Thought this made for for good off season forum fodder. My favorite one was a relatively long conversation I had with Montgomery last tailgate tour. That guy is absolutely the real deal and I was extremely impressed with his genuine care for talking with fans and kids. I couldn't be happier to root for him this year and am glad he's Clone. My old man tells the story of a time he saw Johnny eating at a small town diner in western Iowa about the time Wayne Morgan just got hired as HC. My dad approached him, said Hi, and asked him about Wayne. Johnny released profanity laden tirade of his disgust with the hire and how the program was headed "right down grandpa's sh*t house". RIP Johnny. One of a kind and truly missed.
My dad saw Johnny Orr at a diner in Atlantic and just basically said hi, and didn't want to bother him, but Johnny said no problem, I love talking to fans. Dad said he was the real deal, same guy you heard on the radio and saw on TV.
When I lived out in VA I went to the Vikings vs Redskins game at Fed Ex Field in 2004. I'm wearing my Moss jersey and had endzone seats in about the 5th row. My girlfriend and I go in early and the Vikes are warming up right in front of us. Moss spots my 84 and yells "yo" and fires the football over to me. I played catch with the GOAT for like 5 minutes.
Tim Floyd bought me a shot (he bought a whole tray's worth called Kansas Killers and passed them out) at Wallabys when I was 18. I then got served for the night .
When ISU played Florida State in Arrowhead in the Grambling special, we bought tickets to attend a pre-game party tent fiesta that Johnny Orr was a host. My friends and I were watching the band, and someone came up behind us, put his arms around our shoulders and said, “How you boys doing?” Yep. Johnny Orr. It was actually a little creepy, a la Joe Biden moment, and we all still laugh about it today. And Seneca was in!!!
My wife and her friends stayed in the same hotel as Florida St. They are in the elevator and in walks Bobby Bowden and he proceeds to tell the girls how pretty they are and to leave his football players alone. She said it was super creepy.
I pulled Walden & Gibbons up on a table with me to lead the fight song at Kelly's during Big 8 tourney
2002 Final Four in Atlanta. I was there for work with 2 other guys. Through some connections we got invited to this fancy charity brunch sponsored by Adidas. When we arrived, the maitre d noticed the Iowa State logo on my shirt and asked if we were from Iowa. We replied yes, and he said that there was another couple from Iowa in attendance, so he'd sit us by them. Imagine our surprise when the "other couple" turned out to be Johnny Orr and his wife. Over the course of the next 90 minutes, Johnny had us all in stitches with his stories. All kinds of topics, from basketball, to non sports stuff, to speculation on the number of lesbians in the ISU athletic department. I swear I learned some curse words that I'd never heard before. It was a riot. And the best part is he was doing it while speaker after speaker was addressing the crowd on behalf of this charity. At one point, one of the event organizers recognized Johnny, and asked him to say a few words off the cuff. He agreed, and once he got a hold of a microphone, basically dominated the room for much much longer than any of the other speakers. It was great.
I golfed with Bobby Diaco and Brett Bielema about 25 years ago. Guessing they weren't thrilled to get paired up with a couple of Cyclones but all joking was very cordial. Brett could bomb it and Bobby was no good, if I remember correctly. Brett wasn't fat yet. Also had dinner with Coach GMac after a victory. I know his college roommate. This was before we figured out it wasn't going to work out for him here.
Was at an event at a home on the Tailgate Tour and my buddy and I spoke with Steve Prohm for about 10 minutes, 2-on-1. He told us the story of the night he found out Monte was coming back to ISU for his senior year. Turns out it was about a week and a half before it was publicly announced, and at 1AM in the morning haha
My mother was a waitress at the country club in Ames while in college, where Johnny Orr frequented. She doesn't have fond memories of him. She says he was rude, foul mouthed and made raunchy comments towards her. She still gets upset about it when people bring him up. Hard to choose a favorite moment. When ISU still had a baseball team, my parents used to drop me off at Cap Timm after school. A lot of times just about the only other people in the stands were ISU football players or ISU basketball players. Marcus Fizer was always particularly nice to me, and invited me to sit with them on more than one occasion. That was a highlight of my childhood.
A couple I had, after transferring to ISU 2nd semester of freshman year, was there for orientation or whatever with my mom and was trying to figure out the combo for the mail slots. Up walked Stevie Johnson and he was super nice and showed me how to get them open. Stayed and talked to us for a few minutes. Lived in Larch so was around a lot of the athletes. Played some N64 against Fizer so that was cool. A story I heard from another guy on my floor, a basketball player was in the bathroom with his junk on the counter, scrubbing it with soap talking about how "it burns and he can't get it off".
