'81 Iowa Victory Against Michigan Impactful

Hawkeyes Own 11 Triumphs Against B1G Blue Blood Since That Win in Big House

IOWA CITY, Iowa - Hayden Fry’s rebuild of Iowa’s downtrodden football program turned the corner in 1981.

The Hawkeyes snapped a streak of 19 consecutive non-winning seasons by going 8-4, earning a share of the Big Ten title and going to the Rose Bowl.

Kirk Ferentz was in his first season as Iowa’s offensive line coach, and he has plenty of memories from that rags-to-riches season.

Iowa beat three Top 10 teams in the first six games that season: No. 7 Nebraska, No. 6 UCLA and No. 5 Michigan. Ferentz, now in his 24th season as Iowa’s head coach, credits the 9-7 victory over the Wolverines at Michigan Stadium on Oct. 17, 1981 as the one that carries the most weight.

“That was a really big game, I thought,” Ferentz said. “To go to Ann Arbor and win like that, it was a hard-fought game, and that’s one commonality with all the victories we have had. They’ve been really tough to earn. They go 60 minutes.”

When No. 4 Michigan comes to Kinnick Stadium Saturday, it brings with it a 43-15-4 edge in the series. Ferentz-coached teams have won seven of those 15 games. Fry’s team beat Michigan four times.

Beating Michigan before Fry arrived had been virtually impossible. Coach Alden Knipe’s team won the first meeting ever, in 1900 in Ann Arbor. Six coaches later, Burt Ingwersen ended the 1924 season by winning at Michigan. Eight coaches after that, Forest Evashevski led Iowa to a 37-14 victory at Michigan in 1958.

Evashevski’s successor, Jerry Burns, beat Michigan in Iowa City in 1962. The Wolverines were coached by Bump Elliott, who later became Iowa’s respected athletic director and the man who hired Fry to try and reverse Iowa’s losing ways.

Four victories over the Maize and Blue, period, before Fry arrived. Eleven victories since. The one in 1981 proved to be a program changer.

“It was a big thing within the series,” Ferentz said. “And as far as the impact in the series, then maybe more importantly just for the program. For where we were at that time, it was an important win.”

Michigan had started the 1981 season No. 1 in the Associated Press poll, and the leading candidate to win the national title. Wisconsin stunned the Wolverines in the opener, 21-14. And then Iowa silenced all hopes of a Big Ten title and Rose Bowl bid.

“The only guys who thought we had a chance here today were those players in that room,” Fry said after the victory.

Fry had a theory that three-fourths of the Wolverines’ opponents at Michigan Stadium lost the game before the kickoff “because they’re intimidated by such things as the other school’s tradition and big crowd.”

The Big House draws crowds in excess of 100,000 for each game. And Fry, a psychologist as well as a coach, took on those factors head on. He had crowd noise and band music played over the loudspeakers all week at practice so his team got a taste of calling audibles in the ear-challenging conditions.

Michigan’s tradition was unquestioned, a college football blueblood. The 1981 game was played in an era when the Big Ten had 10 teams and the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game was usually headed to the Rose Bowl.

Fry brought an Iowa team to Ann Arbor that week that had lost nine straight games to Michigan. In fact, the Wolverines had a 25-4-3 lead in the series at the time. And in a three-year stretch starting in 1969, Iowa lost by scores of 51-6, 55-0 and 63-7. That made a 31-0 loss in 1972 sound downright competitive.

The Hawkeyes had not recorded a winning season in two decades, so it’s safe to figure that the Wolverine faithful weren’t too worried about Fry’s team even though they came in with a resurgent bounce in their step. Iowa was 4-1 overall, 2-0 in the Big Ten and ranked 12th in the weekly Associated Press poll.

“I’ve had challenges like this game all my life, and I love them,” Fry had said heading into the contest. “We’ll go into Michigan being humble and polite and we’ll walk softly, but I hope we’re carrying a big stick.”

Iowa got field goals of 20, 36 and 30 yards from freshman kicker Tom Nichol, the last one coming with 2:30 remaining in the third quarter to give Iowa the 9-7 lead. The Hawkeye defense finished the upset, keeping a Michigan running game at bay. The Wolverines had averaged 278.8 yards on the ground. Iowa allowed just 155 in 36 attempts and pitched a shutout the second half.

“We won’t play too many teams as good defensively as Iowa,” said Schembechler after his first loss to the Hawkeyes in nine games.

Big Ten title and Rose Bowl, words that had been foreign to even the most loyal Iowa fan since Evashevski retired after the 1960 season, were suddenly topics of conversation.

“There’s nothing wrong with thinking about the Rose Bowl,” Iowa standout defensive end Andre Tippett said after the victory. “But we’ve got to keep things in perspective.”

The Hawkeyes fell flat a week later, losing to Minnesota at home, 12-10. But they won the next four regular-season games to tie for the title with Ohio State at 6-2 and earn the Rose Bowl berth.

Fry and Ferentz were also part of the biggest Iowa-Michigan game from a national perspective. The top-ranked Hawkeyes beat No. 2 Michigan in 1985, 12-10, at Kinnick Stadium. The Wolverines were ranked 10th when Fry’s 1990 team beat them in Ann Arbor, 24-23.

Three of Ferentz’s seven victories in the series came when Michigan was in the Top 10. They were No. 8 in 2002 (34-9 in Ann Arbor), No. 9 in 2003 (30-27 in Iowa City) and No. 2 in their last visit to Kinnick in 2016 (14-13 on Keith Duncan’s walkoff field goal).

“They have a lot of really good players, and they’ve been very productive, very successful, and it’s going to take our best team effort to have a chance,” Ferentz said.

Just like 1981.