My list of top 11 Iowa head coaches of all time
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Have you ever started a project and then about half way through realized that it was far more difficult than you had expected?
That’s how I felt after taking on the daunting task of trying to rank the top 10 greatest Iowa Hawkeye head coaches of all time, a list that includes both men’s and women’s coaches.
In fact, it was so hard that I ultimately chose to rank 11 head coaches simply because I couldn’t bring myself to cut one of the final 11 from the list.
It would have been hard enough to rank the top 10 men’s and women’s coaches in separate lists, but to have just one list featuring both men’s and women’s head coaches made it close to impossible.
The decision where to the rank head coaches often came down to longevity versus perhaps a better, but much smaller body of work.
Iowa women’s wrestling coach Clarissa Chun was given some consideration after having led the Hawkeyes to back-to-back NCAA championships.
However, her body of work still is too small, and the sport of women’s wrestling still is in its infancy.
Five years from now, assuming she stays at Iowa, Chun will probably have a much better chance of cracking the top 10, or in this case the top 11.
What’s fun about constructing this type of list is that there is no right or wrong answers. It’s all just an opinion, which of course, is influenced by my personal beliefs.
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11. Bucky O’Connor, men’s basketball, 1950-1958: The Monroe, Iowa native led Iowa to back-to-back NCAA Final Four appearances in 1955 and 1956, and also to Big Ten championships in those same two seasons. His 1956 squad finished as the NCAA runner-up, losing in the title game to San Francisco, which was led by future NBA legend Bill Russell.
O’Conner compiled a 114-59 overall record in slightly more than seven seasons as the Iowa head coach.
His life was tragically cut short when O’Conner was killed in an automobile accident on April 22, 1958 at the age of 44.
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10. Howard Jones, football, 1916-1923: Before building the University of Southern California into a national powerhouse, he did the same for Iowa, leading the Hawkeyes to a 7-0 record in both 1921 and 1922. He compiled a 42-17-1 overall record as the Iowa head coach over eight seasons. The Ohio native and Yale graduate also coached some of the true legends in program history, including Duke Slater, Aubrey Devine, Gordon Locke and Waterloo native Fred Becker, who was a first team All-American in 1916 and the first Hawkeye in any sport to earn first team All-American honors. Becker died at age 22 fighting in World War I.
Iowa had a 20-game winning streak from 1920-1923 under Jones that lasted almost three full years.
Jones left Iowa after the 1923 season to become the head coach at Duke where he only coached for one season in 1924 before moving to the West Coach to coach at USC. He coached the Trojans for 16 seasons, compiling a 121-36-13 record.
Jones reportedly left Iowa partly because his wife didn’t like living in Iowa City due to the brutal Midwestern winters.
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9. Lute Olson, men’s basketball, 1974-1983: The Iowa men’s basketball program had fallen on tough times when the North Dakota native replaced Dick Schultz as head coach in 1974. Olson led Iowa to the NCAA Tournament in each of his last five seasons as head coach, and to share of the Big Ten regular-season title in 1978-79.
Iowa hasn’t won even a share of the regular-season title since then.
His high point as the Iowa head coach came in 1980 when he led Iowa to the NCAA Final Four where it lost to eventual NCAA champion Louisville in the semifinals.
Iowa hasn’t been back to the Final Four since then.
Olson also played a key role in getting Carver-Hawkeye Arena built. But then he left Iowa to take the head coaching job at Arizona following the 1982-83 season, and just a few months after the arena had been opened.
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8. C. Vivian Stringer, women’s basketball, 1983-1995: She lifted Iowa to national prominence in women’s basketball and was known as being a master recruiter.
In her 12 seasons as the Iowa head coach, her teams won at least a share of six Big Ten regular-season titles and made nine straight NCAA Tournament appearance, highlighted by a trip the Final Four in 1993.
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7. Judith Davidson, field hockey, 1978-1987: She coached the Hawkeyes to a second-place finish in the 1984 NCAA tournament before winning a national championship in 1986. Her resume with the Hawkeyes also includes being a three-time Big Ten Coach of the Year selection, and winning seven Big Ten regular-season titles during her decade at the helm.
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6. Kirk Ferentz, football, 1999-present: He is Iowa’s all-time winningest football coach (204-124) and the longest tenured head coach in the country as he prepares to enter his 27th season.
