‘Touchdown, Touchdown Iowa’: How Gary Dolphin became the unlikely voice of the Hawkeyes in an era of radio icons

CORALVILLE, Iowa — When Jim Zabel told Iowa fans to hug and kiss their radios, chances are half the state complied.

When Bob Brooks’ deep baritone belted “Hello everybody, how ya doin’,” his voice was as recognizable as thunder and as welcomed as a father’s verbal embrace. When “The Big Shoe” called a sporting event, listeners knew Ron Gonder would provide almost a perfect game description.

For generations, Iowans flipped on their radios and tuned in their favorite broadcasters for Hawkeye sporting events. In Des Moines and throughout the state, it was Zabel’s eccentric and unabashed passion. Eastern Iowa split between Brooks and Gonder, both of whom originated from Cedar Rapids. Collectively, their personalities were as quintessential as their voices.

“They all had their own following,” said former Iowa sports information director Phil Haddy, a Cedar Rapids native who worked at Iowa from 1971 until 2011. “They all had their distinct styles. Jim Zabel was, obviously of the three, the most you’d call a homer. Ron Gonder was, I’d say, not a homer. He was totally unbiased, although he wanted us to win. I’d say Bob Brooks was right in the middle.

“Everybody, and I’m not using this word lightly, loved all three of them because they meant so much to Iowa athletics through the years.”

Zabel graduated from Iowa in 1944 and joined Des Moines’ WHO, the state’s biggest blowtorch, in 1949. He retired in 2000 but still hosted weekly radio shows until his death in 2013. While in school during World War II, Brooks began working at the University of Iowa’s student radio station. He covered Iowa athletics from 1943 until his death in 2016. Nobody was more recognizable than “Brooksie,” from his navy suitcoat on a 90-degree day in August and his signature fedora to his old-fashioned tape recorder that Illinois basketball player Dee Brown once called a VCR.

Gonder, 84, grew up in upstate New York and called Northwestern and Illinois sports until moving to Iowa in 1965. In 1969, he took over as sports director at Cedar Rapids’ WMT, the state’s second-most powerful radio station, and stayed until 1999.

In the early 1990s, Iowa was the only Big Ten school that had not consolidated its radio rights. With Zabel, Gonder and Brooks headlining radio networks throughout the state, plus other individual radio stations calling football and men’s basketball games, space was at a premium, especially at road venues.

“We were kind of a pain in the neck,” said Gonder, who still lives in Cedar Rapids. “They (other schools) had given up their radio booths to the givers, and when we came for the game, why they had to provide for three or four originations.”

Ron Gonder took over as sports director at Cedar Rapids’ WMT in 1969 and stayed until 1999.

When Bob Bowlsby replaced Bump Elliott as Iowa’s athletics director in 1990, pressure mounted from the Big Ten. Learfield Communications knocked on Iowa’s door every year to inquire about exclusive rights, and the money was well beyond what the individual stations paid. By the mid-1990s, the knock was too loud to ignore, no matter the stature of Iowa’s radio icons.

This is where Gary Dolphin comes in. Well, eventually.

Northeast Iowa roots

Dolphin was born the oldest of seven children in Cascade, Iowa, about 30 miles southwest from where Dubuque meets Wisconsin along the Mississippi River. Dolphin’s staunch Catholic family traces its history to Ireland’s County Sligo. The family crest features a bony fish, and only a dash of Luxembourger on his mother’s side keeps Dolphin from claiming exclusive Irish roots.

Highway 151 divided Cascade, then a town of roughly 1,200 people, with Catholic parishes on opposite sides. On the south side stood St. Mary’s for the German Catholics. To the north was St. Martin’s for the Irish.

“We went to St. Martin’s, obviously,” Dolphin said.

