THE BASE OF THE TREE: HAYDEN FRY'S 1983 COACHING STAFF (Courtesy Blackheart Gold Pants
The Hayden Fry Coaching Tree is the greatest of all coaching trees. And the 1983 Iowa staff was the base, an absurd level of coaching talent not seen since.
By
Patrick Vint Jun 20, 2014, 10:00am CDT
Among the dozens of Iowa athletics-related photos in my dad's basement is the above picture of Hayden Fry's 1983 coaching staff. It might be weird for anyone, even the most hardcore of Iowa fans, to have a framed photograph of a bunch of position coaches for a team that went 9-3 and lost the Gator Bowl 31 years ago, but that wasn't just any staff. Hayden Fry's 1983 staff was arguably the greatest collection of coaching talent in the history of the game, a group that would go on to win a staggering 722 games as head coaches, including 32 bowl wins, 9 BCS bowl wins, 35 top 25 finishes (and 22 in the top 10), and 15 major conference titles. And that's not even including Fry's successes.
Here are their stories, starting from Hayden and going clockwise
Carl Jackson
There are two kinds of coaches on this staff: The guys who left to become head coaches, who have been almost universally successful, and the guys who stayed in Iowa City forever. Despite leaving for most of the 90s, Jackson certainly qualifies as one of the latter. He served as running backs coach under Hayden Fry at North Texas, came to Iowa City with Fry, and served in the same position from 1979 through 1988. He was promoted to offensive coordinator when Bill Snyder left for Kansas State in 1989. Jackson then left for an assistant position under George Siefert (another former Iowa assistant) with the San Francisco 49ers. John Mackovic hired Jackson as a running backs coach for his last season at Texas, but Jackson left when Mackovic was replaced with Mack Brown. In 1999, Jackson returned to Iowa City as Kirk Ferentz's first running backs coach, and remained in that role through the 2007 season. He spent 22 seasons as an Iowa assistant.
Don Patterson
Like so many coaches on this staff, Patterson was an assistant under Fry at North Texas. He moved to Iowa City as defensive backs coach in 1979 and remained with the Hawkeyes through Fry's entire tenure, moving to the offensive staff in 1981 and acting as offensive coordinator from 1992 through 1998.
When Hayden retired, Patterson took over as head coach at Western Illinois. Over the next decade, he went 63-47, won two conference titles and made three playoff trips with the Leathernecks. Patterson resigned in 2009 due to a cancer diagnosis -- mirroring his longtime mentor -- finishing his head coaching career as the second-winningest coach in Western Illinois history.
Patterson has since linked up with two former Hawkeyes. He was quarterbacks coach and recruiting coordinator at Buffalo the last three years, where former Iowa linebacker William Inge had been defensive coordinator. This winter, he joined former Hawkeye Bob Diaco's staff at UConn as associate head coach and quarterbacks coach.
Bill Dervich
Dervich is the epitome of the lifelong Iowa guy: He was Fry's strength and conditioning coach and jack-of-all-trades assistant. Dervich eventually became Iowa's first Director of Football Operations -- it was under his administration that
Iowa and Wisconsin started the almost-annual Toolbox Game between the teams' managers -- and remained in that position through 2007.
Bob Stoops
Where to start with Big Game Bob? He was an Iowa defensive back who stayed on as a graduate assistant in 1983 and a volunteer assistant through 1987. When Snyder left for Kansas State, Stoops joined his staff as a defensive backs coach and eventual defensive coordinator. After three successful years as Steve Spurrier's defensive coordinator at Florida, Stoops was the most highly-sought-after assistant in the country in 1998. When Hayden retired the same year, fans presumed that a prodigal son was returning home.
The theories of how the Stoops hire went haywire -- Bob Bowlsby wanted Terry Allen, Stoops wanted too much, money, the search committee took too long, etc. -- are largely irrelevant today. Regardless of how he got there, Stoops eventually took over the smoldering crater that was John Blake Era
Oklahoma Sooners Football. Stoops was pretty good. He won a
NationalChampionship in his second season, the first of five consecutive seasons when his Sooners finished in the national top 6. In 14 seasons as head coach of the Sooners, Stoops has won nine Big 12 titles and ten division titles, finished in the top 10 nine times, taken four BCS bowl games, and passed Barry Switzer as the winningest coach in the history of Oklahoma football. He was the fastest coach in the modern era to reach 100 wins, coached two Heisman Trophy winners, and has built his own coaching tree with future head coaches like Mike Leach, Mark Mangino, and his brothers Mike and Mark Stoops.
Dan McCarney
McCarney is the only longtime head coach to come out of the 1983 staff with a career losing record. It's not his fault, of course.
McCarney was a defensive line assistant on Fry's staff for more than a decade, before joining Barry Alvarez's staff at Wisconsin as defensive coordinator. In 1995, he was named head coach at Iowa State and spent the next 12 seasons in Ames. He set school records for wins (56) and losses (85) and won just five conference games in his first five seasons before breaking through in a nine-win 2000 campaign. He tied for a Big 12 North championship in 2004, which remains Iowa State's only division or conference win since 1912. McCarney's teams went to five bowl games in six seasons, another high mark for the program. And we're not going to talk about his record against Iowa.
He resigned after a four-win 2006 season, and joined former Iowa assistant Jim Leavitt at South Florida as a defensive line coach for one season before catching on with Urban Meyer at Florida. In 2011, he took charge of Hayden's last pre-Iowa program, North Texas, and led the Mean Green to their first bowl appearance in more than a decade last season.
Bill Brashier
On a staff of legendary coaches, Bill Brashier is unquestionably the most important Iowa assistant ever. And he cemented that status before he'd even gotten to Iowa City. In 1979, Hayden Fry was offered the head coach positions at Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, and Iowa.
He asked his staff, including Brashier, where they should go.
Brashier tells the story a bit differently -- he focused on how many people were at a game that the Hawkeyes lost by 40 and imagined what would happen if they could win there -- but regardless of the rationale, it was Brashier who convinced Fry to come to Iowa. The rest has been history.
Brashier reportedly
turned down three head coaching position offers in his time at Iowa, remaining as defensive coordinator through the entirety of Fry's tenure. His decision had an unintended consequence: The glass ceiling created by Brashier's stability forced Iowa defensive assistants to move on, eventually creating three highly successful head coaches from those ranks.
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