By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – If you cover a college athletic department long enough, it’s inevitable that some student-athletes will make poor decisions off the field that become news.

Poor decisions sometimes have legal consequences, and I’ve written stories about Iowa student-athletes breaking the law.

But I’ve also covered Iowa athletics for over three decades and those stories have been few and far between.

It’s hard to even remember the last time an Iowa football player, or an Iowa men’s basketball player ran afoul of the law.

There have been some Iowa football players, including former Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year Tristan Wirfs, that were arrested for drunken driving in recent years. And while that is a serious offense, the arrests have been few and there haven’t been any repeat offenders of which I’m aware.

Wirfs was arrested in July 2018 while opearting a motor scooter. He had two passengers with him according to the police report.

But the Mount Vernon stayed out of trouble for the remainder of his Hawkeye career and he would go on to be selected in the first-round of the 2020 NFL draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Wirfs has since won a Super Bowl and is now considered one of the top offensive tackles in the NFL.

It’s even harder to think of the last time an Iowa men’s basketball player was charged with breaking any law.

Peter Jok had two incidents involving his moped, including being arrested for operating while under the influence. But that was also nearly a decade ago in 2014 when Jok was a freshman.

Jok also learned his lesson because he stayed out of trouble for the remainder of his college career.

Fran McCaffery said when he was hired as the Iowa men’s basketball coach in 2010 that he would recruit players with high character, and he obviously meant what he said because hardly any of his players have made the police blotter.

Every head coach talks about recruiting players with high character, but some don’t always practice what they preach due mostly to the pressure from trying to win.

And while the ugliness from the Pierre Pierce sexual assault scandal will forever be a dark and shameful moment in Hawkeye athletics, it happened nearly 20 years ago, an unfortunate and tragic outlier that hardly describes the true character of most student-athletes.

I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t that unusual for Iowa student-athletes, especially football players, to get arrested for being drunk and disorderly in downtown Iowa City bars.

It was never out of control, but it happened.

One of the burdens with being an Iowa football player, or an Iowa men’s basketball player, is living in a fishbowl in which there is little privacy.

The media might never learn about a student-athlete from a non-revenue sport getting arrested for something minor, whereas the arrest of an Iowa football player or men’s basketball player for just about anything is big news.

But even with the fishbowl always ready to expose bad behavior, it’s hard to think of more than just one recent incident in which an Iowa football player was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in downtown Iowa City, or anywhere for that matter.

And that player has since transferred to another school.

The same could said about the behavior of the Iowa wrestlers.

Hopefully, this column won’t prove to be a jinx because you can never drop your guard when you’re dealing with hundreds of student-athletes who are mostly between the ages of 18 and 23 and living on their own for the first time.

Mistakes and poor decisions will certainly be made in the future by some student-athletes.

The challenge is to limit those mistakes and poor decisions, and right now, Iowa seems to be meeting that challenge for the most part.

My motivation for writing this column came after reading about the random act of kindness put forth by Iowa linebacker Zach Twedt this past Sunday.

The Story City native saw somebody stranded on the side of Interstate-35 in central Iowa and stopped and asked if she needed assistance.

The driver of the car was Omaha native Tina Gunn, who was traveling home from her son’s track meet in Minnesota

Her car had a flat tire and Gunn was worried because her cell phone didn’t have service and she had her kids in the car.

But then out of nowhere came Zach Twedt, who then saved the day by changing the tire.

“Zach will be like a brother forever for me,” Gunn said to WQAD News 8 in Moline, Illinois.

Gunn, who is black, wants to use her story as an example of putting aside racial stereotypes for the sake of just being kind and doing the right thing.

“Also, too, I would want people to look at it and see that he didn’t see color and he wasn’t threatened by us,” Gunn said. “He stopped to help us.

“And for me, it’s just heart.”

And high character.