Dolphin, now 67, kept busy as a child working in his parents’ old-fashioned convenience store. Dolphin’s Corner provided just about everything for Cascade residents as an ice cream parlor, a bar, a gas station and a grocery store. When Dolphin was 8 years old, he received a spin dial transistor radio for Christmas. At that moment, he became immersed at the confluence of radio and sports. One turn gave him Ernie Harwell in Detroit. Another led him to Jack Buck in St. Louis, Merle Harmon with the Minnesota Twins, Jack Brickhouse with the Chicago Cubs or Bob Elson calling Chicago White Sox games.

Baseball was Dolphin’s passion as a youngster. His father organized annual trips to Comiskey Park to watch the New York Yankees play the White Sox for a Sunday doubleheader. Dolphin idolized Mickey Mantle and developed a lifelong love for the Yankees.

Each Catholic parish operated its own high school until the early 1960s, when the town formed Cascade Aquin, which Dolphin attended. By his senior year, Dolphin’s future was uncertain. His father died when he was a freshman in high school, and his youngest brother was 2 at the time. Dolphin worked as a gas attendant when an Aquin priest asked him about his future endeavors.

Dolphin told the priest about his radio and love for baseball. The priest brought out pamphlets for Columbia University, Missouri and other top-notch journalism schools. But Dolphin didn’t want to travel too far from home, especially with a widowed mother. Another school, the Brown Institute in Minneapolis, piqued his interest. The Twin Cities are about four hours from Cascade, and the Brown Institute provided a two-year program. So Dolphin enrolled and completed his courses early.

The Brown Institute’s placement service helped Dolphin gain his first job in Jacksonville, Ill., at WJIL. Like many small-town radio employees, Dolphin did everything from morning announcements to production to sports. He stayed there two years, until he visited his mother and saw a story in the Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph-Herald that indicated KDTH’s sports director, Red McAleece, was considering retirement. McAleece, who broadcast Iowa football games as part of his Tall Corn Network, had suffered multiple heart attacks. He was a local legend and a former pitcher at Northwestern while in college.

Dolphin applied for the job and was hired in 1971. Within two years, Dolphin was calling Iowa football, the minor-league Dubuque Packers and prep sports. Dolphin stayed in radio until 1978, then switched to television on KDUB, then the Dubuque ABC affiliate, until 1987.

With a family, Dolphin reached a financial crossroads. Small-town television didn’t provide long-term stability, so he considered leaving Dubuque TV for Milwaukee radio. He had lunch one day with former NFL linebacker Mike Reilly, who provided color analysis alongside Gonder on WMT.

Reilly suggested Dolphin take up banking. Dolphin was a popular figure in Dubuque, a man with a golden voice who could provide a public relations boost for newly deregulated financial institutions. Dolphin agreed, stayed in Dubuque and called high school games in his spare time for WDBQ radio. He had other side ventures, from coordinating timeouts with officials at Chicago Bears home games to providing television coverage of the National Catholic Basketball Tournament, of which Dubuque’s Loras College served as host.

“That was going fine for about a year,” Dolphin said.

A new radio era

Out of loyalty for its big three broadcasters, Iowa’s athletics department held out as long as it could against the Big Ten, financial reality and common sense.

“Bob really got saddled with a very difficult task,” said Mark Jennings, Iowa’s former associate athletics director in charge of donor and patron services and one of Bowlsby’s best friends. “The Big Ten, after letting us have three broadcast booths every place we went, said we’re going to limit each school to one.”

The department was given a few years to comply, so it prepared for an exclusive venture when its contracts with the three radio networks expired following the 1996-97 men’s basketball season. Each entity paid Iowa $70,000 annually for right fees.

“The world was changing in terms of how media rights were packaged and sold,” said Bowlsby, who was Iowa’s athletics director until 2006 and now serves as the Big 12 commissioner. “Ultimately, in order to maximize the value, we felt like going to an exclusive carrier was the right thing to do.”

The department sent out bid information in May 1996. On Aug. 2, 1996, Iowa announced that Learfield was chosen as the sole radio provider of its athletics programs. The three-year deal for $2.85 million dwarfed what the three networks previously paid Iowa for rights.

Within the state, the Learfield announcement was met with a shoulder shrug. The choice of Iowa’s next radio announcer was the talked-about story, however.

