Background
Frank Holbrook lettered in track and football for Iowa in 1895. How he came to be a part of the football team is not widely known. It is true, however, that in 1895, Iowa nearly did not field an official team. The school Athletic Board ruled that recognition would not be granted until the team paid off its debts, and emergency fundraising was needed for the team to even be formed that season.
To save money, however, the school did not hire a head coach. Practices were reportedly disorganized and sloppy, and the 1895 Hawkeyes posted a poor 2-5 record. Iowa football would never go without a professional head coach again. It was in this season of uncertainty that Frank Holbrook first participated in the Hawkeye football program as a freshman.
The Ivy League was the premier conference in college football at that time, so Iowa hired former Pennsylvania star A.E. Bull as their head coach for the 1896 season. Bull’s arrival made Hawkeye fans optimistic that Iowa could bounce back from the disastrous 1895 campaign.
Read more about this topic: Frank Kinney Holbrook
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)