Evy: The Championship Season

Sept. 22, 2010

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The UI Athletics Department will celebrate the Forest Evashevski era of football at the UI Saturday with the staging of its second “Throwback Game.” The 2010 Hawkeyes will wear uniforms that have the look of the 1960 team – Evy’s eighth and final at the UI – that won the Big Ten Conference title when they entertain Ball State at 11 a.m., Iowa time inside historic Kinnick Stadium. The following is a excerpt from the book, “75 Years With the Fighting Hawkeyes,” by Dick Lamb and Bert McGrane. It talks about the significant coaching decision made by Evy in 1956 that paid off handsomely for the Hawkeye football program.

A favorable schedule in 1956 fitted into the business of perfecting the new attack. Adjustments needed after the Wisconsin game, particularly the need to strengthen a rushing offense, were made a week later against an overmatched team from the University of Hawaii. The Hawkeyes, far too strong for the Islanders, were able to get 42 men into the contest and win, 34–0. Play was generally ragged, Iowa losing the ball four times on fumbles, but it outgained the visitors 331 yards to 78.

The Hawaii game put an end to any experimenting. The rest of the way was over the rockiest kind of road with Purdue, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio State and Notre Dame ahead as regular season opponents. In the Purdue game at Lafayette, the Hawks again had to contend with the exceptional passing of Leonard Dawson, along with the receiving of giant Lamar Lundy, among others. It was a 7–7 standoff in the first quarter, Mel Dillard of the Boilermakers matching an early Iowa score when Ploen threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Jim Gibbons.

Bill Happel raced the last six yards of an Iowa march in the first minute of the second quarter and Dawson countered for Purdue with a scoring pass to Tom Fletcher from the 18-yard line. Again they were tied, this time at 14–14. Still in the second quarter Iowa came on again and once more Happel climaxed the move with a 30-yard run to the goal. Kenny Ploen’s conversion, along with two earlier by Bob Prescott, gave Iowa a 21–14 lead at the half. The scoring slowed in the last two periods, but not the pace. Purdue stopped every Iowa threat. Dawson engineered a passing blitz for Purdue but not until the fourth quarter was about half gone, when he fired a throw to Lundy, did the Boilermakers score again. That pass, from 20 yards out, threw fear into Iowa but Dawson missed the extra point. There was still time for Purdue to threaten again and threaten they did. Starting from their 4-yard line the Boilermakers advanced to Iowa’s 21 where a pass was fumbled and Iowa recovered.

Ninety seconds remained and the Hawkeyes ran out the clock to win their second one-point victory of the season, 21-20. Purdue gained 405 yards, 242 of it on 17 completed passes. Iowa moved the ball 349 yards, including 290 on the ground. Bill Happel gained 99 Hawkeye yards in 12 carries and Don Dobrino 94 in 15 trips with the ball. The Hawkeyes had won five in a row for the first time since 1928, and stood as the only undefeated, untied team in Big Ten ranks.

Game Number 5 of the season was in the record, but opponent Number 6 was Michigan. The game was played at Iowa and for once an Iowa victory appeared to be in the making. It was Homecoming and Coach Forest Evashevski had never tasted defeat at a homecoming, either as a coach or player. Further, the Hawks had not lost a game on their home field in more than three years; but, the Iowa coach never had won from his alma mater in three previous games.

A record stadium throng of 58,137 watched the Hawkeyes bounce back brilliantly from an early Ron Kramer field goal to score twice and hold a 14–3 halftime lead. Hawkeye followers, encouraged by the advantage, nursed fond hopes for the first Iowa victory over the Wolverines in thirteen games.

Michigan killed that hope. Grinding it out on the ground and superior in passing, the Wolverines scored a third quarter touchdown then applied the customary heartache by consuming much of the fourth quarter with an 80-yard march which ended behind the Iowa goal line with 66 seconds left to play. The 17–14 defeat was the only blot on the Hawkeyes record, and John Herrnstein could take the bows. Six times on the fateful, last minute Wolverine march, he crashed out first downs by inches to keep the drive going.

The loss to Michigan, acknowledged by Evashevski to be the most bitterly disappointing of his coaching career, was compounded when it was learned that seven of his first twenty-two men had received disabling injuries. The problem of defeating upcoming Minnesota seemed almost insurmountable. The Gophers were undefeated; they had beaten the same Michigan team by two touchdowns, and a victory over Iowa would send them Rose Bowling on New Year’s Day. The technical preparation of the Hawkeyes was good during most practice sessions. University President Virgil Hancher, visiting a mid-week workout, commented: “Some of the best teaching in the University is done on this field.”