Zabel, Brooks and Gonder enjoyed loyal, devoted followings. Nobody at the university wanted to even slightly offend any of the three. But public pressure increased as fans weighed in on their favorites, often at the expense of a different hall-of-fame broadcaster.

Newspapers throughout Iowa published multiple stories about which broadcaster should lead the new exclusive radio team. A reader poll published in The Cedar Rapids Gazette overwhelmingly tilted toward Gonder.

“It was terrible,” Jennings recalled. “Everybody who is a Zabel fan thinks everybody listens to Zabel. Everybody who is a Brooks fan thinks everybody listens to Brooks.”

The color analysts also commanded attention. Reilly sat alongside Gonder at WMT. At WHO with Zabel, Ed Podolak provided football analysis, while Bobby Hansen did the same for basketball. Those situations were resolved quickly.

Podolak played quarterback at Iowa through 1968 and running back for the Kansas City Chiefs until 1977. After he retired, Podolak joined NBC Sports as an NFL color analyst working with Marv Albert. With the constant travel and trips to New York City, the new career wasn’t as rewarding as he had expected.

NBC Sports executive Scotty Connal left the network to become vice president of sports programming at ESPN, then a startup network. Connal courted Podolak to join the new operation and team with Jim Simpson to call college football games.

“He said, ‘Why don’t you come over and be a pioneer?’” Podolak said. “We had 24-hour delay at that time; ESPN didn’t have any rights. We’d do the game, and ESPN would play it Sunday night. You could tell it was going to develop into something.”

In 1982, Zabel looked for a new football analyst when former Iowa coach Forest Evashevski retired. Zabel called Podolak to gauge his interest.

“I’ve got to tell you, doing neutral broadcasts, it’s just another job,” said Podolak, who grew up in the southwest Iowa town of Atlantic. “To have a chance to come back and be part of an Iowa broadcast, I jumped at the opportunity.”

Hansen, a Des Moines native, played men’s basketball for Lute Olson until 1983. He then capped a nine-year NBA career with a world championship with the Chicago Bulls in 1992. Zabel already approached Hansen about accompanying him on WHO’s basketball broadcasts after his NBA retirement.

In early 1993, Hawkeyes forward Chris Street was killed in a collision with an Iowa City snowplow. Hansen and his wife, Mary, were on vacation in Hawaii and watched the Hawkeyes face Michigan State on television in their first game since Street’s death. Iowa rallied from a 15-point deficit with 3:30 left to beat the Spartans in overtime.

Hansen flew back to Des Moines and was asked to join Zabel for the upcoming home game against Michigan. It was the most emotional day in Iowa sports history.

“The incredible energy that was in Carver … and we won that game,” Hansen said. “Jim and I were literally hugging on the air and crying at the same time. It was a good broadcast, and they invited me to continue the rest of that year. That was the start. I take pride in it. I haven’t missed a game since February of 1993.”

Bobby Hansen (left) and Gary Dolphin (right) during an Iowa basketball game last season. (Jeffrey Becker / USA Today)

By 1996, Podolak and Hansen had sterling reputations to match their Iowa pedigrees. Both had name recognition. Podolak was assured privately by both Bowlsby and football coach Hayden Fry that he’d remain in the booth next to whoever became the play-by-play broadcaster. Bowlsby told Hansen he’d stay on during a golf outing that summer.

A tough situation

As speculation swirled in the fall of 1996, university officials received tapes from about a hundred broadcasters. Football play-by-play radio jobs are rare among major programs, and the interest was intense. Zabel, Brooks and Gonder also wanted the job. The situation presented Iowa with a conundrum.

“The bottom line was, the obvious person you’d almost have to give it to was Zabel because of the strength of their station,” Haddy said. “But at the same time, the others have been loyal for like 50 years. So, what do you do?”

“I think at the end of the day, we decided we’re just going to have to start fresh,” Jennings said. “We had to get all those flagship stations on board. I think the process took two or three years to accomplish all this. Eventually, they all agreed that was the best thing to do, kind of wipe the board clean and start with somebody new. We went through the process of interviewing some people.”

