Destined for Greatness: The Chuck Long Story

00:00:14
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the story of a man who was placed on the Mount Rushmore of Iowa football by the Big Ten Network, Chuck Long. Chuck played for the Iowahawk guys from nineteen eighty one to nineteen eighty five as their star QB quarterback. That is, he also played for the Lions and the Rams. But his story goes much deeper than his accolades. Here’s Chuck to tell his story.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: This surprises people.

00:00:46
Speaker 3: But I was actually born in Norman, Oklahoma, so I grew up a boomer sooner. Both my parents went to University of Oklahoma. My grandparents went to University of Oklahoma in Paris before them, but I was born there. But I was raised in Wheaton, Illinois. We moved up to Wheaton at a very young age I was three years old and my parents stayed there ever since. So I was raised in a good sports town right in the middle of Big Ten country. And when you’re around a big city like Chicago with the Bears and the Cubs, the White Socks, the Blackhawks, the Bulls.

00:01:21
Speaker 2: You’re really indoctrinated.

00:01:23
Speaker 3: Early in the sports scene there, it didn’t matter the sports football baseball, basketball. But as soon as you get into grade school as a young boy, if you weren’t a part of that sports scene and wheaton and you’re like an outcast. So it didn’t really have to prod me too hard to get into sports. I just it became natural. I wanted to be a part of it. It was fun for me.

00:01:47
Speaker 2: And to start with my father.

00:01:49
Speaker 3: My father would come home on the train every night at five thirty short sun in the summertime and gather up all the kids and the parents and play ball till dark. And there was days we went from football, the baseball to basketball and one day just playing all day long pickup games. So that’s what we did every night. My dad was really instrumental in getting all the kids together, and so I took it from him. I said, you know, I just played played hard. I try to include everybody in the neighborhood. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Sandlot, I was Rodrigas in that movie. You know, Rodriguez didn’t care about the score.

00:02:23
Speaker 2: He just wanted everybody to play and have a good time, and the more the merrier, you know.

00:02:27
Speaker 3: Growing up, I just wanted to be a part of you know, playing although my mom will tell you I didn’t go out for little league baseball the very first year I was available to do it, And of course I didn’t do anything that year, and I had a lot of my friends in little league baseball, and I could tell there was angst in the family, like what are you doing hanging around us? Well, that very next year, my mom said, going, you’re going out for little league baseball. Whether you liked it or not, you’re going to love it. So I did, and she was right. I loved it ever since. So that was really my mom’s doing of introducing me and prod me a little bit into baseball, and then from there it was basketball and football. When I was in high school, we were a very successful high school football program. We went to state championship my junior year and I threw the ball four times in that game, completed one pass for minus three yards in that game, still in Illinois state record, I think, never be broken. So the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook, so I wasn’t thinking anything about college, or you just didn’t think that way back then. So my senior year, we threw the ball a little bit more. We’ve got the semi finals that lost. So I was just kind of going to the next sport. I was going on to basketball. I just finished my senior year in football, no phone calls, no recruiting calls, and I started basketball in mid December, and I got the phone call to change my life forever. I’ll never forget. It was this kind of a snowy night. I just get home from practice, and this coach named Bill Snyder, the offensive coordinator at IOWA at the time legendary Kansas State football coach, probably the greatest football coach of all time in college football, calls me up. And my mom answers the phone and says, hey, it’s this coach from i I wants to talk to you. I said, okay, and I get on the phone. And I thought it was a practical joke. I thought it was my buddy Tom, you know, pulling a practical joke.

00:04:31
Speaker 2: And and I get on the phone.

00:04:33
Speaker 3: I realized, you know, shortly though, this is not a practical joke. And Coach Snyder gets on the phone. He’s very monotone, and he’s coach. This is is Chuck. There is Chuck. This is Coach Bill Snyder, University of i with football. We like to talk to you about coming in for an official visit this weekend.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: I said, Tom this year. He goes, no, this is not Tom.

00:04:55
Speaker 3: This is coach Snyder and we like to talk to see if you wanted to fly in this for an official visit at Iowa.

