A home opener at Kinnick Stadium like no other, and yes, it was weird
By Pat Harty
IOWA CITY, Iowa – At approximately 12:50 p.m. on Saturday, I left my house on the east side of Iowa City and started driving to Kinnick Stadium.
Under normal conditions, it would have been a horrible decision to leave at that time because it was less than two hours before kickoff to the Iowa football team’s home opener, and the combination of traffic gridlock, tailgaters and those just doing their own thing on a gorgeous late October afternoon would have made the drive a maddening experience.
It still was sort of annoying because I missed almost all of the traffic lights from the far-east point of Burlington St. to Riverside Drive. And the only reason I took Burlington St. is because I wanted to get the full experience of just how weird the circumstances were on this day with a global pandemic.
Burlington St. normally would be a street to avoid on game day, especially less than two hours before kickoff, because it cuts right through the heart of Iowa City from east to west, and through the middle of downtown.
Nobody would ever confuse it with rush hour traffic in Atlanta, but game-day traffic in Iowa City still can be annoying.
Except during a global pandemic.
It barely took me 15 minutes to drive across town, and that was despite missing most of the red lights on Burlington St.
It didn’t look or feel any different than a Saturday in Iowa City without Hawkeye football.
Upon reaching the University of Iowa campus, it felt almost like a ghost town because there wasn’t anybody in the parking lots and places where tailgaters usually squeeze together long before the game starts.
The parking lot across the street from Carver-Hawkeye Arena to the east is usually a hot spot for tailgaters, but on this day, it was empty, other a jogger who just happened to pass by while I was watching.
I then pulled into Lot 43, which is just west of Kinnick Stadium, and is usually off limits to the media on a normal game day.
There were so many parking spots still available that it took me a while to choose the best one, and let me just say, that was weird.
The process of entering the stadium wasn’t much different than normal, besides, of course, having my temperature taken. It must have been okay because I was allowed entrance to the west concourse which was empty and eerily silent
The scene inside the press box was different because there were fewer media members and guests than normal, and because everyone was wearing a mask.
Steve Roe and the Iowa Sports Information Department deserve credit for making the environment inside the press box seem about as close to normal as possible.
“It’s different, that much is for sure,” Roe said when asked about the surreal circumstances.
A pre-game meal still was provided to the media, but it was served in styrofoam containers that were handed out to each person in line.
One of the strangest things about the whole experience leading up to kickoff was watching the stadium stay mostly empty. There were some fans, I would estimate around 200 to 300, sitting on the west bleachers of Kinnick Stadium. But the stands on the east side were empty other than a few media members taking photos.
There were about 75-to-100 Northwestern fans seated in the north end zone, while the south end zone was empty, with exception to the photo cut outs that were purchased by Iowa fans.
Perhaps the most normal feeling occurred when the Iowa players took the field in their traditional swarm just moments before kickoff. As long as you didn’t pay attention to the stadium being mostly empty, it looked and felt like a typical Swarm.
What didn’t look or feel normal, however, was the National Anthem because at least 25 Iowa players chose to kneel during it.
The players’ decision to kneel didn’t have anything to do with the global pandemic, but was in response to the racial unrest and protests that occurred over the summer, and to the accusations of racial disparities that were made against the Iowa program by multiple former black players.
Kickoff finally came and Iowa led 14-0 before the first quarter was even half over, thanks to two Northwestern fumbles in Iowa territory.
Iowa then expanded its lead to 17-0 on a 22-yard field goal by Keith Duncan with 1 minute, 43 seconds left in the first quarter.
The same Iowa team that self-destructed with two costly turnovers against Purdue was now on the positive side of the turnover battle, just a week later.
When the first quarter ended, both teams huddled on their respective sideline and then turned to the patients in the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital to perform the Wave.
That felt normal, too, and it felt good on a day when so much of what happened felt really weird.
By halftime, though, Northwestern had trimmed the deficit to 20-14 and started to figure things out on offense behind graduate transfer quarterback Peyton Ramsey.
Caleb Shudak’s 52-yard field-goal attempt as time expired to end the first half deflected off the right goal post, keeping Iowa’s lead at six points and keeping the momentum shifting to Northwestern’s side.
So that certainly felt normal, a pesky Northwestern team causing problems for Iowa.