Chuck Long can relate to what Luka Garza is experiencing right now
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – Only Luka Garza and a select few truly know and understand what he is feeling and experiencing as he prepares to make one of the biggest decisions in his life.
Garza has declared for the 2020 NBA Draft as a junior, and Iowa’s All-America center is expected to announce his decision about whether he will stay in the draft on Aug. 2, unless the NBA pushes the deadline back even further.
Iowa fans are hoping, and in some cases, praying that the 6-foot-11 Garza will return for his senior season because his presence in the lineup would make Iowa arguably the best team in the Big Ten on paper.
Not since Chuck Long decided to return for his senior season as the Iowa quarterback in 1985 has a Hawkeye student-athlete faced a decision that would largely determine how his or her team would be perceived heading into the season.
Iowa probably would have been respectable without Long behind center, as would the Iowa men’s basketball team without Garza.
But with Long performing at an All-America level, Iowa marched to the 1985 Big Ten title and finished 10-2 overall.
The hope is that Garza will have the same impact on the men’s basketball team, which hasn’t won a Big Ten regular-season title since 1979.
“A huge factor, and I’m sure that’s a huge factor for him as well,” Long said of having a good team at Iowa. “Here’s Iowa having a chance to win the Big Ten, which has been a while. It was a big factor me. If we had graduated everybody in that 84 season, and there was nobody coming back or just a really young team coming back, I probably would’ve leaned towards turning professional, to be quite honest.
“We had a great offense coming back and a lot of our defense. That was a huge factor in me coming back, no question about it, to have a chance to be a starting quarterback for a Big Ten championship team at Iowa, and it worked out that way. Yeah, that was really the deciding factor, along with getting my degree. I had a chance to finish my degree that fall and just get that out of the way and concentrate the entire spring on the next chapter in my life.”
Long was fortunate to have stayed healthy his senior season. He also finished runner-up to Auburn running back Bo Jackson for the 1985 Heisman Trophy and was selected in the first round of the 1986 NFL Draft by Detroit Lions, and with the 12th pick overall.
The problem with Garza’s senior season is that it’s uncertain if it will even happen with the highly contagious Coronavirus still spreading in multiple states.
The situation in the NBA is also fluid due to the virus. The plan is to resume playing the season that was suspended in March, but as we’ve seen with the virus, plans can change in a hurry.
Long didn’t have to deal with a global pandemic in 1985 while mulling over his decision, so he sympathizes with Garza having to make such a difficult decision under surreal circumstances.
“I just couldn’t imagine doing it,” said Long, who played six seasons in the NFL before becoming a college football coach. “The pandemic may change everything because you don’t know if you’re even going to have a season in college. So I think if there’s a chance to go professionally, and there’s a pandemic with not even sure if you’re even going to be playing a collegiate season, I would probably lean towards going professional.”
Garza said when he declared for the draft that he would stay in the draft only if he was convinced that a team would pick him in one of the two rounds.
Garza projects as a possible second-round pick, but it only takes one team to make a dream come possible.
Long wasn’t sure where he projected as an NFL prospect after his junior season. He had finished the 1984 season in spectacular fashion by throwing six touchdown passes against Texas in the 1984 Freedom Bowl.
But Long still wasn’t convinced that he would be selected in the first round of the 1985 draft, and that uncertainty was a factor in his decision to return to Iowa.
“I didn’t think I was in that first round material, although, people were telling me that I was,” said Long, who is the Chief Executive Officer for the Iowa Sports Foundation, and a college football analyst for the Big Ten Network. “I wasn’t sure if I was or not. The Freedom Bowl certainly enhanced me in the eyes of the NFL. I knew that was going to be a big factor. I had a lot of starting experience behind me. But I just didn’t know.
“I felt like I needed another year of maturation and another year of being a starting quarterback at the collegiate level. I had a lot of range coming out of that Freedom Bowl and I just didn’t know.”
Hayden Fry’s influence was another factor that kept Long at Iowa.
Fry didn’t pressure Long to return, but he made it impossible for Long to leave.
“I loved it. That was the other factor. I just loved coach Fry,” Long said. “I loved the staff. What he stood for. How much fun he made football. Hayden is the type of guy, it’s hard to leave him. He’s just hard to leave and you wanted to be around the guy every day. He just had that kind of charisma. He made it so much fun to play. Even practice was fun under coach.
“He’s a father figure to me, I just felt like, gosh, I can’t leave my father. I can’t leave my father who’s really brought me up in the collegiate world. I just felt indebted to him and I was not going to leave him.”
Garza, meanwhile, also has a close relationship with his head coach.
In fact, Fran McCaffery’s influence was the biggest factor in Garza picking Iowa over a host of other scholarship offers.
McCaffery has also avoided putting pressure on Garza to return.
Of course, McCaffery would love to coach Garza as a senior, but McCaffery also wants Garza to do what is best for him.
Fry felt the same about Long’s decision 34 years ago.
“I can relate to anybody that goes through these decisions,” Long said. “I always answer by saying each individual is different and each situation is different. You always like kids to come back to college and enjoy and get the most out of that college experience as possible.
“But you have a Covid situation, too, that may enter into the picture as well. But I never fault a person for making their own decision on whether to stay or not. But I always like to see kids go back to school and further their education and try to get their degrees. Many of them that go on to play professionally without a degree have a hard time coming back to get one. And at the end of the day, you need one to move forward in your career outside of your sport.”