The Long Road Home: Chuck Long Returns for Hawkeye Homecoming
At first, Chuck Long (85BBA) thought it was a prank.
In fall 1979, Long quarterbacked his high school team, Wheaton North, to an Illinois state football championship. But the junior didn’t exactly toss the ball all over the field that season. When North used its option attack to beat LaSalle-Peru 14-6 in the Class 4A state title game, Long threw for minus-3 yards. Division I football didn’t seem like a part of his future.
So, when Long received a phone call from the University of Iowa, he wondered if someone was pulling a practical joke on him.
“We were basically a team with a great running game and a great defense,” Long says. “Because of that, I wasn’t going to get recruited. I mean, who in their right mind would do that?”
PHOTO: John Emigh
Legendary Hawkeye quarterback Chuck Long reminisces on his time at Iowa ahead of this fall’s homecoming festivities.
But Iowa’s new coach, Hayden Fry—himself a former quarterback at Baylor 30 years earlier—saw something special when he watched film of the tall, lanky signal caller, who would lead Wheaton North back to the playoffs as a senior. Iowa flew Long in for an official recruiting visit, his first introduction to the campus where he’d become a football legend and the charismatic Texan who would change his life.
“I came back, told my dad they had offered me a full-ride scholarship,” recalls Long. “He said, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ I said, it covers room, board, tuition, everything. He said, ‘Have they seen you play, son?’ My dad had a great sense of humor. For my family, it was all a very surreal moment.”
This fall, Long will make another memorable visit to Iowa City—this time as the grand marshal of the UI homecoming parade. Long was 4-0 in homecoming games as Iowa’s quarterback, including when he ran in the winning touchdown to beat Michigan State to cap homecoming weekend in 1985.
Long turned Iowa’s scholarship offer into an eight-season NFL career, followed by a lengthy college and professional coaching career. The road, Long says, started with the faith that Fry had in him.
PHOTO: HAWKEYESPORTS.COM
Long leads No. 7 Iowa to a 20-14 win over No. 3 Ohio State in September 1983.
“The university and my experience there opened up so many doors to me,” Long says. “It changed my life forever. You always think about ‘what if.’ What if I didn’t go to Iowa, where would I be? I would probably have done what my dad did—get on the train every day from a western Chicago suburb and go into the city to work every day. My experience as a student-athlete at the University of Iowa has taken me all over the world.”
“The university and my experience there opened up so many doors to me. It changed my life forever." —Chuck Long
Long was a four-year starter with the Hawkeyes from 1982–85 and became the first quarterback in Big Ten history to pass for more than 10,000 yards. He threw a record six touchdown passes in the 1984 Freedom Bowl, and he was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1985 after leading Iowa to the Big Ten championship and a spot in the Rose Bowl. Fourteen years after his college career ended, Long was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
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For all the success he enjoyed at Iowa, however, Long struggled during his freshman year. “I was overwhelmed at my very first training camp,” he said. “I didn’t know how to read coverages, I didn’t know any of that stuff. Hayden and [offensive coordinator] Bill Snyder, they were ahead of the curve. They were today’s spread offense. They had a sophisticated passing attack, and you had to be able to read coverages as a quarterback to be good at it. And I was lost.”
Long remembers calling his father, Charlie, during training camp when his confidence was waning.
“Dad, I don’t know if I can do this,” Chuck said. “I’m so far behind.”
“You’ve got really good coaches there who know what they’re doing,” Charlie said. “And they will get you to that point where you need to be. Just trust the process.”
Long became the starter at the beginning of the 1982 season but got off to a slow start. He threw for just 31 yards in the season-opening 42-7 loss at Nebraska.
PHOTO: HAWKEYESPORTS.COM
In 1985, Michigan State nearly upset No. 1 Iowa at home, only for Long to score a 2-yard touchdown with 27 seconds remaining to lead Iowa to a 35-31 victory.
“Of all the games I’ve played, that was the worst day I ever had,” says Long, whose team was trailing big when he called a timeout in the second half. “It’s a hot day, I go over to the sideline, and Hayden was mad at me for calling a timeout. He says, ‘Charlie, why are you calling a timeout? Let’s get this game over with.’ I proceeded to throw up all over his white pants and white shoes. So, he benched me on the spot. That was a miserable day.”
