Large Fry

Longtime Iowa coach inducted into College Football Hall of Fame

NEW YORK (AP) -- Hayden Fry, former coach at Iowa, SMU and North Texas State, said Tuesday he couldn't be more thrilled or honored to join the ranks of the College Football Hall of Fame.

"I think this is the top of the mountain in college football," said Fry, 74, who retired from coaching in 1998. Fry spent 20 seasons at Iowa, where he won three Big Ten titles, appeared in 14 bowl games and became an icon for the Hawkeyes.

"And I get to go in at the same time as coach [Doug] Dickey, who I was an assistant coach with at Arkansas," said Fry, one of 13 inductees being honored in ceremonies in New York.

Dickey coached at Florida and Tennessee. He and Fry played together at Arkansas for coach Frank Broyles before joining the staff as assistant coaches.

Also inducted was Jerry LeVias, who was recruited by Fry as the first black scholarship athlete in the old Southwest Conference.

"The greatest thing I ever did in college football was recruiting Jerry Levias to SMU as the first African-American player there," Fry said. "We spent a few years looking for the right guy, and he was it."

LeVias said his faith in God and Hayden Fry were the only things that got him through those lonely years at SMU.

"In four years of college, I never had a roommate. No one wanted to room with me," LeVias said. "Coach Fry told me, 'If you don't want them to get your goat, don't let them know where it is."'

Fry surrounded himself with notable assistants, including Dan McCarney, now coach at Iowa State, and Kirk Ferentz, now Iowa's head coach.

"I never hired an assistant coach unless he wanted to become a head coach someday, because then I knew he wouild work hard at it and try to get better," Fry said. "The only way I was able to win so many games was surrounding myself with winner."

"He's touched an awful lot of people in his career," Ferentz told the Iowa City Press-Citizen. "His personality was perfect. It really captured the imagination of the people."

Fry and the other inductees will be enshrined at the Hall in South Bend, Ind., in August.