only trying to get our goat. …I will bet you a Minnesota prize hog against an Iowa prize hog that Minnesota wins.”
Later Olson commissioned the creation of the bronze pig, Floyd of Rosedale.
That 1999 win and environment at Kinnick Stadium was recalled the other day by then Minnesota head football coach Glen Mason. “Well, it’s, you know, it’s a tough place to play because…the stands are so close to the field. There really isn’t any sideline and they’re right there.
“The one thing I used to always talk about to the players was that you know, you’re involved in the game, which is funny because you’re not involved in what’s behind you. The heckling, the harassment (that) takes place (at Kinnick Stadium) is quite intense.”
The crowd can be a distraction and so, too, can the pink visiting locker room. “Well, it goes back to (Iowa head coach) Hayden Fry,” Mason said. “He was a psychology guy, and it was supposed to put you in, I don’t know, a mellow mood. …”
Mason told his players “not to worry” about the locker room. Rather, “worry about the guys in black and gold you’re going to have to block and tackle.”
Morgan said the pink environment didn’t psych him out. “…It’s actually really nice because it’s spacious. I always enjoyed it.”
In the closing seconds of that 1999 game Minnesota linebacker Sean Hoffman deflected an Iowa fourth down pass in the end zone to preserve a 25-21 victory. “…We were out of linebackers, and he (Hoffman) hurt his shoulder,” Mason said. “He was coming off the field with his shoulder hanging and I said, ‘Sean you gotta go back in. We got no one else.’
“And he turned around and went back in and the next play they threw a pass, and to this day how he got that arm up with a bad shoulder I don’t know. But he knocked the ball down. And if they would have scored, we wouldn’t have won. And we wouldn’t have gone to a bowl game. Sean Hoffman.”
Mason reveled in coaching courageous players and Hoffman fit the mold. “He was as tough as they come.”
Mason’s 2002 team lost 45-21 to Iowa in the Metrodome. After the game, delirious Iowa fans stormed the field, tore down a goal post and tried to carry it out of the stadium.
Does that incident rile up Mason?
“If I was going to be mad at anybody about that, I’d be mad at me,” said Mason who beat the Hawkeyes three consecutive times from 1998-2000. “You’re responsible for trying to keep a team from beating you and then didn’t get it done, so, it is what it is.”
Former Gophers head coach Joe Salem defeated Iowa three times from 1979-1981. “We should have beat them four in a row,” Salem told Sports Headliners. “We dropped a touchdown pass in the end zone late in the (1982) game.”
No Gopher coach is more famous for his connection with the rivalry than Salem, now 88 and living in his hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. One of his sons used to say that his dad had a certain look during Iowa week.
“I think they all (my players) knew the way I felt,” Salem said. “I probably should have brought a different attitude (against other opponents). I should have done that to more teams.
“It (Iowa) was a big game. It was the only game as far as I was concerned.
“You know, Michigan and that other stuff was big, yeah. But that one had a little more emphasis than everything else. …I liked to go down there (Iowa City).”
Salem, whose overall record was 19-35-1 during his tenure from 1979-1983, saw his teams win twice at Iowa. “Yeah, I mean it was a fun place to play. I mean those people were crazy and they were wild. …”
Every season during the week leading up to the Iowa game Salem would troll the Hawkeyes and their fans by wearing bib overalls at practice. “…The first time I came out in them everybody is laughing and having a good time with it, and all that jazz. But it was just another way of saying, we’re playing the farmers. The farmers from Iowa is what it was.”
Fry, always the psychologist, wore a straw hat and bib overalls after the 1982 game. Salem retorted that he was way ahead of Fry, having worn his farmer’s outfit during game week.
What was it about Iowa and the Hawkeyes that fired Salem up like nobody else? “That happened from my playing days. That was Warmath’s big game, I think, and we always got ready for Iowa. … So, it was always a big game in my heart, anyways.”
Warmath, as in head coach Murray Warmath, was Salem’s college coach and later worked for him as an assistant. For most of Salem’s playing career at Minnesota he was a backup quarterback, but he has a special place in Gopher history because of his heroics in the 1960 game in Minneapolis when the No. 1 ranked Hawkeyes came to town.
It was Salem who came off the bench to help spark key plays for the offense on a day when much of the game story was the punishing defense led by Big Ten MVP and All-American nose guard Tom Brown. The No. 3 ranked Gophers just dominated the defensive line of scrimmage and physically manhandled the Hawkeyes in a 27-10 outcome that catapulted Minnesota to the Rose Bowl for the first time ever and to a first national championship since 1941.
The game atmosphere was electric inside old Memorial Stadium. An overflow crowd of 65,610, including an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Hawkeyes fans, watched the most prestigious matchup in Minnesota-Iowa history.
Warmath was a hero and was hoisted on to the players’ shoulders in the delirious moments after the game. In the coach’s biography, The Autumn Warrior, author Mike Wilkinson reported “the crowd went crazy” and fans also hoisted Salem up off the ground.
Wilkinson, now 82, is nearly a lifelong ardent Gopher football fan. “I’ve been steamed up (about Iowa) since I was 10 years old. Bob McNamara in ’54; the Gophers won 22-20. I thought that was a big deal. …It’s always been a rivalry. I think I want to beat them more than Wisconsin. We’ve beaten Wisconsin recently. Iowa we’ve beat once in 12 years. …They’ve got our number.”
Wilkinson also offered this: “Their fans aren’t the most civil and well behaved. They’re not like Nebraska or Penn State fans.”
McNamara was an All-American halfback from Hastings who helped lead the Gophers to that 22-20 win and a final 7-1 record in coach Murray Warmath’s first season in Minneapolis.
With more than 65,464 fans packed into Memorial Stadium, the game’s highlight came in the first half with the score tied at 7-7. McNamara received an Iowa kickoff at Minnesota’s 11-yard line and made an 89-yard touchdown run that deserves a place among the most determined efforts in program history.
McNamara shook off Iowa tacklers, refusing to go down. Warmath said in The Autumn Warrior that the run was indeed the stuff of legends. “It was the finest example of brilliance and desire I have ever seen,” the coach praised.
It’s been 72 years since McNamara’s fabled run that inspired future Gopher fans like Wilkinson. The Gophers haven’t won at home like they did in 1954 since 2014 when they routed Iowa 51-14.
Minnesotans would relish seeing the pig come home, just as the Little Brown Jug did on October 3 when the Gophers upset Michigan, 20-14, at the Bank. Unfortunately, the Gophers looked like they were still celebrating the glitzy win at Purdue on October 10 when the Boilermakers embarrassed them 41-13 in West Lafayette.
Morgan, who is “fired up” for Saturday’s game, predicts the Gophers are “gonna be prepared for Iowa.”
Minnesota fans hope that’s true and that players and coaches have a certain look in their eyes like the old coach in Sioux Falls who says “you always get ready for that one.”
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