Hi Rob. Well I get what Coach Campbell is saying. But for an old ISU alum like me who harkens back to the halcyon days of Earle Bruce, that spring game was the last vestiges of what was ISU's annual Veishea celebration, which unfortunately deteriorated into a big and sometimes violent drunk and was canceled for good in 2014. I remember telling my son that a car was overturned and set afire out in front of the Jimmy John's on Welch Avenue where we ate before attending our last spring game during Coach Rhoads' time.
Working for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier then, I also interviewed celebrated Iowa-born opera star Simon Estes, teaching at ISU and Wartburg at the time, who would have been Veishea grand marshal that year, about the event's cancellation for good and for all time. My boss, who was a Hawkeye alum, didn't get the signficance of it at all and wondered why the hell I was even doing the story (um, because it involved an international opera star living in our coverage area and we do have Iowa State readers in our area?) . In Iowa City of course, the spring game was such a sacred ritual that I recall a couple actually got married on the field at halftime back in the Hayden Fry era. And now they have "Fryfest" worshipping the legacy of the man who bailed Iowa fooball out of the dark days of the Ray Nagel, Frank Lauterbur and Bob Commings eras that some Hawk fans today are too young or too spoiled by decades of success to remember. So they shouldn't begrudge us older 'Clones at at least the memory of our own seemingly silly but fun rituals.
When I was in school, of course as a dormie I thought Veishea was just a showcase for the frats. But now that I'm old, I miss it. I miss the cardinal and gold tulips on campus (and maybe they still do that), the parade, all the families on central campus and the kids running up to see and hug Cy like Santa or Mickey Mouse at Disneyland; they even had a Stars over Veishea variety show. My sis and brother in law brought my then-little niece one year and she just loved the parade. Now if you say "Veishea," someone will either respond with a blank stare or say "Gesundheit!"
But as the expert ESPN analysts observed during the Pop Tarts Bowl, I guess we Cyclones out in that big cornfield west of Chicago known as Iowa should be happy with our tap water and pool tables. And now we have a trophy in the Jacobson Building with a working toaster too!
Well said, Pat. That toaster — like most things nowadays — may or may not be a working device. There’s some dispute there. As for the “spring game,” it simply makes so sense in the current climate. Players — er, “student-athletes” — at least finally have some agency. But what’s going on now is unseemly and untenable. Like so many other more important things.
Hi Rob. Well I get what Coach Campbell is saying. But for an old ISU alum like me who harkens back to the halcyon days of Earle Bruce, that spring game was the last vestiges of what was ISU's annual Veishea celebration, which unfortunately deteriorated into a big and sometimes violent drunk and was canceled for good in 2014. I remember telling my son that a car was overturned and set afire out in front of the Jimmy John's on Welch Avenue where we ate before attending our last spring game during Coach Rhoads' time.
Working for the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier then, I also interviewed celebrated Iowa-born opera star Simon Estes, teaching at ISU and Wartburg at the time, who would have been Veishea grand marshal that year, about the event's cancellation for good and for all time. My boss, who was a Hawkeye alum, didn't get the signficance of it at all and wondered why the hell I was even doing the story (um, because it involved an international opera star living in our coverage area and we do have Iowa State readers in our area?) . In Iowa City of course, the spring game was such a sacred ritual that I recall a couple actually got married on the field at halftime back in the Hayden Fry era. And now they have "Fryfest" worshipping the legacy of the man who bailed Iowa fooball out of the dark days of the Ray Nagel, Frank Lauterbur and Bob Commings eras that some Hawk fans today are too young or too spoiled by decades of success to remember. So they shouldn't begrudge us older 'Clones at at least the memory of our own seemingly silly but fun rituals.
When I was in school, of course as a dormie I thought Veishea was just a showcase for the frats. But now that I'm old, I miss it. I miss the cardinal and gold tulips on campus (and maybe they still do that), the parade, all the families on central campus and the kids running up to see and hug Cy like Santa or Mickey Mouse at Disneyland; they even had a Stars over Veishea variety show. My sis and brother in law brought my then-little niece one year and she just loved the parade. Now if you say "Veishea," someone will either respond with a blank stare or say "Gesundheit!"
But as the expert ESPN analysts observed during the Pop Tarts Bowl, I guess we Cyclones out in that big cornfield west of Chicago known as Iowa should be happy with our tap water and pool tables. And now we have a trophy in the Jacobson Building with a working toaster too!
Well said, Pat. That toaster — like most things nowadays — may or may not be a working device. There’s some dispute there. As for the “spring game,” it simply makes so sense in the current climate. Players — er, “student-athletes” — at least finally have some agency. But what’s going on now is unseemly and untenable. Like so many other more important things.