1915

Fall
Writing for the yearbook, Professor Arthur G. Smith noted that Iowa “athletics would be helped if the students, who never engaged in any more strenuous sport than the fox trot, would cease explaining with elaborate detail to the home alumni at Christmas time the strategic weakness of the team.”

November 12
The “I” Club was formed to promote interest in athletics among the alumni and to encourage them to use their influence in helping to persuade Iowa athletes to attend S.U.I. With membership open to all who earned a letter “I” from the Athletic Association, 22 charter members were inducted.

November 13
Preparations for Iowa’s Homecoming celebration took on a new twist when the electrical engineering students devised an electric sign to flash the football yell. “Thursday and Friday nights before the Iowa-Ames game, from the upper part of the physics building there flashed continually the famous Iowa locomotive yell. Word by word, the electric lights blazed it in

‘Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
Iowa Fights! Iowa Fights! Iowa Fights!”

“When the student body gives the yell, it starts slowly and gathers momentum in much the same way that an engine puffs out of a railroad station, and ends in a drawn-out, crashing chorus on the ‘Iowa Fights’ parts….

“The sign was commented on here by students and visitors as the most clever device ever invented to express football spirit.”

Nevertheless, Ames beat Iowa on Saturday. Final score: 16-0

Howard Jones

As later reported in the yearbook, not only the team faced defeat that day: “Not a sound broke that sad stillness of the night. We were defeated. Yes, it was we that were defeated. Not the loyal old grads, not the team alone, but we, the University students. Our halting cheering and half-hearted support of the team did as much toward losing the game as the team itself.” The electric cheering sign was not enough to secure a victory.

December 20
The Board in Control of Athletics announced that Howard Jones, a Yale graduate and veteran of football there, would be Iowa’s new coach. Jones was the first Iowa coach to sign a long-term contract.

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