00:05:01
Speaker 2: I said, sure, why not? You know, do you have the right guy? You know? Anyway, I get off the phone. My father said, well, who was that?

00:05:11
Speaker 3: I said, was coach Bill Sider from the University of ioland he wants to fly me in this weekend for an official visit.

00:05:18
Speaker 2: Are they going to pay for it?

00:05:19
Speaker 3: My father said, I said I think so, Dad, I think they’re going to pay for it.

00:05:24
Speaker 2: So lo and behold.

00:05:26
Speaker 3: He drops me off at oah Hair Airport on a Friday. I fly into Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I get picked up by the great John Street, longtime trainer there. I remember Power Company, about the only restaurant in Corrival at the time, and they had the biggest prime rib I’ve ever seen in my life. But I meet this wonderful staff Hayden Fry, Bill Snyder, Barry Alvarez, Dan McCartney, Kirk Farrence, Bob Stoops ended up being a GA later, Ron you know, Don Patterson, Carl Jackson, Bernie Wyatt, Dell Miller. I mean, these guys went on to became legendary coaches. Five of those guys were the all time winning his coaches at respective universities around the country, all on one staff. Never been done before. I don’t think it’s been done since, to be honest with you. So I meet this legendary staff and thinking, yeah, the right guy here. I mean throw the ball four to five times a game. So at the end of the we go through the weekend, and it was a great weekend. They you know, they they dine you, and they show you the tours of the facilities, the academic tours, the whole thing. And back then he didn’t know whether you had a scholarship offer or not. So I’m just thinking, I’m on a good trip here. Nice to be recognized. And so I get to Sunday and Hayden that’s where that’s when you go into Hayden’s office and you learn all all about the great Hayden Fry. And he brings me in his office and he sits me in this big leather couch. I mean, I thought I was in the taj mahal. He says, Charlie, we want you to be a Hawk guy. We’re going to offer you a full right scholarship. I said, what does that mean exactly, Coach? He goes, well, it covers everything, room, board books, tuition. We’re going to give you a full ride to pay for your education. I said, I jumped out of the chair so shake his hand and said, oh my god, Coaches, this is unbelievable. This is a dream come true. Although it wasn’t really a dream of mine. You know, I said, this is great. I want to be a hawk gy. He goes, oh, slow down, son, you go when you fly home, you talk it over your folks and see if you really want to be a Hawkey.

00:07:45
Speaker 2: This is a big change for you.

00:07:47
Speaker 3: Said okay, but I know I want to be an Iowhawk guy. Well, I fly home and my dad picks me up at O’Hare Airport and I get in the car. He goes, how to go, send us a dad? Better than I thought it really? Well, all they’ve offered me a scholarship. He goes, Really, He goes, what does that mean? I said, well, they’re going to pay for everything my entire education, room, board books, tuition a whole nine yards, and he said, son, have they seen you play? I let my dad was a funny guy who’s had a great sense of humor, a wonderful man, And I said, I know, Dad, it seems strange, but they’ve offered me a full, full ride, and the rest is history. I obviously took the scholarship offer and changed my life forever.

00:08:36
Speaker 1: How lovely to hear self deprecation like that in a family. It’s a beautiful thing to see being able to tease each other and speak a little bit of truth to each other and not get feathers ruffled from such things. Son, have they seen you play? My goodness, a beautiful story. A kid born in Oklahoma, born in Sooner Territory, Barry Switzer Country, is now calling himself a Hawkeye and moving to Iowa, city of all places. And when we come back, more of Chuck Long’s story, and it’s more than a football story, folks, It’s about so much more here on our American stories, and we continue with our American stories and Chuck long story, the University of Iowa’s star quarterback in the nineteen eighties. When we last left off, Chuck had just visited the University of Iowa after coach Bill Snyder unexpectedly called him, as Chuck called it, the call that changed his life. He decided to go, got the scholarship offer, and of course met legendary coach Hayden Fry. Here’s Chuck talking about coach Fry.

