maly, too

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

The guy who said statistics are for losers was right. Iowa’s football team proved it in today’s 27-22 victory over Mississippi State in the Outback Bowl.

The Hawkeyes had a hard-to-believe minus-15 yards rushing and totaled just 199 yards to 342 for their Southeastern Conference opponent on offense.

Seventy-five of Iowa’s total came on Nate Stanley’s 75-yard touchdown pass to Nick Easley.

Three Iowa running backs totaled 4 yards in 15 carries.

Who cared? Nobody.

“We had s hard time blocking their front,” Hawkeye coach Kirk told reporters after the game. “Defense really bailed us out.”

Friday, November 23, 2018

I Should've Turned Down the Sound

The second-worst thing that happened in tonight’s Iowa State-Arizona basketball game in the Maui Invitational was the fact that Bill Walton was the analyst on the ESPNU telecast.

The worst thing was that Arizona rallied to somehow defeat the Cyclones 71-66 after just about everyone, including me, thought Iowa State would win.

Having to put up with the Cyclones blowing a 10-point lead and listening to Walton’s obnoxious commentary throughout the game did me in.

At least the large number of Iowa State fans in the arena on Maui had one advantage over TV viewers on the mainland.

Folks in the arena didn’t have to listen to Walton, who played basketball at UCLA and in the NBA so long ago that I wrote lots of newspaper stories about him.

Walton talked virtually non-stop during the telecast, turning the poor play-by-play guy into an afterthought.

Walton even took the time to talk about perhaps riding RAGBRAI sometime in the future.

“Can you ride a bicycle?” the play-by-play guy asked.

Walton said he could indeed ride a two-wheeler, but added that he’d need to decide “whether I want to leave San Diego and go to Iowa in July.”

Getting back to the basketball game, things went sour in a hurry for Iowa State.

The Cyclones appeared to be fully in control throughout most of the game, but then collapsed in the final minutes.

I thought Iowa State had enough to overcome its injury and suspension problems.

Shows you what I knew.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Gene Raffensperger's Journal

In one of the many conversations I had with Gene Raffensperger over the years, he told me about a personal writing project he began during his working years.

He said he wrote something every day in a journal.

It could have been about something he did, something that had been done to him, something he wished he’d have done, something he wished he hadn’t done. Maybe something else.

He told me people had asked if he planned to publish what he wrote.

“I told them no, I don’t have any plans to publish what I write,” Raff told me. “I just want my family to read it sometime.”

Raff, who was a wonderful writer and had an outstanding newspaper career, died last Tuesday in Cedar Falls at the age of 89.

Hopefully, Raff’s family now has the journal and is enjoying what he wrote.

Not a Pretty Picture

It didn’t look any prettier to me tonight on the Longhorn TV Network than it did to Matt Campbell inside 100,119-seat Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium at Austin, TX.

I’m not Iowa State’s football coach. Campbell is.

I didn’t have an explanation. Campbell did.

“They were the more physical football team,” Campbell told reporters after Texas’ 24-10 victory.

“We struggled to tackle, struggled to win at the line of scrimmage.”

The Longhorns took a big step toward the Big 12 Conference championship game with the victory .

Iowa State has hoped to remain in the league championship conversation, but didn’t.

Texas [8-3 for the season, 6-2 in the Big 12] can reach the league’s title game by winning at Kansas next week.

“People thought we forgot how to play defense,” Texas coach Tom Herman, a former Iowa State offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, told reporters.

“We’re overachieving right now. We’re winning on toughness. We’re winning on grit.”

Iowa State’s records fell to 6-4 and 5-3 in a game that saw the Cyclones play the first half without suspended running back David Montgomery.

Texas sacked Cyclone quarterback Brock Purdy 5 times and limited him to 10 pass completions in 23 attempts for 130 yards.

Purdy went into the game with a 5-0 record since becoming Iowa State’s starter.

It was a difficult time and place for the streak to end.

Balance

Balance. It’s spelled b-a-l-a-n-c-e. And that’s precisely what Drake’s basketball team had today while beating Texas State 75-69 in front of 2,968 fans at the Knapp Center.

All 5 starters scored in double figures. Nick McGlynn [pictured] had quite a day, scoring 16 points and grabbing 11 rebounds.

Nick Norton scored 15 points, Brady Ellingson 13, Tremell Murphy 10 and D. J. Wilkins 10.

“To close the game out, I thought we made some incredibly tough plays and, from a program standpoint, you build off those toughness-type plays,” said Drake coach Darian DeVries, whose team has a 2-1 record.

By the way, the crowd of 2;968 [the 7,152-seat Knapp Center was less than half-full] wasn’t bad considering Drake was playing at the same time the nation’s TVs were full of collegiate football games.

Another “by the way.” Drake’s football team ended its season with a 43-6 victory today over Morehead State at Morehead, Ky.

The Bulldogs closed with a 7-3
record for the season, 6-2 in the Pioneer Football League.

The Worst I've Ever Seen

I’ve been around a while and I’ve seen plenty of bad Big Ten football teams.

Don’t forget, I got a lot of experience watching losers when Iowa went 19 consecutive seasons—spread over 3 decades in the previous century—without having a winning record.

But the Illinois team the Hawkeyes crushed 63-0 today is the worst I have ever seen, and Lovie Smith of the Fighting Illini is the worst coach.

Lovie [whose salary is $4 million a year] makes Frank Lauterbur, who won 4 games in 3 seasons at Iowa in the 1970s, look like the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

The Dynasty

The dynasty continues.

Dowling Catholic of West Des Moines is the class 4A State High School football champion again.

That’s a stunning 6 straight championships for the Maroons.

This time they stormed back from a 13-point deficit and defeated previously-unbeaten Cedar Falls, 22-16, at the UNI-Dome.

Tonight’s victory climaxed a season that included a couple of losses during the regular season.

Dowling finished with an 11-2 record. Cedar Falls wound up 12-1.

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.