Greg Hansen : Hunger was Iowa theme for Stoopses

Commings went to Iowa and became MVP of the Hawkeyes' 1957 Rose Bowl team. Stoops signed with the Washington Senators, hit. 218 in a Class A season in Superior, Neb., and went home to Youngstown where he married his high school sweetheart, Dee Rochford.

Ron and Dee Stoops had six kids and lived the white-picket-fence life in Youngstown. He taught high school history, painted houses in the summer and coached football in the fall. She was the mom.

Commings became a legendary coach at Ohio's Massillon High School and was hired in 1974 to rescue his alma mater; Iowa had gone 12 seasons without a winning team. In 1977, Commings offered a scholarship to Bobby Stoops, a not-so-big and not-so-fast safety who wasn't in great demand.

Commings said he took a chance on Bobby Stoops because he was from Youngstown, and because he suspected that Ron Stoops' kid wouldn't back down from anybody.

Boy, did he get that right.

Commings was fired in 1978 and Hayden Fry began another Iowa reconstruction project. In the first spring practice of 1979, new Iowa defensive coordinator Bill Brashier identified Bobby Stoops as what Fry calls "a bell cow."

"Coach Brashier said, 'Coach Fry, we have a guy out there who'd chase you up in those two-bit seats just to knock your jock off,' " Fry said at a recent news conference in Iowa City. "I said, 'Who's that?' And he said, 'His name is Bobby Stoops' And I talked to him and found out that his daddy's a football coach back in Ohio. And I said, 'Oh, he's really hungry.' "

Perhaps that should be the working title of the Stoops' brothers football lives: Oh, They're Really Hungry.

"Everybody thinks my boys are lucky," Dee Stoops was saying on the UA's practice field Tuesday. "It's easy to forget all those years when they put in their time."

The irony is that Bob Stoops wanted to leave Iowa. He would call home during the Commings days, frustrated by all the losing, waiting for someone to say the powerful words: come home.

But because the Youngstown Sheet and Tube factory closed in 1977, eliminating 4,000 jobs — "Black Monday," the papers called it — there was no opportunity in Youngstown. Bob Stoops stuck it out at Iowa. Mike Stoops followed, then Mark Stoops.

All wore jersey No. 41 at Iowa. All would "knock your jock off." From 1977 to 1991, one of Ron and Dee Stoops' boys either coached or played football for the Hawkeyes.

Who has a legacy like that? What family? What school?

"Bob's decision to stay at Iowa turned out to be a life-changing experience for all of us," Mike Stoops says now. "Youngstown probably has as much to do with it as anything. Living in such a tough environment, you had to learn to compete at a young age. Growing up with six kids and very limited means, that's how we learned to survive."

If Youngstown was tough, Iowa City was opportunity.

The Stoops brothers lived in the dorms. Didn't often have a car. Mike Stoops remembers that his top salary as a Hawkeye assistant coach was $15,000.

"When we'd drive to Iowa City, we'd take ham sandwiches and spaghetti, things like that, and sit on the floor of their dormitory, have a picnic," Dee remembers. "It was hard on them because we couldn't help out much financially."

For five years, the Stoops brothers lived either at Slater Hall or Hillcrest Hall. It was chaos. Fry required the football players to live together. It was "Animal House" with shoulder pads.

"I wouldn't recommend that any more," Mark Stoops, Arizona's defensive coordinator, says with a laugh.

"I tell our players that and they just die," Mike Stoops says. "It was like our own frat house."

But the Stoops brothers took care of business and eventually outgrew Iowa City. Bob became a volunteer firefighter, then a Hawkeyes' graduate coach, and in 1988, became an assistant coach at Kent State. Mike left for Kansas State in 1992. Mark took a teaching/coaching job in Macedonia, Ohio, which is just 46 miles from the family home in Youngstown.

And now they've come so far that Saturday's game in Iowa City seems like a return to another world. None of the Stoops brothers have coached or played at Kinnick Stadium for 17 years.

The old Slater dormitory is still there, but now it has "Quiet House Floors" where students are not allowed to make noise from 7 p.m. to 10 a.m.

And that's not all that has changed. Mike Stoops says college football has evolved so dramatically that the Stoops brothers of the '70s and '80s might not be able to play for the Iowa Hawkeyes of the 21st century.

"We had the intangible qualities you need but those aren't going to carry you in modern-day football," he says. "The speed has gotten so great. We didn't have to cover the whole field the way you do now. We were able to overcome physical liabilities with our instincts and competitive nature.

"But Iowa gave us the opportunities, and we made the most of them. That's where we found our place."