Of the four articles that I plan to publish in this series, I think this one will be the most difficult for me to write.
A decade later, in retrospect, I’m grateful for all of the lessons that came from this life experience. Nonetheless, it doesn’t absolve the fact that there are aspects of this chapter that were incredibly difficult to experience at that time. I had to make some grown-man decisions during these years as an 18-21 year-old that permanently altered the course of my future.
Let’s make a couple of things clear from the get-go:
Are there some things I would’ve done differently? Absolutely, no doubt about it. I’d challenge anyone to look back on their formative years and tell me with a straight face that there aren’t some things you would change, too.
Do I regret my decision choosing to go to Iowa? Not one bit - that’s the truth. So much good came from it that if I could go back and change the decision to attend this school, I would not.
*I also want to be upfront that some of my memories from this chapter are a little bit hazy, but none of what I’m about to write is meant to be intentionally dishonest. I’ll fact-check where I can in whatever articles still exist from ten years back, but I may get some minor details wrong (which year something occurred, who was there, exact details from conversations, etc.).
Alright, with all those disclosures out of the way… Let’s get into it.
June 2012 - Iowa City, Iowa
The day after my high school graduation, my parents and I loaded most of the few nominal belongings I owned as an 18-year old into our family vehicle and made the two and a half hour trip west to Iowa City, IA - The place that I thought I’d be calling home for the next 4-5 years.
Our Director of Player Development (*Not sure his exact title) at the time, Chic Ejiasi, had worked his behind-the-scenes magic and found me a place to live my first summer there, along with two other incoming freshmen - Mitch Keppy (my high school wrestling rival - read about him in part 1 of this series) and Connor Kornbrath, an incoming punter from West Virginia.
The house wasn’t anything special, but it was awesome for the three of us to be living away from home for the first time. I said goodbye to my parents, watched them drive away, and promptly cracked a beer with my two roommates to celebrate our newfound freedom and the start of this exciting new chapter.
A Rough Start
As I said in the first paragraph of this article, are there things I would’ve done differently during my time in Iowa City? Absolutely.
The first decision I wish I could take back occurred my very first weekend there in Iowa City, all of about 72 hours after getting settled into my new college house. By now we had tracked down and linked up with a few of the other teammates in our incoming class, and we were all giddy and excited to start experiencing life away from the watchful eyes of our parents. That very first Friday that I was on campus, I went with three teammates to a bonfire just outside of Iowa City. One of the teammates I went with had grown up in Iowa City, so he was excited to introduce his new Iowa Hawkeye teammates to all of his hometown friends at this bonfire.
Sitting around the fire pit, making conversation with all of these new people, I was about 3/4 of the way through my very first beer when an Iowa City Police squad car came rolling down the driveway.
Now, I’m not an idiot.
Could I have run into the woods like some of the other minors there did? Sure.
But, I grew up with a Federal law enforcement father, and under his tutelage and in my few interactions with local police growing up, I had come to the conclusion that things work out better most of the time when you’re just respectful and communicative with law enforcement.
In my hometown, when underage drinking parties got busted, they just said to shut it down, take care of each other, and get home safely. So, I calmly hid my half-empty beer behind the log I was sitting on and stayed seated where I was while the two police officers got out of their patrol car and walked over to us. I learned on this night that Iowa City Police, or these two officers, at least, did not operate the same way the cops in my hometown did.
I was instructed to blow into their breathalyzer machine. Even then, I wasn’t really sweating the situation. I was ~250 something pounds and had drank half a beer to that point. The numbers read back something like, “0.04." It was next to nothing. After the fact, a friend with their own breathalyzer that their parents sent them off to college with conducted some experiments and literally blew higher than that after swishing with mouthwash. But, in Iowa City, the underage drinking policy is zero tolerance, meaning that anything over “0.00,” was a fineable offense.
These officers were out to make an example of a couple of us that night so that all of the other underage kids would be deterred from continuing to drink, and myself and three other teammates were the ones chosen to fall on the sword.