“You’ve got really good coaches there who know what they’re doing. And they will get you to that point where you need to be. Just trust the process.” —Charlie Long's encouragement to his son Chuck
Long, though, grew into his job. He threw for 304 yards and three touchdowns in Iowa’s 28-22 win over Tennessee in the 1982 Peach Bowl, the game he says changed his career. That season started a four-year run in which the Hawkeyes won 35 games with four bowl appearances.
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The 1985 season, when the Hawkeyes were ranked No. 1 in the nation for five weeks, was one that brought Iowa’s program national attention. “People forget that back then, there were only one or two games of the week on national TV, and we were good enough to be in a few of them,” he says. “That was a big deal.”
One of the biggest victories of that season came in the fourth game, when Long scored the winning touchdown on a naked bootleg with 27 seconds left to beat Michigan State 35-31. The Hawkeyes had moved into the No. 1 spot in the national polls a few days earlier but needed to rally from a 24-13 third-quarter deficit.
The play call on the decisive touchdown came as a surprise to Long, who faked a handoff up the middle, then rolled to the right and raised the football over his head as he crossed the goal line untouched. As Kinnick Stadium shook, Fry embraced Long on the sidelines.
“The full five years I was there, we had never practiced that play, and then Hayden calls it. The genius of Hayden Fry,” Long said.
PHOTO: HAWKEYESPORTS.COM
Coach Hayden Fry joins Long for his acceptance of the 1985 Davey O’Brien Award for best quarterback.
Two weeks later, Long was part of the 12-10 win over Michigan in an epic No. 1 vs. No. 2 battle that ended with the winning field goal by Rob Houghtlin (87BA). Long, who threw for 297 yards in the game, completed several key passes on the final scoring drive, including an 11-yard toss to Mike Flagg (87BBA) on third-and-8 from the Iowa 48-yard line.
“The euphoria of the crowd when Rob Houghtlin kicked that field goal—I have never been part of a crowd like that since,” Long says. “It was a Hollywood-scripted ending. We take the ball down the field, they try to ice Rob with the timeouts, and then he went out there … he basically told us, ‘Don’t worry guys, I’ve got it.’ And went out there and drilled it. I can still feel it. Not just see it, but feel it. Your hair stands on the back of your neck.”
Long would finish second behind Bo Jackson in the 1985 Heisman Trophy voting, then was a first-round pick of the Detroit Lions in the NFL draft the following spring.
University of Iowa HomecomingOct. 20-26, 2024
His path since then included coaching stops with Iowa, Oklahoma, San Diego State—where he was a head coach for three seasons—and Kansas. Long, who lives in Altoona, Iowa, still coaches today; he’s the offensive coordinator for the UFL’s Arlington Renegades and works alongside former Hawkeye Bob Stoops (83BBA), who is the team’s head coach. Long is also CEO and executive director of the Iowa Sports Foundation, a nonprofit organization that operates several health and wellness programs in the state, including the Iowa Games, the Iowa Senior Games, Live Healthy Iowa, the Iowa Corporate Games, and Adaptive Sports Iowa.
Homecoming will give Long a chance to reflect on those memorable years at Kinnick Stadium—and all he’s accomplished since. It’s a road, he says, that wouldn’t have happened if Fry hadn’t taken a chance on him.
“I’ve enjoyed the journey ever since I stepped foot on Iowa soil,” Long says. “It’s been a whirlwind ever since.”
PHOTO: JOHN EMIGH
A consensus All-American, Long stands near his honorary portrait (upper left) in the All-American Room at the Hansen Football Performance Center.
PHOTO COURTESY John Bohnenkamp
John Bohnenkamp (88BA) is an award-winning Iowa sportswriter who has covered Hawkeye athletics for 36 years. He currently serves as the sportswriting coach for The Daily Iowan. In 1985, Bohnenkamp was a UI sophomore in the north stands of Kinnick Stadium, where Rob Houghtlin’s field goal landed to beat Michigan.
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