That didn’t make the solution easy for anyone, especially Bowlsby. He grew up in Waterloo, Iowa, and earned his master’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1978. Bowlsby knew what those three voices meant to the state and how they built interest for Hawkeyes sports. But to choose one would damage relationships with the other two.

“First of all, I don’t think you can replace those three guys. Gonder, Brooksie and Zabel,” Bowlsby said. “They’re all, in their own right, iconic broadcasters and great people. Beloved people. All of them have great senses of humor and they love people and they just were so committed to the Hawkeyes.

“I felt like we needed somebody who was a friend to all three of them that was respectful of the traditions and the commitment that Jim and Ron and Bob had made and they could work with them. They could draw the best of them and keep them involved and yet move on to a new model.”

University officials then met with the big three and told them choosing among them was impossible. Their disappointment was obvious.

“We had a meeting and they told us they wanted to not choose any one of the three of us, and unmentioned was our ages, which we were all near a retirement point,” Gonder said.

Bowlsby and his staff opted for a King Solomon-type solution. While none of the three would handle play-by-play duties, Bowlsby wanted all three to become part of the broadcast and participate in pregame and postgame duties. Gonder would handle sideline duties with Brooks and Zabel in the Learfield booth along with Podolak and the new voice. Zabel opted out for men’s basketball, but Gonder and Brooks also would participate in both sports.

“In order to protect our friendship with all of them, the obvious answer was to pick none of them to do the play-by-play,” Haddy said. “That’s why we knew we had to look outside. Otherwise, we’re going to cause somebody who’s been with us for a half a century some really hard feelings. That’s something that we didn’t want to do. Then we came to the middle ground, let’s not cut ties entirely with these guys.”

Everyone was on board for the new radio team except for one person.

Finding Dolphin

Loras College, a Catholic institution in Dubuque, launched the administrative careers of Kevin White and Tom Boeh. White, now athletics director at Duke, took his first leadership role at Loras in 1982. White helped bring the athletics program back to NCAA Division III and away from the NAIA.

Boeh, one of White’s protégés, ran track and cross-country at Loras, where he worked in the mid-1980s. By 1990, Boeh was Northwestern’s assistant athletics director for external relations. The school needed a play-by-play men’s basketball voice.

While in Dubuque, Boeh and Dolphin became friends. Boeh, who later became athletics director at Ohio and Fresno State, asked Dolphin if he would consider the Northwestern job. Its profile didn’t carry quite like the other Big Ten institutions, but it was a major opportunity. Dolphin accepted.

The logistics proved difficult. Dolphin remained in Dubuque and commuted to Evanston for home games or Midway Airport for road trips. He kept his job with the Bears, so that meant weekend doubleheaders in late fall and early winter.

“It was a time management experience for me that I never want to go through again,” Dolphin said, “but it was a lot of fun and I met a lot of great people.”

Dolphin saw the Hawkeyes twice each year and regularly enjoyed dinner and drinks with Zabel, Brooks and Gonder. He became friendly with Iowa men’s basketball coach Tom Davis. During the summer of 1996, Dolphin read headlines in The Des Moines Register and The Cedar Rapids Gazette speculating on which broadcaster would become the sole voice of Iowa sports.

Dolphin chuckled to himself. Zabel was the most well-known and worked at the largest station in Iowa. Gonder was the best play-by-play broadcaster among the three, and that’s who Dolphin wanted to get the job. Dolphin didn’t apply because he thought he had no chance.

Concurrently, Jennings and Bowlsby sat at their Carver-Hawkeye Arena office suite discussing the radio situation. They looked hard at about 60 candidates, and the best by far was Jim Rose from Nebraska. Yet, they were nervous. The last thing they wanted to do was push out Iowa’s venerable radio trio for an out-of-state voice. Perhaps it was a plea or a suggestion, but Jennings brought up the need for an Iowa broadcaster.

