Four Bohannon brothers, but no QBs. Here’s why.
NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa – You’d figure with four sons that Gordy Bohannon would have produced at least one elite quarterback in the bunch.
Or any type of quarterback for that matter.
“I played one year in like seventh grade or something,” said Jordan Bohannon, who is the youngest of the four Bohannon brothers and an incoming freshman guard on the Iowa basketball team. “It just wasn’t my thing.”
Basketball is Jordan’s thing, as is the case with his three older brothers. The game has been good to all four of the Bohannon brothers and vice versa.
It’s hard to argue with each of their decisions to pursue basketball, considering all four of the Bohannon brothers will have competed at the Division I level once Jordan becomes a Hawkeye.
Matt Bohannon just finished a sparkling career as a sharpshooting guard for Northern Iowa this past spring. The second youngest of the four brothers was on hand Thursday to watch Jordan compete in the Prime Time League.
Matt was asked why none of the brothers chose to follow in their father’s footsteps.
Gordy Bohannon played multiple sports in high school, but he chose to pursue football in college, where he started at quarterback for Iowa’s 1981 Rose Bowl team.
“I don’t know,” Matt Bohannon said. That’s good question. That’s a really good question.”
Matt then thought about it for a few seconds before giving an answer.
“We chose basketball kind of because we wanted to follow Jason,” Matt said in reference to Jason Bohannon, who is the oldest of the four brothers and a former standout guard for the Wisconsin Badgers. “Jason started it. So we can blame him more than anybody.”
Jordan Bohannon also credits Jason for steering the other three brothers to basketball.
"I guess Jason kind of set the bar on the whole basketball stereotype with the Bohannons," Jordan said. "I guess we just kind of followed his footsteps."
Jordan Bohannon, who is listed at 6-foot-1, is the shortest of the four brothers, while Zach Bohannon, who played basketball at Air Force and Wisconsin, is the tallest at 6-6 and the second oldest brother. So it wasn’t a case of them being too short to play quarterback.
It just wasn’t in their blood, even though it was in their blood. Each of the four brothers gave quarterback a shot before moving on.
“We all played football, me and Jordan kind of cooled a little bit early,” Matt Bohannon said. “But the older two brothers played in high school the first couple years and I stopped in eighth grade. We were all quarterbacks, all four of us. We just never really stuck it out.”
There wasn’t any pressure on the Bohannon brothers to stick with football. Their father encouraged them to play multiple sports and never tried to force them behind center.
“He was real supportive on anything,” Jordan Bohannon said. “We were all really into baseball. Baseball and basketball, pretty much we grew up with, not really football too much.”
Some of their fondest memories of playing football occurred in their backyard where the four brothers would divide into teams, with each getting a shot to play quarterback.
Jordan Bohannon was reluctant to say which of the four brothers would have been the best quarterback.
“I don’t know. That could be a toss-up,” Jordan said. “We’ve kind of had some games in the backyard playing two on two. It was kind of hard to tell.”
Matt Bohannon, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate to say which of four brothers had the most potential at quarterback.
“I think definitely me,” Matt said, grinning ear to ear. “Just the toughness aspect and I think I definitely have that over my brothers.”
As for their father, Jordan said there are times when Gordy reminisces with his four sons about being a Hawkeye quarterback. Gordy will show an old tape of him playing for the Hawkeyes to show his sons what they could have been.
“He’ll say this is what I used to do in college,” Jordan said. “This is what you missed out on.”
Jordan Bohannon finally broke a trend when he signed a letter of intent with Iowa last November during his senior year at Linn-Mar High School.
He became the first of the four Bohannon brothers to follow in their father’s footsteps with regard to picking a college.
Jordan said he tries to use the same approach with playing basketball that his father had as a quarterback.
“He always said to not really force anything,” Jordan said of his father. “We kind of took his mentality into basketball. Our whole mindset is not really forcing the issue and just waiting until the game comes to us. I think we really took on my dad’s mentality from that aspect.”