2025 Iowa Athletics Hall of Fame Spotlight: Bob Bowlsby

BY JOHN BOHNENKAMP

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- The first paying job for Bob Bowlsby (78MA) was selling soft drinks at Iowa football games at Kinnick Stadium.

When he returned to Iowa in 1991 to become the men’s athletic director, Bowlsby felt he had come full circle. And now that he’s going into the UI Athletics Hall of Fame, another circle has been completed.

“It’s just a very special place,” he says of Iowa.

Bowlsby helped usher in a new era for Hawkeye athletics. He took over for longtime men’s athletic director Bump Elliott in 1991, and he oversaw the merger of the men’s and women’s programs when Christine Grant (70BA, 74PhD), the women’s athletic director, retired in 2000.

Elliott and Grant had a significant impact on Bowlsby’s career.

“Following a legend like Bump is a daunting task,” Bowlsby says. “He always said supportive things. And it was the little things with him — he always used to save a spot for me at the Rotary Club meetings to sit with him because he knew I was busy and was going to probably be late.”

Grant came to Bowlsby for advice when she was looking for a new women’s basketball coach in 2000. Bowlsby, who knew the three candidates for the job, recommended Lisa Bluder, whom Grant would hire. A few months later, Grant retired.

“When she came in and told me that she was going to retire, she said almost in the same breath, ‘And I’ve recommended to the president that we merge the programs,’” Bowlsby recalls. “I have never in my entire career had a nicer professional compliment than that, because I knew how much it meant to her.”

Bowlsby’s biggest hire was football coach Kirk Ferentz to replace the legendary Hayden Fry in 1998. He remembers how during the interview process Bob Stoops (83BBA), one of the other candidates for the position, accepted the head coaching job at Oklahoma.

“I got beat up for not hiring Bob, but I think Kirk’s turned out pretty good,” Bowlsby says. “By the time he finished interviewing, we knew we had the right guy. We had some long afternoons his first couple of years. But what we saw was his teams got better in the second half of the season than they were in the first half, and his teams were better in the second half of games than they were in the first half, and that’s a mark of quality coaching.”

Bowlsby left Iowa in 2006 to become Stanford’s athletic director. He later served as Big 12 commissioner from 2012-2022.

Bowlby was Iowa’s athletic director when the stadium went through an $87 million renovation project, completed in 2006. And he returns to the stadium this fall for the first time since the latest renovation project in the north end zone was completed in 2019.

“Kinnick is such a special place,” Bowlsby said. “There’s nothing that beats a big game day.”

Bob Bowlsby (Administration)
Became the University of Iowa’s 10th men’s athletics director in June, 1991, serving in the position from 1991-2006… named the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Central Regional Athletic Director of the Year and Sports Business Journal National Athletics Director of the Year in 2001-02… appointed to the 15-member United States Commission on Opportunities in Athletics by President George W. Bush in 2002-03… served as President of the Division I-A Athletic Directors’ Association from 2002-03 and had a five-year term on the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament Committee from 2001-05… was the chair of the NCAA Tournament and Selection Committee for the 2004 Final Four in San Antonio and 2005 Final Four in St. Louis… directed the merger of the Iowa men’s and women’s athletics programs into a single unit in 2000, supervising 24 sports… hired Kirk Ferentz to replace Hayden Fry as Iowa’s head football coach and Tom Brands as the Hawkeye wrestling coach… oversaw the planning, construction and renovation of more than $100 million in campus projects, including the $87 million project at Kinnick Stadium… served as the director of athletics at Northern Iowa (1983-91) and Stanford (2006-2012) and was the Big 12 Conference Commissioner from 2012-2022… native of Waterloo, Iowa… earned his master’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1978.