Jeter Gained His Competitive Edge From His Father
Bob Jeter won a Rose Bowl at Iowa, then won three NFL championship games and two Super Bowls with the Green Bay Packers.
His son, though, was more interested in basketball.
“Well, I was a lot thinner than him,” Rob Jeter said, laughing. “And I didn’t want to put on a helmet to compete.”
But Jeter learned a competitive edge from his father, something that he has carried with him into his basketball career, first as a player and then as a coach.
Rob Jeter was officially named as the new head men’s basketball coach at Western Illinois University earlier this week, his second head coaching job at the NCAA Division I level.
Jeter has spent the last two seasons at Minnesota as an assistant, and spent four seasons as an assistant on Bo Ryan’s staff from 2001-05.
He is back as a head coach. In 11 seasons as the head coach at Milwaukee, he went to two NCAA tournaments and one NIT.
He takes over a program that won just five games last season, and only two in the Summit League.
Jeter knows the recruiting footprint in the Midwest, and he knows what he is looking for to build a program.
“The same thing you have to do at any school you go to — make sure you have the right players in place, the right staff,” he said. “And then you have to make sure you have to instill a philosophy and standards. We’re going to keep things simple — we want to be a team surrounded by our defense. We want to be very solid defensively.
“For me, looking at building a program, it starts with personnel and I always like to look at the defensive side of the ball first.”
Bob Jeter was an All-Big Ten player at Iowa. He rushed for 194 yards on just nine carries in the Hawkeyes’ 38-12 win over California in the 1959 Rose Bowl.
He went on to play two seasons in the Canadian Football League on the same team as former Iowa teammate Willie Fleming. When Jeter joined the Packers, he moved to defensive back and was a key player on the Vince Lombardi championship teams.
“I know he really loved his teammates,” Rob Jeter said of his father, who is in the National Iowa Varsity Club Hall of Fame. “He really loved Iowa. He was a football guy. Very head-first, just dive into things. The Iowa experience, coupled with the Green Bay experience, was really special to him.
“He was my first role model, along with my mom. My mom was a teacher, my dad was an athlete. (He was) a fierce competitor. I think that was the first thing I learned — how to compete. My dad, it didn’t matter what we did. He wanted to win.”
Those games with his father, whether it was backgammon or basketball, taught Jeter how to compete.
“From my dad, it was how competitive life is, how you have to be prepared to compete,” Jeter said.
It was an unusual hiring process for Jeter, given all of the constraints now over concerns of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Jeter spent a half-day on the Western Illinois campus to see the facilities and meet people in the athletic department.
Since his hiring, he has been in communication with current players and former players, while also trying to recruit for next season.
“There are still phone calls to be made. There’s still the FaceTime things you can use,” Jeter said. “It’s been exciting, I’m excited to be back, leading a program.”