“(Bowlsby) looked at me and said, ‘Listen, pal, where do you think we’re going to get one?’” Jennings recalled. “That’s exactly what he said, ‘Hey, pal, where do you think we’re going to get one?’”

Jennings grew up in north-central Iowa and served as team manager for Frank Lauterbur’s football team in 1973, which finished 0-11. That was the first year Dolphin called Iowa football for KDTH.

Bob Bowlsby, now the Big 12 commissioner, served as Iowa’s athletic director from 1990 to 2006. (Denny Medley / USA Today)

Bowlsby gave Jennings permission to call Dolphin and reached him at his bank office in early November 1996.

“Mark says, ‘Hey, we’re just curious why you haven’t applied for the Iowa job?’” Dolphin said. “At that time, I’m 45 years old. I said, ‘M.J., I’m not going to play that political game. I know you’re going to give it to one of the three.’ He goes, ‘Honestly, we’re not. We don’t feel that we can give it to one over the other. We plan to keep Podolak and Bobby Hansen because they’re great, but we’re going to hire a new play-by-play guy, and we think you should apply.’”

Dolphin had quality tape from Northwestern basketball, but he hadn’t broadcast a college football game since 1977 at KDTH. He quickly put together a highlight reel and sent it off.

About three weeks later, Dolphin was called to interview in front of six people: Bowlsby, Jennings and associate athletics director Rick Klatt with Iowa, and Learfield officials Roger Gardner, Greg Brown and Keith Sampson. It was Thanksgiving week, and Dolphin drove on icy roads from Dubuque to Iowa City.

The committee asked Dolphin about his radio favorites and his familiarity with the Hawkeyes. Before calling games for Northwestern, Dolphin served as I-Club president for Dubuque County. He revered Iowa’s radio icons and listened to big three predecessors Paul Eells and Tait Cummins in the early 1950s and 1960s. Dolphin, of course, broadcast Iowa games in the 1970s in the hiccup period when neither football nor basketball was any good.

Dolphin left the Iowa City hotel feeling good, but as two weeks passed, he became nervous. He traveled to a few Iowa home basketball games just for appearances.

“I’m waiting and waiting for that phone call,” he said. “Nothing.”

A day after Iowa dispatched Northern Iowa in a men’s basketball game, Dolphin’s life changed forever.

“It was December 11 of ’96. It was a Wednesday night,” Dolphin said. “The phone rings about 8 o’clock, and it’s Roger Gardner. ‘Yeah, Roger.’ He goes, ‘I don’t know how to put this, but we’d like you to be the next voice of the Iowa Hawkeyes.’ I was momentarily stunned as you can imagine. I gave the thumbs-up to (my wife) Cindy. I said, ‘I’ll gladly accept.’”

At that moment, Dolphin’s acceptance ushered Iowa radio into a new era. He attended his first football game at then Iowa Stadium in 1962, when Notre Dame crushed Iowa 35-12. His first basketball game also was in 1962, when Don Nelson scored 35 points on senior night in an 81-64 win against Wisconsin. Becoming the sole voice of Iowa radio was almost a fantasy.

“It meant the world because I love the Hawks,” he said.

Selling Dolphin

The news conference was scheduled ominously for Friday, Dec. 13. Joining Dolphin and Bowlsby were Learfield executives plus Zabel, Brooks and Gonder.

The veterans admitted their disappointment publicly but all touted Dolphin as the best possible successor.

“I liked his hire because he was an Iowan, because he had been around the University of Iowa,” Gonder said. “I knew him as a good guy. I really liked Gary. I knew by hiring him, he’d be a good personality. He’d be a fun guy. I was really pleased with that hire.”

“It seemed like he was a good middle-ground choice,” Haddy said. “Somebody who wasn’t going to upset any of those three by picking somebody from their station, other than them. He was a friend to all of them, but at the same time, he was somebody totally different.”

Dolphin still had Bears and Northwestern duties for the rest of that season, but he spent the spring and summer traveling the state and meeting with affiliates. A few considered dropping Iowa for Iowa State, but the newly formed Hawkeye Radio Network solidified most of its base. With Zabel, Brooks and Gonder under one network, the broadcast had more firepower than ever before.

