Iowa's Mount Rushmore

**jaretac** · 01-24-2009, 07:03 PM

Originally Posted by wartknight

Not trying to start any rivals smack talk but just curious- How many people outside of Iowa have a clue who Nile Kinnick is?

The reason you have to include Kinnick is because he won the heisman. If troy davis had won I would have had him instead.

**Shinyhappyclone** · 01-24-2009, 07:04 PM

We could have a Kirk Hienrich, Raef Lagfrentz, and Nick Collison on a selfish, pompous, arrogant, elitist redleg rushmore. We could all pee on it.
I hate KU, but who am I kidding. You could put about 12 ex-ISU players on there too that dogged us.

**CyValley** · 01-24-2009, 07:21 PM

I'll bet a good number of fans here don't know just how universally admired Kinnick was for his athletic prowess and for his high character. Below is some stuff I quickly dug up.

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Sophomore Honors (1937):

> 1st team All-Big Ten

> 3rd team All-American (on 1-win eiu squad)

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Senior Honors (1939): (Won every major award in the country)

> Averaged 57 minutes PT per game

> Big Ten MVP (by widest margin in conference history)

> Consensus 1st Team All-American (appeared on every first team ballot to become the only unanimous selection in the AP voting)

> Walter Camp Award

> Maxwell Award

> Heisman Trophy

> AP Male Athlete of the Year (beating out Joe DiMaggio, Joe Louis, Byron Nelson)

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Posthumous Honors:

> Sports Illustrated selected Nile Kinnick as the third greatest sports figure in the history of the state of Iowa, behind only Dan Gable and Kinnick's youth baseball teammate, Bob Feller.

> College Football News ranked Kinnick as the ninth greatest college football player of all-time.

> Kinnick's likeness is on the face of the coin tossed at the start of every Big 10 football game.

> College Football Hall of Fame (1951, the Hall's inaugural year)

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Some have said Kinnick's Heisman Trophy speech is the finest ever given. Kinnick accepted the award on Dec. 6, 1939, three months after World War II was ignited by Germany's blitzkreig strike on Poland. Kinnick closes his remarks with this thought:

"Finally, if you will permit me, I'd like to make a comment which in my mind, is indicative, perhaps, of the greater significance of football and sports emphasis in general in this country, and that is, I thank God I was warring on the gridirons of the Midwest and not on the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the players of this country would much more, much rather, struggle and fight to win the Heisman award than the Croix de Guerre."

After hearing the speech, Bill Cunningham wrote in The Boston Globe, "The country is OK as long as it produces Nile Kinnicks. The football part is incidental."

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ESPN Classic - Everybody's All-America

**usnclone** · 01-24-2009, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by wxman1

Mount Trashmore?

Yeah. Thats in Virginia Beach, VA. Good place to fly a kite.

**DJK15** · 01-24-2009, 07:58 PM

Originally Posted by wartknight

Not trying to start any rivals smack talk but just curious- How many people outside of Iowa have a clue who Nile Kinnick is?

I doubt the majority of people outside of Iowa would know anyone besides Kurt Warner and Shawn Johnson.

But I'm sure there's plenty of "old people" who know of Nile Kinnick. He was big, even outside Iowa.