By LUKE MEREDITH, Of The Associated Press
IOWA CITY ” In nine years as the head coach of one of the nation’s most famous wrestling programs, Jim Zalesky won three national championships, produced 45 All-Americans, earned two National Coach of the Year honors and was voted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
So what did all that get him? Fired.
It’s been six years since the Iowa Hawkeyes have won the NCAA championship. In a state where attendance at the high school wrestling tournament doubles that of the basketball tournament and Hawkeyes dual matches often draw more than 10,000 fans, six years without a banner is half a decade too long.
So shortly after Iowa closed the book on its worst season in 37 years this March, athletics director Bob Bowlsby showed his Hall of Fame coach to the door.
The job of bringing Iowa wrestling back toward the expectations set by generations of Hawkeye champions fell to 38-year-old Tom Brands, a four-time All-American and former assistant coach at Iowa.
Brands left a comfortable gig as head coach at Virginia Tech for the chance to turn around his alma mater, and he knew right away what he was in for.
Bowlsby said at Brands’ first press conference that the Iowa wrestling job “is the toughest job in college sports.”
“I embrace that,” Brands said.
Bowlsby just may be right. Since their first national title in 1975, the Iowa wrestling program has achieved a level of success almost impossible to fathom. The Hawkeyes have won 20 national championships and 27 Big Ten titles over the past 32 years, and have placed at least one of their own in every Olympics since 1980.
Wrestling isn’t just a sport at Iowa, it’s an institution, like women’s soccer at North Carolina and track and field at Arkansas. Like it or not, future coaches who take on such jobs can’t avoid being judged against history.
“Anyone who takes that job, or the Arkansas track job, or the North Carolina women’s soccer job, knows the level tradition has dictated,” Bowlsby said.
The man most responsible for making Iowa the gold standard in wrestling circles is Dan Gable, one of the most successful college coaches ever ” in any sport. In 21 seasons on the Hawkeyes bench Gable’s teams won every Big Ten tournament they competed in, as well as 15 national championships.
Gable moved on to an administrative role in the athletic department in 1997, clearing the way for Zalesky. But his legacy still looms over the program, serving as a measuring stick for every Hawkeyes coach that follows.
Instead of trying to run away from Iowa’s past, Brands has gone out of his way to embrace it. His first major step in that direction was to persuade Gable to return as his top assistant coach.
According to Brands, Gable was brought back to help restore the sense of community the Iowa wrestling program had during his tenure as head coach.
“Its very important from a unity point of view,” Brands said. “We are really going to rely on his expertise.”
Zalesky got off to a fast start walking in Gable’s footsteps, winning three straight national championships before the bottom began to fall out.
The Hawkeyes failed to win the Big Ten in five of Zalesky’s final six seasons, and Iowa ‘s overall record slipped in each of the past three. Meanwhile, Oklahoma State overtook the Hawkeyes as the nation’s premier program by winning four straight national titles.
Things hit rock bottom, relatively speaking, in 2006. Iowa finished sixth in the Big Ten tournament ” it’s worst showing since 1967 ” and failed to place an individual winner at either the Big Ten or NCAA tournament for the second straight season.
Sure, the Hawkeyes finished fourth at the NCAA tournament last season. But Bowlsby felt he had to do something to stop the program’s steady decline.
“Everybody understands the expectations,” said Bowlsby, who announced last week that he’s leaving Iowa to take over as A.D. at Stanford in July. “It doesn’t mean we will reach them every time. But we always have to be in position to reach those expectations…I didn’t feel that realistically we were competing to meet those expectations with regularity.”
Bowlsby hasn’t given Brands a so-called “national titles quota,” and Brands insists that the mind-set he wants to instill in both his wrestlers and those around the program is one where the constant improvement and a passionate commitment to Iowa wrestling is considered success.
That being said, Brands knows that one of the main reasons the job he’s worked his entire career for was open is because Iowa isn’t ready to accept playing second-fiddle to anyone.
“I don’t look at it as enormous expectations. There’s a standard and we have to meet that standard,” Brands said. “We have to raise the bar.”
Wrestling Gear