It also produced some challenges and bruised egos. Gonder was the most gracious. He and Dolphin remain good friends.

“Brooksie was very professional,” Dolphin said. “I never could read Brooksie, and you didn’t know if he was pissed off or happy. But ultimately, I think he was glad that I got the job, and they all said the right things.

“Z, you could tell he was pissed off. He was contentious, and I got it. I gave him his space, and he and I had a couple good heart-to-hearts. I said, ‘You know Jim? In the end, it’s their decision. Not mine, not yours. But the bottom line is what’s best for the Iowa fans.’ Podolak and Hansen both called me after the announcement and said, ‘Look, we got your back. Don’t worry about it. They’re all friends of ours. But you know in the end, we got your back.’ So once I knew I had their support, it was full steam ahead. I didn’t worry about anything after that.”

In the 1997 season opener, Learfield’s Kinnick Stadium booth was bursting with Dolphin, Podolak, Zabel, Brooks and Gonder as well as radio producers and The Des Moines Register reporter Rick Brown and photographer Bill Neibergall. Dolphin arrived at the stadium well in advance. As the game approached kickoff, newspaper reporters turned on their radios to listen.

“Bowlsby, before the game, comes up near and the lower lip is sticking out,” Dolphin said. “He said, ‘Look, I don’t really give a shit about your play-by-play. I know you can do play-by-play. I hired you because you’ll be the best traffic cop in the booth. … Now when that kickoff is consummated, I want you on the headset, not Zabel.’ I almost had to rip the headset off Zabel’s head because the ball’s going down to the other end, and he’s just rambling away.”

Shortly before kickoff against Northern Iowa, Brown wrote, Zabel whispered to Dolphin, “Break a leg.” Dolphin then put his arm around Zabel and said, “Thanks, Z.”

“It worked for one, maybe two years,” Haddy said. “It got to be almost a laughable deal. Each one is fighting to get the microphone. So from that standpoint, that’s what went on.”

“It went well, and it was to Gary’s credit that it went well,” Gonder said. “To put him in the position he was in with three old-timers looking over his shoulder and then having him to coordinate it and everything, he made it go. He made it with his personality, and he made it work. As far as I was concerned, once I agreed to be part of it, I was going to do whatever they wanted me to do over that period of time.”

Iowa arranged for all three veteran broadcasters to travel with the team. Every Friday on the road, they met with Dolphin and Podolak.

“With each passing game, each passing call-in show, Z got better, Brooskie got better, Gonder was still …” Dolphin said with admiration. “Once we got to dinner on Friday night, of course Eddie and I picked up the tab all the time. So they got real friendly to us then.”

The rest is history

It didn’t take long for Dolphin to provide his signature call. On Iowa’s first offensive play from scrimmage, running back Tavian Banks took the handoff and sprinted 63 yards for a touchdown. Dolphin played off the runner’s name with “Put it in the bank … Touchdown, Touchdown Iowa.”

For 22 seasons, Dolphin’s “Touchdown, Touchdown Iowa” has echoed from radio sets across the state and nationally through Sirius XM and the TunedIn app.

“All the play-by-play guys like to develop that signature call,” Podolak said. “It sure fits perfectly. It started the right way. He got to use it on the first play.”

Gonder provided sideline reports for a couple of years, then retired from WMT in 2000. Zabel and Brooks also left the booth, and it became Dolphin’s domain. Gonder mostly has stayed out of the public eye, while Zabel hosted the Sunday night talk show “Two Guys Named Jim” on WHO until his death in 2013.

Iowa broadcasters (clockwise from top left) Jim Zabel, Gary Dolphin, Ron Gonder and Bob Brooks. (Des Moines Register)

Bob Brooks attended every football game until he died in 2016. He was the only media member to cover all six of Iowa’s Rose Bowl appearances. His son, Rob, became the football sideline reporter in 2004 and currently is the voice of Iowa women’s basketball.