We were all cited with “PAULA’s,” or “Possession of Alcohol Under the Legal Age,” and ordered to go home and pay the $300 fine. It was an absolutely deflating way to kick off our first weekend in Iowa City, and more than that - we all knew it was going to have repercussions above and beyond what it may mean to a normal college student, since we were student-athletes.
I went home and called my parents. Naturally, they were disappointed in me. I had always been a generally “good,” and high-achieving kid, but at the same time I was a bit of an envelope-pusher, the only one of my siblings who had ever consumed any alcohol, and had once been arrested for misdemeanor disorderly conduct when I was fifteen after a night out of egging houses with friends.
Stupid, juvenile shit - it was never anything malicious.
But now, I was over 18 with a world of opportunity in front of me. Fucking up was going to have bigger consequences from this point forward in my life. My parents said, and I grudgingly agreed, that the right thing to do was to go tell Kirk Ferentz, my new head coach, the following day down at Kinnick Stadium where he and his staff were running a charity event.
Since I hadn’t taken an official visit to Iowa City, and we weren’t scheduled to report for workouts until the following Monday, this was going to be my first time meeting the Head Coach.
Talk about a first impression.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night, and the following morning, I piled into a car with two of my other guilty teammates, and drove, very slowly, down to Kinnick Stadium.
Meeting KF
The three of us (one of the teammates caught with us couldn’t make it) trudged down the stadium steps and sat in the front row until, before too long, Coach Ferentz (Or KF, as he’s endearingly referred to as) noticed us sitting there, waved, and started walking our direction.
He was all smiles and was excited to welcome us to Iowa City and meet me in person, before we quickly took the wind out of his sails and confessed to what had happened the night before.
A professional in every sense of the word, KF could not have handled our bad news any better. He said that his own sons had not made it out of Iowa City squeaky clean and had been in trouble a time or two, as had many other great players in the program’s history.
That being said, we weren’t off the hook. There would be consequences for our mistake that would likely involve some painful workouts, but he wouldn’t judge us based on one mistake - he didn’t even know us yet. He challenged us to let that be our last mistake during our time here, and show him how well we could respond to this setback moving forward.
From that day forward, I had every intention to prove to KF that I was not that kind of kid, and I would put my best foot forward to contribute to his program from there on out.
Summer Workouts
I wish I could remember all of the little details from the very beginning of my time in Iowa City - meeting all my teammates for the first time, meeting the coaches, my first workout, my first practice, etc., but I don’t. At least, not in great enough detail to write about.
Summer workouts were tough, but I remember really enjoying them. That summer was my first exposure to Chris Doyle, who at that time had risen to become a mythical figure in the storied history of Iowa Football. Doyle carried the presence of a general - commanding equal parts fear and respect. He was critical but fair, and demanded an extremely high standard, as is necessary for success at this level of college football. He was slow to praise and complement, but it made these rare complements so coveted that those of us who responded well to Doyle’s style of leadership would run through a brick wall for him just for the chance to hear a, “not bad, Sealby.” At the time that I was an incoming freshman in the program, Doyle had recently attained the pinnacle of success in his profession, becoming the highest paid strength and conditioning coach in all of Division 1 College Football. The University of Iowa Athletic Director at the time, Gary Barta, said about Coach Doyle, then, “Kirk approaches the role of strength and conditioning coach as really another coordinator,” Iowa athletic director Gary Barta said to USA Today. “We have an offensive coordinator, a defensive coordinator and then student-athlete development is the third piece of that equation.”
Iowa, more than any other school in the country, was known for developing little known recruits into NFL draft picks, and this was largely because of Coach Doyle. I was buying what he was selling, and hoping that he’d be able to mold me the same way he did so many other legendary players before me.
Compared to some of the wrestling workouts I had endured in high school, football workouts were hard, but not impossible. I was smaller than a lot of my offensive and defensive line teammates, so I was actually a pretty high performer right away in a lot of our strength and conditioning competitive events that summer. I wasn’t going to stay small for long though - Doyle ran his strength program like a science experiment. Every Monday morning for my entire time in the program, we all had to weigh in. The strength staff had goal weights set for us each week that would progressively bring us closer to the weight that they felt we would perform best at in our position. If I remember right, I think you had a 1-2 pound buffer above or below your target weight.
