Three-Minute History: ‘Champions of Iowa’

In his inaugural address as the third president of Iowa College in 1887, George Augustus Gates spoke of the importance of developing a sound body and a disciplined mind as part of a comprehensive education. “I do believe thoroughly in the cultivation and encouragement of college athletics of all sorts.” With these words, Gates launched an era of athletic success at the College we now know as Grinnell that earned it a legitimate claim to the title “Champions of Iowa.”

In his history of the College, Pioneering 1846–1996, Professor of History Alan Jones ’50 wrote about Grinnell’s remarkable football victories over much larger institutions in the 1880s and 1890s, including foes such as the universities of Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska. 

An 1889 contest between Iowa College (which formally changed its name to Grinnell College in 1909) and the University of Iowa was the first intercollegiate football game played west of the Mississippi River, a game in which the Grinnell team embarrassed the Hawkeyes, 24-0.

The following year brought another victory for Iowa College when the rivals played again. Even though the University of Iowa had the home field advantage, the team from Grinnell won the game, 14-6. In this era, football was a brutal and loosely regulated sport. An account of the Oct. 18, 1890, game reported, “Blood flow[ed] freely.” 

It took the Hawkeyes four tries before they were able to get a win against little Iowa College. In December 1901, the University of Iowa’s Daily Iowan student newspaper wrote respectfully about the Grinnell team:

“First among the state colleges stands Grinnell. Coach Tratt has excellent material from which to pick his team — fast, gritty, and plucky, in fact, the same kind of stuff from which Grinnell teams have been made since the memory of the college athlete in Iowa runneth not to the contrary.”