Dolphin still lives in Dubuque and makes the long and sometimes dangerous commute, especially during basketball season. Highway 151, which leads past Cascade and into Dubuque, now is a four-lane road, which shaves off a few minutes. Longtime Iowa fundraiser Andy Piro called Highway 151 “The Gary Dolphin Expressway.”

Nobody is in greater demand than Dolphin on the I-Club circuit. His comedic style more reflects Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson than a university cheerleader. Dolphin’s one-liners poke Iowa’s biggest rivals and fellow Big Ten competitors. Perhaps his best quip jabbed border foe Nebraska. Dolphin told I-Club patrons a story about General Custer recognizing his dire situation at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

“The bad news is we’re all gonna die,” said Custer … er, Dolphin. “The good news is we don’t have to go back through Nebraska.”

“He was born to do the job he does,” Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz said. “He thrives on all the stuff and loves being out in the public. Just give him an event to go to and he’ll jump in a car and drive.”

Dolphin’s humor and self-deprecating personality cover many of his dated references, but at times he gets himself into trouble. Twice during this basketball season, he was suspended. Once was a two-game slap after a hot-mic mishap when he raved about three Pittsburgh freshmen while using a derogatory tone toward Iowa’s Maishe Dailey, then a junior. Three months later, Dolphin said Maryland sophomore Bruno Fernando “was King Kong at the end of the game” in how the powerful center dominated the Hawkeyes the final minutes in a one-point Iowa loss.

That earned him an indefinite suspension, a social-media firestorm and the humbling reality of unconscious bias. Most Iowa fans rallied to his defense, and Dolphin was reinstated for spring football.

“When something like that hits you, you’re thinking, ‘Geez, I know I’m not a racist,’” Dolphin said. “I know that I meant well in trying to praise the young guy. But maybe I didn’t do my homework enough.

“What I said was outside the boundary line, and I’ve taken steps to correct it,” Dolphin said. “I’ll come to grips with that, learn from it, take unconscious bias classes, racial insensitivity courses, and we’ll get through it.”

Ferentz was among the first to reach out to Dolphin and offer his support. The football coach was firm in his assessment that Dolphin had to alter his approach.

“Hey, just get it rectified,” Dolphin recalled from his conversation with Ferentz. “Get it corrected. Be yourself, don’t change your personality; we know who you are. We know that you didn’t mean anything vindictive or vicious about your comments. But the world has changed. You haven’t.”

“I know this: I can’t imagine Gary being negative about any athlete that’s played,” Ferentz said. “I can’t imagine. He loves the kids that play the game. He loves them. It’s unfortunate.”

Twenty-two years and change from when Dolphin and Iowa athletics paired up for better or worse, richer and, well, richer, Dolphin still looks the part. Nobody represents the TigerHawk with more dedication, no matter the tribulations.

Dolphin has fought through prostate cancer in 2011 and recovered from a fall out of his vehicle that resulted in a horrific broken leg two years ago. He would like to reach 25 years in the Iowa booth alongside Podolak, 71, and Hansen, 58, in 2021. (Dolphin will be 70.) Then it’s a year-to-year decision.

“I can promise you this: I’m not going to be here when I’m 80, like Brooksie and Zabel,” Dolphin said. “As I said at my press conference when I got the job, I’m not here to fill the shoes or fill the seat. I’m here to occupy the seat and the shoes for a few years. And then the next voice of the Hawkeyes will come in and sit in my chair and wear my shoes. And that’s the way it should be.”

A generation after his hiring, Dolphin no longer is considered the new kid. His voice is just as discernible as those of Brooks, Zabel and Gonder before him.

“All these years later, he enjoys an iconic status as well,” Bowlsby said. “He is much beloved, and he’s had a couple of recent challenges, but I know in my heart that there’s scarcely anyone around who loves the Hawkeyes more than Gary Dolphin. I also know that his heart is always in the right place. I’m sure things will recover and these recent things really are not indicative of the Gary Dolphin that I know.”

(Top photo: USA Today)