Not exactly.
But that October, BT football champion Illini were due to play In Iowa Stadium. And for weeks that Autumn Iowa students prepared (in that era, students got free tickets to all athletic events; the rub was that only about 5000 seats were set aside as the student section when enrollment was over 10,000; so you were at the gate when it opened at 9 AM for the 1:30 game time, keeping warm by means of five or six flasks of bourbon, brandy, rum). For Illinois you brought a knapsack of ammunition. Still, things did not get out of hand until the second half. The Illini, frustrated by surprisingly competitive Hawkeyes, went from physical to dirty----all the signal needed for onslaughts of tomatos & overripe apples, etc followed by charges into the Illlnois seating at the Southeast corner of the stadium.
But the carnage never spilled onto the field. Neither Iowa nor Illini players were involved in the fights. And neither Evy or AD Paul Brechlet did anything to encourage the outburst. The more significant truth, however, is that neither did anything to prevent it or halt it. The next morning a telephone conference call to all the BT schools resulted in a decision that Iowa-Illinois games ---FOOTBALL ONLY --- were suspended indefinitely.
The suspension lasted seventeen years. It proved more painful to Iowa, since for 12 or so years the Hawkeyes were on the rise to multiple national rankings, and several titles & bowl victories----including midway through Iowa's only #1 national ranking in 1958. The Illini, in contrast, were bottom feeders for a decade until 1964.
From what I've read, there were indeed brawls during the game between Iowa and Illini players, with several being ejected from the game, with the crowd then throwing things onto the field and fights then breaking out in the stands. I've also read that Evy encouraged his players to engage in some of the in-game chaos to toughen them up. I found a source for this a few years ago, will look again for it.
Other facts: the top two NFL career interception leaders are both Iowa grads, Paul Krause and Emlen Tunnell. Chuck Long is likely to be the only player to ever appear in FIVE bowl games, a quirk of eligibility that is no longer possible.
The best team in Iowa in the early 40's was neither Iowa nor ISU. It was Iowa Pre-Flight, arguably the best team in the nation for a couple of seasons during that time.
Nile Kinnick was a Christian Scientist and did not seek formal medical care even when injured. In addition to playing football at Iowa, he also played basketball. He also had about the worst nickname ever, the 'Cornbelt Comet'. Ugh.
Kinnick's famous Heisman speech was given off-the-cuff, without written notes. I suspect it will remain the only Heisman speech to reference a French military honor for quite some time.
The best coach to ever coach the Hawkeyes? Not Ferentz. Not Fry.
Answer: Howard Jones, in the early 1920's (look him up, amazing man, amazing career). He left Iowa in a strange dispute with the physical education department and U of I administration, which is also kind of an amazing sort of event considering that this guy was probably a better coach than Knute Rockne, on par with Bear Bryant and A A Stagg.
The name of our mascot, 'Herky,' is a corruption of the word 'Hawkeye'. So obvious, that it didn't dawn on me for thirty+ years until I read it someplace.
The 1968 Iowa helmets did not look the same every game. If you look at old photos, they change subtly all the time. 'IOWA' is on the lower back of the helmet for one game, 'HAWKS' is then there for another, and--unless the negatives are backward--it seems that the 'flying Hawk' logo is sometimes on one side of the helmet, sometimes on the other, and--I think--sometimes on BOTH sides. I would love to have Ed Podolak, or another 1968 team member, tell me why these things occurred.
The best part about the famous 1970's streaker was that he not only ran naked the length of the field (north to south), but that he did so holding a little IOWA pennant on a stick in his hand. He might have been naked, but he never stopped being a Hawkeye fan.