I worked for a small telephone company out of college. The company was a partner with Iowa Network Services and Johnny Orr was a spokesman for INS and they offered to send Johnny to the company 100 years of service celebration and to play golf with anyone my boss wanted him to play with. My boss asked the local radio station sportscaster to play with Johnny because we did some work with the radio station and he knew the guy would love to play with Johnny. When they got back, we asked Johnny how the golfing went. He said, "GODDAMN, COACH! HE SUCKS!" Used to brush my teeth next to Ellis Hobbs when he lived in Willow his freshman year. Never really talked to him - just gave him a casual head nod. I worked for ISU Food Service in Linden and was asked to help cater the recruiting breakfasts at McCarney's house. Never seen a man eat so many pancakes as Stevie Hicks' dad; saw Austin Flynn and his family there when I think he committed. Was with a friend walking down Welch and remember seeing Tim Barnes smoking a joint out on the sidewalk. Tailgated for a very brief time with Jacy Holloway at the ISU-FSU game at Arrowhead. A buddy of mine was super excited to meet him and he was nice, but I think he was a little weirded out by my friend.
My youngest son is very outgoing and will just walk up and make friends with anyone. During a couple father son team camps he spent most of his time hanging out with Naz. They even had a special handshake etc. The next winter my oldest was playing at basketball tournament in Ames. Iowa State was playing at home that night. I don't remember the opponent but I remember watching from the All Iowa Attack facility during halftime/timeouts of my son's games. Naz had several big shots down the stretch and Iowa State won. After my son's game was done we stopped at the Kum and Go by the practice facility and Naz was in the check out line in front of us. When he turned around I said "hey Naz, do you remember a kid form the father and son camp you kept doing that handshake with?" He said "yeah you mean Joe?". I said yeah he's sitting right outside in the van, would you mind saying hi, he'd think it was pretty cool. He said sure thing. He walked out to the parking lot, opened the van door and stuck his head in the door and played Angry Birds with him for about 15 minutes. I thought that was pretty crazy for a college guy coming off a huge win on a Saturday night.
We went to Cardinals spring training in Florida in 2001. We somehow scored seats right next to the Cards dugout in the first row. Before the game, McGwire is sitting by himself in the dugout. I lean over with a ball and a marker and say "Hey! McGwire! Could I get your autograph?" He looks over and says "hey buddy!" then proceeds to get up and walk away... During spring training, the coaches sit on folding chairs on the field. Bobby Knight is a huge Cards fan and sat with Tony LaRussa on the field for that game, right in front of us. He and my stepdad chatted for the whole game about how Bobby always enjoyed the fans in Iowa. This was when he was between IU and TTU. I remember my stepdad even asking him where he was going to coach next and he just said "not sure." Not soon after, he signed with TTU. Bobby even offered to give me his autograph after the game, without me even asking. I still have that baseball. ISU specific...I was a snare drummer in marching band. Before my first home game, all the leaders made it clear that you never, under any circumstances, let anyone touch or play your drum. We entered the stadium from the south back then and had to walk all the way around the field to the north end zone bleachers. On that walk, Ellis Hobbs III comes up to me and starts tapping on my drum with his fingers. I didn't say a word...
We were on a Panama Cruise the first half of April with the ISU Alumni Traveling Cyclones; there were about 15 of us in the group. We were wandering around the ship during an "at sea" day taking pictures of "the boys" (our ISU mascot props) when an older couple (Yeah, older than ME!) approached us and asked if we were Cyclones. Told them yes, we were, and he said we both graduated from there. I asked when, & he said he was there from 41 to 48 with a break in the middle for WWII. Gave us common ground because my father had a similar experience at A&M. He mentioned that he played "a little ball" while he was there, and I was like "really? Football, basketball, baseball?" and his wife elbowed him in the ribs & said "He's a Hall of Famer in basketball at ISU!" Yup - Ray Wehde!!! We had lunch with them a couple of days later and just laughed our butts off the whole way through. At one point Ginny was talking about something and asked Ray to confirm. He was kind of staring off into space. Without missing a beat and without looking at him, she threw another elbow to his ribs & said something like "isn't that right, Ray?", at which point he replied "Oh, yes!". Relationship goals. The boys:
I was at a house party once that he just showed up to, and he absolutely partied it up. Nobody knew him. He just rolled in and had a good time.
I've had a lot of great interactions with players at the events that used to be on August 1st (old man moment, can't remember the name) but a few years ago when Hakeem Butler was a true freshman he was one of the guys running the event for the tackling and football running drills. He was absolutely hilarious and great with the kids. I remember thinking that he was just so skinny he was never going to play but I did like him. Well, I was wrong about that one.