Overweight, and you had some extra conditioning to do.
Underweight, and after each of your workouts, you had to consume a super-caloric sludge-smoothie that the team nutritionists concocted to help you gain weight.
As a “gainer,” that first summer, I had to put down a ton of these smoothies. By the end of the summer I was around ~270 relatively athletic pounds, and starting to look the part of a Big Ten Lineman.
The issue I faced next, however, was whether I was going to be an offensive lineman or a defensive lineman for the Iowa Football Program.
Fall Camp #1 - Making the Switch
I began my first fall camp as a defensive lineman, switching between defensive tackle and defensive end. Reese Morgan, the coach who had recruited me, had been named as the defensive line coach effective this 2012-13 season, after having coached the offensive line for many years before that.
After being recruited as a “lineman athlete,” having played both sides of the ball in high school and having a suitable frame at 6’4” but without any muscle on it yet, it made sense to start out on the defensive line where Coach Morgan, with the help of Coach Doyle in the weight room, could shape me into a formidable player.
I learned quickly that the game speed at this level of football was different.
After every practice this first fall camp, we would watch film, and it was always easy to point me out. I looked like a fish out of water. The ball would snap, the older players would fire off the ball, and I’d still be in my stance a half second later, often resulting in me getting blown backwards and planted on my ass.
A common question that gets posed to guys like me who went from a small, rural high school program to this level of college football is,
“What was your ‘welcome to college football,’ moment?”
I remember mine all too well.
Austin Blythe was only a year ahead of me in the program, but had already gathered a ton of respect from upperclassmen and coaching staff alike. An interior offensive lineman, Blythe had been a 3x state champion wrestler in high school and likely could have taken his pick of any program in the country to wrestle at, before deciding to stay home and play football for the Hawkeyes. His redshirt year had been productive, and he was slotted to be a starter in his redshirt freshman year this season - an unheard of and ridiculously impressive feat.
So, there I was, lined up against him on an inside zone play.
The ball was snapped, a few seconds went by, and then, as if I had teleported, I found myself looking up at the sky, laying in the lap of a linebacker, about seven yards back from where I had just started the play seconds before.
It looked just as bad on film. I was getting buried on the defensive line, partly because of my size, and partly because of my get-off timing. It also didn’t help that there were some absolute studs in my incoming defensive line class - some who are still in the NFL today (Jaleel Johnson) or would be if not for a freak injury (Drew Ott).
About halfway through my freshman fall camp, after a slew of injuries had decimated the offensive line, Coach Morgan called me into his office with a proposition.
“Reid, how do you feel about playing offensive line? We think you’d make a great offensive lineman with a little more weight on you. You understand leverage from your wrestling background, and you have the opportunity right now to get some reps with the second-team and accelerate your learning curve with how thin the room is currently. You’re early enough into your career that switching right now won’t set you back.”
I thought it over, talked with my parents about it, and ultimately trusted that Coach Morgan had my best interest in mind and wouldn’t steer me wrong. The next day, I walked in and sat down in the Offensive Line room, where Brian Ferentz (Kirk’s oldest son) would be my new position coach from here on out.
Spring Ball
That first fall camp for me ended on a positive note, even after making the switch. I wouldn’t be in the “Two-Deep,” traveling with the team to away games, but I wasn’t really expected to that season - only a handful of freshman ever did that this early.
As the season kicked off, my job was to keep gaining weight, work my ass off with Coach Doyle, give our starting defense a good scout-team look every week, and show up to Spring Ball ready to compete for a job in the Two Deep.
I did all that was asked of me during that fall and winter, and showed up to Spring Ball right on track with where I thought I was supposed to be.
Looking back now, it’s easy to see that there is so much more I could have been doing this first year.
I had gotten away from my “above-and-beyond,” mentality that brought me all of my wrestling success in high school, and had fallen into the trap of just doing what the majority of my teammates were doing - knocking out our required workouts, then heading off to the bars to meet girls.