00:10:42
Speaker 3: Here’s like a Hollywood star. He was like John Wayne. He just oozed with charisma. Now here’s a program that’s coming off twenty losing years in a row, and he took over and he just had his feeling about him when he shook his hand, and he’s going to turn this thing around.

00:10:57
Speaker 2: He got to know you as a person.

00:11:00
Speaker 3: Was just a football player that was big, but he just made football fun. You know, you couldn’t wait to hear and do what he’s going to do next. Every day in practice he did something different. At the end of our practice. Here was his unique. He has something called cheer cheer, and he had it printed on his practice script. He saw his practice script. He had all the periods and all the drills. At the end of it, he had the word cheer. And the reason why he had that is he wanted everybody, regardless of if it was a good or bad practice.

00:11:35
Speaker 2: He wanted everybody to leave the field on a.

00:11:37
Speaker 3: Positive note every day, and that was hard sometimes on a bad practice. But he’d make his speech how we got to get better and improve, and then he calls somebody up, a staff member, a player, all right, who has the cheer today?

00:11:53
Speaker 2: And that person had.

00:11:56
Speaker 3: To say something funny, a motivational, something to get people on a positive note before we left that field. And he always tatou our coaches, don’t let him leave the locker room without putting your arm around him and give him something positive, encouraging to come.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: Back the next day and try harder. That was his unique.

00:12:21
Speaker 3: Well, my very first year, we had a turnaround season. I didn’t play this year. I was just a freshman. I was dressing. But we had a turnaround year. That was our year that we turned everything around. Was a magical year. We went to the Rose Bowl, first winning season since the fifties, and I just took it all in. I remember sitting on the sideline going, man, this is unbelievable that we’re doing this well. We had a senior dominated team. A lot of those guys graduated next spring. The quarterback battle was wide open, and I was in the battle. Obviously, it was wide open anybody’s game. And you know, going back to that first fall, I was struggling to see myself as a big ten football player.

00:13:10
Speaker 2: I mean, I was.

00:13:11
Speaker 3: Coming from a high school that threw the ball four times a game. So I’m like, well, it was overwhelming for me.

00:13:17
Speaker 2: How am I gonna catch up to this? So I go into the spring.

00:13:20
Speaker 3: It’s wide open, and I immersed myself in film study.

00:13:25
Speaker 2: I took a lot of time till.

00:13:26
Speaker 3: Nine ten o’clock at night just trying to catch up to this game. Well, the very s first spring scrimmage, a few of the other quarterbacks got their chance, you know, they went in there and played.

00:13:39
Speaker 2: Then I got my chance.

00:13:40
Speaker 3: At the end and they threw me in there and I went sixteen for seventeen in that spring scrimmage.

00:13:48
Speaker 2: I just got hot. I couldn’t miss.

00:13:51
Speaker 3: And that’s when Hayden he coined that phrase. That’s when he s made that statement that I was desert for greatness.

00:14:00
Speaker 2: I and then the media.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: Came up after me and asked me, you know, he just said that you’re gonna be destined for gracefists.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: I said, hey, slow down. That was only one spring scrimmers.

00:14:09
Speaker 3: I didn’t even played a game yet, and then he named me the starting quarterback. But I didn’t know that I had a long way to go. Well, the first game was rough. We upset in Nebraska the year before. They had a really good team. They had everybody coming back off of that team with revenge on their mind.

00:14:30
Speaker 2: They were frothing at the mouth.

00:14:32
Speaker 3: And they absolutely destroyed us and me in the process. And I couldn’t do anything right in that game. I fumbled the ball, I threw the ball into the ground, I threw interceptions, shot gun snaps going over my head. I mean, it was a miserable afternoon. It was about one hundred and twenty degrees on the field.

00:14:50
Speaker 2: It was that high.

00:14:51
Speaker 3: And I had about fifteen of my family members there, both sets of grandparents from Oklahoma, my parents, my family was there, my girlfriend was there. It was just it was a complete disaster.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: Debut.

