Hawkeye Legacy Group Assembles an All-Time Great Football Roster

PHOTO: Justin Elsner/HAWKEYESPORTS.COM Members of the 1985 Iowa football team celebrated the 40th anniversary of their Big Ten championship in fall 2025 at Kinnick Stadium. The Hawkeye Legacy alumni group organized the reunion.

Only five guests showed up in 2018 when Ben Hansen (10BA) and Broderick Binns (12BA, 18MA) hosted the first event for their newly formed Hawkeye football alumni network in Chicago.

“We could have easily folded at that time,” says Hansen, UI director of football operations and assistant athletic director for football.

Instead, a text from one of those guests—Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz—encouraged the organizers to keep growing the group.

Now Hawkeye Legacy, a program that supports and connects former Hawkeye football players, draws hundreds of guests for its events. This past fall, 340 attended a Hawkeye Legacy reunion in Iowa City that celebrated the 1985 Big Ten champion Hawkeye football team. Seventy former players from that team returned along with coaches Dan McCarney (75BS) and Barry Alvarez for the homecoming celebration. More than 200 also gathered later that fall to commemorate the 2015 squad’s perfect regular-season record.

Nearly eight years since its debut, the Hawkeye Legacy network continues to foster a brotherhood for Iowa football alumni—known as Legacy Hawks—through career and personal networking opportunities, family events, and special access to the program.

Going In-House

PHOTO: Justin Elsner/HAWKEYESPORTS.COM Former Iowa football assistant coach Dan McCarney, right, is greeted by former Iowa offensive lineman Mike Haight at a Hawkeye Legacy reunion in 2025 in Iowa City that celebrated the 1985 Big Ten champion Iowa football team.

To establish Hawkeye Legacy, Hansen and Binns sought insight and support from the Iowa Football Club, a successful fraternal nonprofit organization with a similar mission that originated early in Ferentz’s tenure at Iowa. But why start a new network? Hansen and Binns wanted to build an internal group within the Hawkeye football program, allowing more resources for organizing events at Kinnick Stadium and better access to former players. “Our mission was to really showcase what we have always valued, which is that this is family,” says Hansen of the Iowa football program. “Our culture is really strong.”

Hansen says the program emphasizes an open-door policy to every alum, whether they need support or want to visit the current team. And whether they competed on a team that won a conference championship or finished sub-.500, Hansen says every Hawkeye is celebrated for their contributions to Iowa football.

Hawkeye Legacy began with about 300 alumni records in its database and has expanded to more than 1,600. The group hosts two reunions each fall, where alumni as far back as the 1950s trade stories with those who played as recently as the 2020s. Whatever is lost in translation between generations always comes back to a common thread: they all shed blood, sweat, and tears for the black-and-gold.

Key to Connection

Other Division I Power Four programs and NFL teams have contacted Hansen to learn about Hawkeye Legacy to start their own alumni networks. What’s the secret to its success that brings former players back? Hansen points to the longevity of Ferentz and Hayden Fry, who cultivated continuity and strong relationships throughout the past 47 years of Iowa football.

“You can tell that the people here really truly care,” says Hansen. “That starts at the top with Coach [Ferentz] and how he treats everybody in the building—the players, their families, our fans. And then that trickles down to the entire staff. That’s why you genuinely feel that connection.”

PHOTO: Justin Elsner/HAWKEYESPORTS.COM Members of the 2015 Big Ten West Division champion Iowa football team are recognized in November 2025 at Kinnick Stadium.