With his next win, the 70-year-old Ferentz would tie Woody Hayes as the Big Ten’s all-time winningest head football coach with 205 wins.
He has led Iowa to a share of two-Big Ten regular-season titles in 2002 and 2004 and to 22 bowl games since 2001.
He was named the Associated Press National Coach of the Year in 2002 and 2015 and the Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2002, 2004, 2009 and 2015.
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5. Gayle Blevins, softball, 1988-2010: The Dayton, Ohio native won 40 or more games in 13 of her 23 seasons at Iowa, including a career-high 53 wins in 1991, 52 wins in 1997 and 50 wins in 2005. She also led the Hawkeyes to 16 NCAA tournaments, four Women’s College World Series appearances, five Big Ten regular season championships, and two Big Ten Tournament titles.
In 31 years as a head coach, Blevins compiled a record of 1,245 wins, 588 losses and 5 ties. At the time of her retirement, Blevins was the second-winningest softball coach in NCAA Division I history. She never had a losing season at Iowa or Indiana.
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4. Forest Evashevski, football, 1952-1960: He led Iowa to its only wins in the Rose Bowl following the 1956 and 1958 seasons and compiled a career record of 68-35-6. His 1958 team finished 8-1-1, won the Big Ten title and defeated the California Golden Bears in the Rose Bowl.
Though they finished second to the LSU Tigers in both major pre-bowl game polls, the 1958 Hawkeyes were recognized by the Football Writers Association of America as national champions after all the bowl games had been played.
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3. Lisa Bluder, women’s basketball, 2000-2024: The Marion, Iowa native retired in May 2024 as the all-time winningest coach in Big Ten history with an overall record of 528-254 and a Big Ten record of 262-145. Under her leadership, the Hawkeyes advanced to the National Championship Game in each of her last two seasons as head coach in 2023 and 2024 and made 22 postseason appearances overall (18 NCAA and 4 WNIT), including 14 of the last 16 NCAA Tournaments.
She also led the Hawkeyes to five Big Ten Tournament titles, and two shared Big Ten regular season championships.
She coached some of the best players in program history including two-time National Player of Year Caitlin Clark and consensus All-America center Megan Gustafson.
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2. Hayden Fry, football, 1979-1998: The Texas native ended nearly two decades of misery by leading Iowa to the Rose Bowl in his third season as head coach in 1981. Iowa had suffered through 19 straight non-winning seasons before the breakthrough season came in 1981. He also led Iowa to an outright Big Ten title in 1985 and to a share of the conference title in 1990.
His 1985 squad was ranked No. 1 in the polls for six straight weeks during the 1985 season.
Fry is credited with breaking the stranglehold that Ohio State and Michigan had on the Big Ten in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. He also helped to erase the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust mentality that was used to describe Big Ten football in the 1970s by emphasizing the forward pass when few coaches were at the time.
Fry’s influence and success goes beyond just wins and losses and that helps to explain why he is ranked so high on the list. He created the tiger hawk logo, which is now one of the most recognizable images in college sports.
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- Dan Gable, wrestling, 1976-1997: This pick was a no-brainer as his teams won 21 Big Ten championships and 15 NCAA Division I titles while also compiling a dual meet record of 355-21-5. The Waterloo native also coached 158 All-Americans, 50 national champions, 106 Big Ten champions, and 12 Olympians, including eight Olympic medalists.
In addition to coaching folk-style wrestling at Iowa, Gable coached freestyle wrestling. Gable was the head coach of three USA Olympic teams and six USA World teams.
A strong case could be made for having more than just one wrestling coach on the list, but the bar for wrestling, fair or not, is ranked so high because of what Gable achieved.
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Also considered: Francis X. Cretzmeyer; men’s track and field/cross country; Gary Kurdelmeier, wrestling; David McCuskey, wrestling; Tom Brands, wrestling; Jim Zalesky, wrestling; Glenn Patton, men’s swimming; Ralph Miller, men’s basketball; Tom Davis, men’s basketball; Beth Beglin, field hockey; Duane Banks, baseball; Joey Woody, track and field; Tom Dunn, men’s gymnastics; Dick Holzaepfel, men’s gymnastics.