00:15:06
Speaker 3: Well, in the middle of the fourth quarter, I’m still in there. We’re getting beat forty two to nothing. I call a time out because I’m not feeling so good, and so I get to the sideline and Hayden is livid. He you know, he’s angry with me. He said, hey, Charlie called me. Charlie goes, what are you doing calling a time out? This game’s over with keep the clock going. We want to get out of here, you know, healthy. Well, I proceeded to throw up all over his white pants and white shoes.

00:15:34
Speaker 2: He was so mad.

00:15:35
Speaker 3: He called the trainer and he said, trainer, get this guy out of here. And he benched me right on the spot. I come out after the game. I showered up, cleaned up, so did coach. But I come out after the game and I go through. I go up to my family and they’re all hugging me and hey, it’ll get better. And my grandmother, my little old southern grandmother, said hey, Chuck, you don’t have to play this game anymore if you don’t want to. And so I said, Grandma, it’s only one game, give me a break. Care Hopefully they’ll get better. Well, we going. The next week, he decided to start another quarterback. So he’s not quite you know, thinking, he’s thinking, I’m not quite ready yet. So he starts another quarterback. So I’m sitting to bench, and this is against Iowa State at home. Iowa State beats us, and he decides after that game go with the long kid. Just stick with him. We go down in Arizona, zero to two, with our backs against the wall. We win that football game, and I started ever since. I was one of those guys got motivated by proving people wrong.

00:16:48
Speaker 2: We were number one in the nation in eighty five. We just ride. We just ride.

00:16:52
Speaker 3: A few weeks prior to the Michigan game and they were number two. First time one and two got together, probably since the sixties, and by far the greatest game in my history and high school, college, or professional.

00:17:08
Speaker 2: Or even coaching.

00:17:09
Speaker 3: There was such a buzz on the campus all week long about this game, and the build up was just tremendous, hard to describe. We finally get to this game day and it’s kind of a misty, cloudy, rainy day.

00:17:23
Speaker 2: And we get to the.

00:17:24
Speaker 3: Pregame warm up and everybody’s in the stands already.

00:17:28
Speaker 2: There was nobody tailgating. They were already.

00:17:31
Speaker 3: They wanted to soak in every moment as well. And that opening kickoff was loud. It was a back and forth defensive battle and it’s ten to nine and we got to go on a drive to win the game. We get it down to the twenty six yard line, we call our last timeout with two seconds left.

00:17:50
Speaker 2: I mean, this was a Hollywood script. Michigan had two timeouts left.

00:17:54
Speaker 3: So they used them both to ice our field goal kicker, Rob Holland. So Rob goes out there, they call a time out. He goes back out there, They call another time out, and I’ll never forget Rob Hotland going out. They’re out of timeouts. He’s got to go out and kick it now. He turns around to our sideline he says, don’t worry, guys, I got this.

00:18:14
Speaker 2: He went out there, snap hold kick right through the up to rights. I’ll never forget it.

00:18:21
Speaker 3: And the elation of motion, that crowd on their feet and how loud.

00:18:25
Speaker 2: It was was unbelievable.

00:18:27
Speaker 3: Storm the field, Fans storm the field, We stormed the field. We were just on cloud nine beating this number two team at home, I would say, the greatest victory in Hawkeye history.

00:18:42
Speaker 1: And all these years later, Chuck is remembering that day like it happened yesterday, and we all have those moments in our life, hopefully at least one or two. And by the way, his story of just getting pounded by perennial powerhouse Nebraska in his first start back in the day Nebraska was just unstoppable and Oklahoma big, big powerhouse programs, and how he grew from that because, as he said, I’m the kind of guy who likes to prove people wrong and that’s where I get my motivation. When we come back, more of this unique American voice, Chuck Long’s story continues here on our American Story, and we return to our American stories and the final segment of our story with Chuck Long the University of Iowa star QB in the nineteen eighties. When we last left off, Chuck was describing his team’s win over the University of Michigan in nineteen eighty five, a number one and in number two in the same conference and two teams who don’t like each other, a moment he called a high point of his career. Iowa would also win the Big Ten Conference championship that year, and here’s Chuck talking about what that moment meant for the people of his state.

