maly, too: My Neighbor Al Got Fired Up When I Told Him About Nebraska's New Football Coach. Al Thought the New Guy Was Ex-Hawkeye Mike Reilly Of Dubuque. I Said He Had the Wrong Mike. It's Mike Riley Of Oregon State. Al Said, 'Mike Who From Where?'

Thursday, December 4, 2014

My Neighbor Al Got Fired Up When I Told Him About Nebraska's New Football Coach. Al Thought the New Guy Was Ex-Hawkeye Mike Reilly Of Dubuque. I Said He Had the Wrong Mike. It's Mike Riley Of Oregon State. Al Said, 'Mike Who From Where?'

By RON MALY

My Neighbor Al, the Health Nut came over for a cup of Italian Dark Roast at mid-afternoon.

He was in a decent mood, which is usually the case after he's had an appointment with one of his doctors.

"I feel like I could run 10 miles!" Al told me.

"Easy now," I said. "Ten miles might be about 9 miles too many. How come you're feeling so good?"

"Because my LDL went from 100 to 90 on my latest blood test."

I know all about LDL and HDL. LDL is bad cholesterol and HDL is good cholesterol. I'm well aware that Al has been working on his LDL, trying to get it as low as he can. In addition to taking a Lipitor tablet every night for his cholesterol, he's swallowing three fish oil pills every morning.

"That's great, Al," I said about his improved LDL score. "But let's talk about your cholesterol some other time. Right now, I want to talk some football. Did you hear that Nebraska hired a new coach today?"

"No, I didn't," Al said. "Who is he?"

New Nebraska coach Mike Riley

"Mike Riley," I answered.

"You mean the guy from Dubuque who used to play linebacker for the Iowa Hawkeyes, the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings in the1960s?" Al asked. "After his playing days were over, I listened to him talk football on radio station WMT in Cedar Rapids. He was Ron Gonder's color man on the Iowa broadcasts. Damn good color man. But when did he leave radio work and go into coaching?"

"No, not that guy, Al." I said. "I'm not talking about Mike Reilly of Dubuque. I'm talking

Ex-Hawkeye, Bear, Viking Mike Reilly

about Mike Riley of Oregon State. Different spelling of the last name."

"Mike Who? Mike Riley of Oregon State?" Al said. "I thought there was only one team in Oregon, and it was the University of Oregon. I didn't know football was a major sport at Oregon State."

"Well, Oregon State actually has a Division I team," I said. . "I know all we ever hear about is Oregon and those flashy green and yellow uniforms. Mike Riley coached Oregon State to a 5-7 record this season."

"You mean Nebraska hired a guy who went 5-7 this season to to replace Bo Pelini, who was fired after going 9-3?" Al said. "What kind of sense does that make?"

"Probably no sense at all," I answered. "Riley no doubt wanted out from under Oregon's shadow. The Huskers aren't in anybody's shadow in Nebraska--at least not in football. But Creighton is the best basketball school over there."

"Was Mike Riley the first choice at Nebraska?" Al asked.

"I doubt it," I said. "I'm hearing that Bret Bielema, the old Iowa linebacker who coached at Wisconsin and now is at Arkansas, turned down the Nebraska job before it was offered to Riley."

"Too bad," Al said. "It would've been fun having Bielema back in the Big Ten. I always liked his postgame handshakes with Jim Walden when he was playing for Iowa and Walden was coaching Iowa State.

"Pour me another cup."

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.