The Reid of today would love to be able to tell 18-year-old Reid,
“Remember, you’re lucky just to be here. You’re not a blue-chip recruit. You don’t have the same God-given athletic gifts that most of these guys do. You’re going to have to work harder than them to see the same results.”
But… my punch-the-clock, status-quo approach hadn’t caught up to me yet. That Spring Ball, sure enough, I found myself rotating into the Two-Deep. This meant that I was only an injury or two away from seeing the playing field. I was right on track, or so I thought. I finished my first Spring Ball at Iowa taking a majority of the second-team guard reps, so there were no alarm bells going off in my head yet inciting that sense of urgency that, now, it is clear to see that I needed.
Brian’s First Recruiting Class
I’m not the kind of guy to make excuses, and I’m not going to. You can draw whatever conclusions you want for yourself from what I’m about to write.
The offensive linemen in the class behind me were ridiculously talented football players. I have nothing but respect for those guys. Five of them ultimately had opportunities to play in the NFL (Sean Welsh, Boone Myers, Keegan Render, Ross Reynolds, Ike Boettger). That group of guys won the Joe Moore Award as the most outstanding offensive line unit in the country in 2016.
They were dominant, no question about it… and they just so happened to be the class of players at the same position as me, in the year group right behind me, hand-picked and brought in by our shared position coach as his first ever recruiting class.
I’m mature enough to know that nothing about this situation was malicious or intentional, by Brian Ferentz or anyone else - it was just a terrible spot for me to be in, or any of the offensive linemen in my class, for that matter.
Of the offensive linemen in my class, only one guy ever started a game on the Iowa offensive line (Cole Croston). The rest of us either transferred out, or primarily rode the pine and scraped up garbage-time minutes in blowout games.
This outcome begs the question - was the class behind me just that much more talented?
Or, given the same opportunities… could the players in my class have accomplished as much?
There’s no way of ever knowing, and nothing can change what’s already happened.
I could only control what was in my control.
And, that’s life.
Fall Camp #2 - Leapfrogged
I went into my second fall camp confident.
I had finished Spring Ball pretty consistently running with the second team offense, and had just wrapped up another strong summer of growth in the weight room - gaining more favor with Coach Doyle, who’s opinion was highly regarded throughout the building. The first week of that second fall camp, I found myself taking all of the second team left guard reps.
In week two, something changed.
Coach Brian (Ferentz) started working a true freshman named Sean Welsh in at left guard with the second team, splitting reps with me.
On the one hand, I felt a little slighted. I had earned these reps through the previous year and a half of busting my ass. I wasn’t naïve, and I knew that competition was always present in high level college football… but it sucked extra for me because Sean was an absolute stud. Things for him just clicked right away, from day one. His technique was impeccable, and he was winning 1-on-1 reps in his first camp against upperclassmen defensive linemen who had played in Big Ten football games.
On the other hand, it lit another new fire inside me. I knew that once you got passed over by someone younger than you, your college football career was all but over. I started going into the O line room after hours with Austin Blythe to watch film with him and learn from him. I started going out a lot less on the weekends, opting to stay in and binge Sons of Anarchy with my roommates (among other ridiculous, mostly sober household hobbies and experiments - I lived with some interesting characters). I got more serious with my then girlfriend who (mostly) kept me in line. I more or less really started dedicating myself to the program, and my career, a year and a half after arriving on campus.
Unfortunately for me, I probably took the initiative to better myself a little too late. I should’ve been taking all of this action my freshman year, before Sean and the other guys in his class got to campus.
By the end of that second fall camp, Sean was taking all of the second team left guard reps. In our first away game of the season, Sean boarded the bus to travel with the Two-Deep roster, and I stayed home in Iowa City, alone in an empty house, watching the football team I was a part of play away games from my couch. This played out for the rest of my second football season with the Iowa Hawkeyes.
And that’s it for Part 2 of my College Football Experience series.
Year three is where things start to get really interesting.
I hope you guys enjoy reading this series as much as I’m enjoying reminiscing writing it.
Until next time,
Reid
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