http://www.cleveland.com/livingston/index.ssf/2010/11/post_18.html
Statue of Iowa legend Nile Kinnick a reminder of a long-lost time in college sports: Bill Livingston
Published: Saturday, November 20, 2010, 2:38 AM Updated: Saturday, November 20, 2010, 2:42 AM
Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer
Associated Press photographIowa's Nile Kinnick won the Heisman Trophy in 1939 and died four years later during World War II.
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The Iowa players will walk toward the team gate of Kinnick Stadium Saturday afternoon on their way to their meeting with Ohio State. Each Hawkeye will pause briefly near the gate to follow a team superstition and rub for good luck the bronze replica of the leather helmet that Nile Kinnick, the stadium's namesake, wore when he won the Heisman Trophy 71 years ago. Part of the appeal of college football is the lore, and no legend at Iowa is bigger than that of Nile Kinnick. The 20-foot-tall bronze statue of Kinnick, the star of Iowa's "Ironmen" team of 1939, does not depict him in a football uniform, just everyday trousers and a jacket. He is carrying several books. His helmet rests behind him, at his feet, like an afterthought.
Kinnick was a great athlete because he worked at it. As detailed in former Des Moines Register columnist Chuck Offenburger's book "Bernie Saggau & the Iowa Boys," Kinnick sharpened his shooting eye in basketball on cold mornings on two baskets in the hayloft of the family's barn. One of the smaller kids in the neighborhood would be stationed in the barn's cupola to monitor when class was starting at Adel High School down the road.
In baseball, Kinnick was the catcher in American Legion ball for no less than Indians legend Bob Feller, who lived in Van Meter, 20 miles away.
Kinnick was a student-athlete when the term was not a contradiction. He earned a Phi Beta Kappa key as a commerce major and was so well-spoken that many Iowans thought he would eventually be a congressman, senator or maybe even president of the United States.
In football, Kinnick was the scrawny quadruple-threat man, 5-8, 170 pounds, whose running, passing, punting and drop-kicking drove the 1939 Hawkeyes to a 6-1-1 record. He and his teammates often played all 60 minutes of a game, thus earning the "Ironmen" nickname.
The 1939 season provided a morale boost for Hawkeye fans who were hard pressed to meet their bills, loosening the grip of the Great Depression on their spirit. The Kinnicks had been among those who lost their farm, moving to Omaha, Neb., for Nile's senior year in high school.
Today, there seems to be a bigger divide between students and athletes than between blue states and red. It is the same in the gap between the amateur ideal of college sports and the quasi-professional reality.
The Heisman, which should represent the best achievements in college football, has recently endured its worst abuses. Reggie Bush returned his Heisman, but he could not remove the tarnish from all the illegal benefits he and his family received at Southern Califronia.
Quarterback Cameron Newton of Auburn is favored to win the Heisman this year despite rumors that his father demanded $180,000 for his son's services from collegiate suitors.
But Kinnick's reputation was spotless. Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said few, if any, of his players know who Kinnick was. Asked about him, Tressel said, "I know he was a war hero."
It isn't just Kinnick's football career that defines him. It is also the "what if?" factor, the possibilities that were lost in his death in World War II. In his Heisman acceptance speech, Kinnick seemed to sense the shadows deepening around him.
"I thank God that I was born to the gridirons of the Middle West and not to the battlefields of Europe," he said. "I can say confidently and positively that the football players of this country would much rather fight for the Heisman award than the
Croix de Guerre."
When war seemed inevitable, he enlisted in the Navy Air Crops. He was called to active duty three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Kinnick kept a diary during flight school, from which Sports Illustrated's Ron Fimrite quoted in a tribute story in 1989, 50 years after his Heisman season. "[The clouds] were like snow-covered mountains, range after range of them," Kinnick wrote, "and I was like an alpine adventurer, climbing up their canyons. . . ."
It was also from them that he fell to his death.
With his Grumman fighter leaking oil off the coast of Venezuela on a training flight in 1943, Kinnick ditched in the Caribbean Sea, rather than endanger planes that were on the deck of the aircraft carrier Lexington four miles away. No trace other than an oil slick was found of him or the plane. His death was grieved around the state of Iowa.
Today, Kinnick seems to have come, not just from a different time, but almost a different civilization. It is too bad that the entrance ritual is probably the modern players' closest brush with the values he represented.
In a coarsened culture and a more mercenary age, it is a touch of class.