The tension and tedium on the morning of the Gopher clash was electric. Out of the Curtis Hotel in Minneapolis and into the raw November day trooped the Hawkeyes, to board their team buses for the ride to Memorial Stadium. Coach Forest Evashevski described the ensuing minutes:

“As we were riding in the bus I was still concerned about the attitude and mental buildup of our squad. I felt that it wasn’t just right; that we needed something more than the normal incentive. This was provided for us when we arrived at the stadium.”

“As our squad left the buses and went to the pass gate they were stopped by the Minnesota gatekeeper who wouldn’t permit them to enter the dressing room without their pass tickets. I had been given the passes but by the time I got there the boys were all standing around trying to get in. The gatekeeper was properly insistent and as I walked up, ready to hand him the tickets, he turned to me and said, rather harshly, `You know better than this. You know you were given tickets and that you can’t get in without them.’

“The light went on in my head immediately. I pushed the tickets back down in my pocket and told him: `Well, I’m sorry, but I guess there won’t be any game if you aren’t going to let out squad in.’ So I never did produce the tickets, and by that time they were calling for the athletic director and various other officials. I think we were kept there fifteen minutes, and this incensed our squad to no small extent. It was a very cold day and by the time they allowed us to go in anyway, our boys couldn’t wait to get out on the field to meet the Gophers. By this time they were no longer concerned about their injuries or the great rating of Minnesota. It was a psychological windfall which doesn’t happen often, but it was placed right in my lap.”

The 1956 Minnesota team was the finest the Gophers had since the days of Bernie Bierman. Its followers had already reserved all Western Airline bookings from Minneapolis to Los Angeles between Christmas and New Year’s. Iowa was a seven-point underdog. The game, played before a nationwide television audience, was a meeting of two tough teams that could move the ball or stop an opponent. The Gophers received the kickoff and marched quickly for a first down. Then on the fourth offensive play of the game a Minnesota back fumbled and two Hawkeyes pounced on the ball at the Gopher 38. The aroused Hawks began a drive, rammed their way to the one-yard line, highlighted by a clutch 7-yard toss from quarterback Ploen to reliable Jim Gibbons. Fred Harris was called upon and he stampeded into the end zone. Bob Prescott kicked the extra point. More than 55 minutes of playing time remained but there was never another touchdown. Iowa’s defense was furious. The Hawks caught fire. They helped force six Minnesota fumbles, and recovered half of them. Three times they captured Minnesota passes, Bill Happel snatching one just a yard from the Iowa goal and another in the final two minutes when the Gophers were make a desperate try for a score. The Hawks left the field with their coach on their shoulders, and a Sunday newspaper headlined the story: “Iowa Unpacks Minnesota’s Bags, 7–0.” Don Suchy was named national “linesman of the week” by one wire service, but 21 other Hawkeyes shared in the post game accolades. Any decision over Minnesota is cherished by an Iowa team. That one was doubly so, and most disheartening to the Gophers and their Coach Murray Warmath.

Iowa’s record was 4–1 in the conference when Ohio State arrived at Iowa stadium on November 17, 1956. The proud defending champions, possessors of seventeen straight Big Ten victories, were favored to add an Iowa scalp to their impressive, record breaking string. Hawkeye experience had been that ominous business threatened whenever the Buckeyes provided the opposition. Coach Forest Evashevski posed a penetrating challenge to his team when he told them: “You have sixty minutes to play — and the rest of your life to remember it.”

The manner in which the Iowa team rose to the occasion has become a story of the pride, the desire, and the unselfish sacrifice which Evashevski expected and received from his players. After a bruising, scoreless first half Iowa got the ball on its own 37 to start the third quarter. The Hawks went on the march, covered 63 yards in 10 plays, including a climactic 17-yard scoring pass from Kenny Ploen to Jim Gibbons. Bob Prescott missed his first extra point of the year, but Iowa had a 6–0 lead. That was the final score.

So ferocious was the Hawks defense that it permitted Ohio State no advance beyond the Iowa 32-yard line. It permitted only two pass completions for 18 yards, and it limited the Ohio ground attack, which has rushed for a modern conference record of 465 yards the week before, to only 147. The Bucks were out-first-downed, outrushed and outpassed. More importantly, they were outscored and stripped of their Big Ten title in the wake of the most important victory ever witnessed on the turf of Iowa stadium.

The Hawkeyes had earned a Rose Bowl trip. That night, at a victory celebration in the Memorial Union, university provost, Harvey Davis, solemnly advised 2,000 cheering students that there would be two additional days of Christmas vacation.

“An excellent victory deserves one day,” he said in measured academic voice, “and an extraordinary one deserves two.”

TOMORROW: Notre Dame and the Rose Bowl.