Hawkeye Connections Help Boettger Build the Stally Brand

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- One lesson Ike Boettger learned while playing high school, college, and professional football was the value of teamwork. Now, relying on teamwork is making him a successful entrepreneur.

Boettger graduated from the University of Iowa in 2017 with a degree in enterprise leadership. Before receiving his diploma, Boettger started at right tackle for the Hawkeye football team that won the Big Ten West Division in 2015. The next season, he moved to left tackle and was named honorable mention all-Big Ten. Boettger played 36 NFL games and spent time with five teams, most of that with the Buffalo Bills. 

In 2024, as Boettger transitioned out of the NFL, he came up with the idea for an apparel company named Stally. Stally blends country lifestyle, athletics, and entrepreneurial spirit into apparel that fits in anywhere from a county fair to a football tailgate or startup pitch competition.

Shortly after hatching the idea, Boettger benefited from another form of teamwork — the Hawkeyes-helping-Hawkeyes variety. While growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, Boettger always had a passion for sports, but even though he didn’t recognize it at the time, he was also inundated with entrepreneurship. His father, a pastor at Nazareth Lutheran in Cedar Falls, had a side hustle of raising pigs so his mother could stay home and focus on her own entrepreneurial venture, Barn Happy, an Iowa-themed gift shop. For the Boettgers, entrepreneurship still is a family affair. 

Click HERE to read the entire article.