But he and the U are "throw-backs" to an earlier time in college sports when you didn't just dump a coach when you hit a rough patch.
What era was that? In the first six years of Iowa football, Iowa had five head coaches (1892-97). Over the next 12 years Iowa had four head coaches. Then Jess Hawley went 24-18 from 1910-1915 before Howard Jones took over and went 42-17 from 1916 to 1923. Jones was Iowa's first great coach.
In 1921 Iowa went 7–0 and won the Big Ten championship, it's first since 1900. The team was retroactively selected as the 1921 national champion by the Billingsley Report and as a co-national champion by Parke H. Davis. The Hawkeyes were invited to play the California Golden Bears in the 1922 Rose Bowl, but the Big Ten forced Iowa to turn down the invitation. Aubrey Devine, Duke Slater and Gordon Locke were named All-Americans.
In 1922 Iowa won its second consecutive Big Ten title (7-0) and was retroactively selected as the 1922 national champion by the Billingsley Report.
Burt Ingwersen succeeded Jones from 1924-31, going 33-27. Then hard times hit the Hawkeyes. From 1932 to 1952 Iowa toiled under six head coaches, with Eddie Anderson's 1939 Ironmen, led by Nile Kinnick, the lone bright spot.
Leonard Raffensperger went 5-10 in his two seasons as the head coach (1950-51) before he was fired and Forest Evashevski was hired. Under Evy, Iowa quickly regained national stature for the first time since 1939. Evy went 52-27 until he resigned after the 1960 season. Jerry Burns (1961-65) went 16-27 before he was fired. Ray Nagel followed (1966-70) and went 16-32 before he was shown the door. Frank Lauterbur was hired from Toledo and led the Hawkeyes to an astounding 4-28 mark in his three years (1971-73), including an 0-11 season in 1973, after which he was fired.
Next, from an Ohio high school came Bob Commings, a two-way lineman on Evy's 1957 Rose Bowl champions. Commings was passionate but outmatched and was fired after compiling an 18-37 mark between 1974 and 1978. Then Iowa found a fella down at North Texas and brought him to Iowa City. His name: John Hayden Fry.
Fry brought Iowa back to national prominence for the first time in 20 years. In only his third year in Iowa City he led the Hawkeyes to a share of the Big Ten title in 1981 and their first Rose Bowl appearance since 1959. In fact, after Iowa hadn't been to a bowl game for over two decades, the Hawkeyes played two bowls in one year--the 1982 Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 and the 1982 Peach Bowl (a win over Tennessee) on Dec. 31.
Until forced to retire in 1998 due to his battle with cancer, Fry had restored Iowa to national prominence and had them ranked #1 in the nation for most of the 1985 season, only six years after arriving in Iowa City. And then, of course, KF took over and has held on ever since, primarily because Gary Barta is the AD.
So history would seem to say that firing football coaches for underperformance is not a new phenomenon--in Iowa City or anyplace else--except for the Barta era.
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