Hayden Fry

High Porch Picnic is a fast, fun read.

Some quick things that come to mind about Hayden....when he came to Iowa, he made the standard changes to motivate the team. Among his rules, he focused on looking like winners. The Steelers fit his vision of power and winning at his arrival. The Steelers sent Hayden some of Bradshaw’s unis, which Iowa patterned as their new look. Hayden also had the tiger hawk symbol created. The 'swarm' used by the team to come out on the field was a powerful statement he also made. Hayden particularly liked the use of black in the swarm and described how powerful of an image it is. The team still comes out of the tunnel in a huge hand holding surge...very cool. The ANF (america needs farmers) helmet sticker was important to him to connect with the community.

The pink locker rooms, of course were the main focus. But the amenities in the locker room were also sparse. The door was a bit smaller and the big deal was opposing teams had to duck to get out of their tunnel as they approached or left the stadium. Kinnick has since been remodeled last summer. I was back for the Iowa/Michigan game this past season and when I toured the new facilities, the pink takes over everything. The space is decent, but as the Michigan managers were still unloading the equipment, I saw they brought stuff to cover the pink carpeting and had several big screens of white used to cover some of the wall space. Back in the day, Bo used to have managers cover the locker room in butcher paper….so I see it still gets under Michigan’s skin.

As a trainer, we knew he always gave misleading injury reports during weekly pressers. He would even play that up on the field, dressing a scout teamer and putting him in certain drills with the impression he was playing in the game. He had some classic stories of that against Michigan with Bo over the years.