00:20:18
Speaker 3: Well, eighty five season, farmers are going through a hard time. It was a devastating year for farming. Farmers were losing their farms. It was tough. Hayden had a farming background. He grew up on a farm in West Texas. He knew all too well what it was like to be a farmer. Hayden would always be in tune with the farming community, what was going on in Iowa, and he always made us aware of that as a football team. In fact, every year he would say to us, hey, man, to get in good with the Iowa people, you have to get in good with the farmers first. If they like you, everybody else would like you. And that’s exactly what he did when he when he arrived here, he got in two of that farming community. He went to all those i clubs around the state and at the time there was thirty thirty five of them, these clubs.

00:21:12
Speaker 2: And he goes speak to those farmers.

00:21:14
Speaker 3: I mean, he’d be the first one there and the last one there shaking hands. They they just absolutely fell in love with Hayden. So I I’ve had countless farmers come up to me saying, hey, we were going through a hard time, but man, you just gave us that moment of joy and happiness just listening to you listen to that those games on who Radio being out in the fields, and we stopped and listened to those games. This brought us so much joy and happiness and took us away for a moment that that was big back then.

00:21:49
Speaker 2: The end of football is tough.

00:21:51
Speaker 3: I I got, I have to be honest with you, and it’s tough on a lot of guys because they’re used to the limelight. They’re use to competing on a team, they used to being in the locker room with guys from all over. It’s fun. Football is fun. It’s exciting. You know, you hear the roar of the crowd. But a lot of guys struggle and transition to real life, and I will say I did too. Fortunately for me, I got right into coaching Hayden Fry long story short, but I showed some interest in coaching. I talked to him about it. He had an opening and he hired me. But I remember that first fall and coaching. I still missed the NFL, and I remember going in on Sunday and watching those Pro games thinking I could still play.

00:22:45
Speaker 2: You know, look at it.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: I know I’m better than that quarterback and he was starting. And it took me a while in transition.

00:22:53
Speaker 2: To get over that.

00:22:54
Speaker 3: Because my NFL career didn’t go as well as my collegiate career. So I felt like I had still something to prove there, so I felt like I could still play. But over time that went away and I really enjoyed coaching, so my transition was better than a lot. And what I really learned to love is mentoring and coaching kids. Even in time, I learned to love that more than I did playing, because when you’re playing and you’re a quarterback, it’s more individual getting yourself ready to play. Hey, I got to get ready to play for my teammates, but I got to get myself ready to play. But when you’re coaching, you’re trying to get others ready to play on a physical and emotional level. And I really learned to love that more than I did as a player. In two thousand, I was part of a national championship year at Oklahoma under Bob Stoops, coached a quarterback named Josh Heipel who’s the head coach at Tennessee now University of Tennessee. And just being part of a undefeated, magical year of winning the national title only undefeated season I’ve ever been a part of as a player and coaching my.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: Entire career, you learn how rare.

00:24:11
Speaker 3: And undefeated season is. I had a guy named Nate Hibbel who followed Josh Hipel and that is following. He followed a legend, and that’s Oklahoma football. Let me put it to you this way. If you’re not fighting for a national championship every year.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: They don’t like you. They’re they’re booing you. Iowa’s different. Iowa.

00:24:32
Speaker 3: You go to a bowl game, You’re they’re happy. Oklahoma expectations are are through the roof. So they had We had this young man named h Nate Hibbel who followed Hipel and a man. There was a lot of pressure on that kid, and he actually got beat out by a future Heisman Trophy winner and Jason White. To Nate’s credit, and he’s in his fifth year, he has one more year ago, and he just got beat out. To Nate Hibbles’s credit, he never got down on himself. He just had a great level of conference about him. And he said he came in, he said, coach, if you need me, I’ll be here. Don’t worry. You know, I know where it’s at right now. I like to be playing, but if you need me, well, Jason White blows his knee out in Game three. Nate Hibble takes over and takes us to a rose Ball and he’s a Rosebull MVP. That was a great story. The following story is even better. Nate Hibble’s done. Jason White comes back off of two acl reconstructed knees, one on each knee. Everybody wrote, Jason White off, can’t play anymore. Fan base is like, hey, you need to find another quarterback. Our strength coach at the time came to me in the middle of summer said hey, you got to find another quarterback. He’s not gonna make it. He didn’t go through spring ball. He could barely get through summer. And I remember being in a staff meeting and I was the offensive coordinator time a quarterbacks coach. Bob Stoops is in there, Our staff’s in there, and we’re going around the table on our starting lineups and who we think can win for us that year, big year for Oklahoma. We had a good team coming back. They get to me and they said, Chuck, who do you think should be our quarterback?

00:26:15
Speaker 2: What do we need to do there?

00:26:16
Speaker 3: And I said, men, I think Jason White’s our guy.

00:26:24
Speaker 2: You could hurt a pin drop.

00:26:26
Speaker 3: But Bob always back to his coaches and he said, hey, if you think he’s going to be healthy enough to play. Let’s give it a shot. So we modified our offense. We went pure shotgun. We didn’t move him around much. We just wanted to keep him healthy. Well, he entered the fall, and you know he was ready to go. Now we could not practice him every practice. We had to sit him out, like every fourth practice. To sit him, he had ice his knees down. We had to do all that, just arrest them. We got him through training camp the fall. We had to send him every Monday so he can get through the fall. Ends up winning the Heisman Trophy that year. Probably one of the greatest Heisman Trophy winning stories there is, just when he went through as a player, small town kid from Tuttle, Oklahoma, three thousand people in the population. Just a toughness and grit that he showed getting through that year and winning a Heisman Trophy. Well, I got out of coaching A long story short. I was in coaching, thinking I was going to stay in coaching, and then the Big Ten network called, so I moved to Iowa and I had this opportunity.

00:27:40
Speaker 2: I got a phone call from.

00:27:41
Speaker 3: A guy named Doug Reichardt, who’s very prominent businessman in des Moines. In the state of Iowa, everybody knows Doug and he was the chairman of the board of the Iowas Sports Foundation. So he calls me up and he says, hey, our CEO executive record position is open. We’re interested in hiring you. I said, okay, and I and I explored and researched what the ISF was all about, but it was really a no brainer for me. We reach about two hundred thousand Iowans statewide from all ninety nine counties, and our five pillars include the Iowa Games, Live Healthy, Iowa Senior Games, Corporate Games, and Adapt to Sports Iowa, which is sports and recreation for people with physical disabilities. And I grew up with I have a brother was born with cerebral palsy, and so that was really the icing on the cake for me to take the job to try to help people with disability, to have them become more active and give them avenues where they could compete in sports in the state of Iowa. Along with everybody else. I just want my legacy. I want people to say, hey, I was a good person. I helped others. I used my platform to help others. I just want to be thought of as somebody that gave back, built good Retha shifts and gave.

00:29:01
Speaker 2: Back to the community.

00:29:02
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, I try to use my platform in football.

00:29:07
Speaker 2: To be able to do that.

00:29:08
Speaker 3: I feel I had a rare opportunity. It’s brought me all over the world and my travels, and I just never wanted to be a guy that all he’s an eye guy, he’s all about himself. I just wanted to be a guy that they look at and said, hey, he was all about helping people and foundations and community.

00:29:29
Speaker 2: And that’s it.

00:29:32
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Chuck Long for sharing his story with his checkout Chuck’s biography Chuck Long Destined for Greatness on Amazon dot com. Also check out the Iowa Sports Foundation and what they do at Iowassports Foundation dot org and great work on the piece by Monte Montgomery. I want my legacy to be that I was a good person that I helped others. I use my platform to help others, and I was a guy who just gave back. So many American stories like this lives well lived, not perfectly lived, but well lived. We celebrate them here Chuck Long’s story here on our American Stories