INDIANAPOLIS — Every section of Gainbridge Fieldhouse but one featured swaths of orange-colored attire Thursday night. Around half of the 192 seats directly behind the Iowa bench were filled with Hawkeyes; Illinois fans comprised the rest of the sparsely filled arena.
The color wheel surrounding the floor, the actions within the game itself and the final result all serve as the perfect metaphor for why the 15-year Fran McCaffery era ended following the Hawkeyes’ 106-94 Big Ten tournament loss to their biggest rival. In the highest-scoring game in Big Ten tournament history, the Hawkeyes showed why they are both dynamic and unable to compete for championships. In the past nine years, Iowa never finished below third in Big Ten scoring offense. Over the same span, the Hawkeyes ranked last or second-to-last in scoring defense eight times. Both were on display, as was the final blow-up of the McCaffery era.
Known for his volatile on-court persona, McCaffery received a pair of technical fouls with 13:33 to play and left the floor for the last time as Hawkeyes’ coach. Iowa’s 17-16 record was McCaffery’s second worst over his last 14 seasons. With seven NCAA Tournament appearances over that span and an eighth purged because of COVID-19, McCaffery had earned the right to an on-floor mulligan. A season-ending injury to arguably his best player (Owen Freeman) in February effectively ended the program’s shot at an NCAA Tournament bid. Those things happen in the Big Ten.
But McCaffery would still be coaching the Hawkeyes if it was just about a disappointing season, an early Big Ten tournament exit and a perpetually leaky defense. The reason why McCaffery no longer coaches at Iowa is because not enough fans cared about the program while he led it.
McCaffery, the winningest coach in Iowa men’s basketball history, paid the price for the program’s lowest average attendance since the 1964-65 season. The Hawkeyes averaged 9,161 tickets sold (10th in the Big Ten) and just 5,276 seats actually filled per game. That’s untenable for a program with fans passionate enough to sell every women’s basketball ticket in consecutive seasons and four consecutive years of sellouts in football and men’s wrestling. They love the Hawkeyes, but they just don’t like McCaffery.
Big Ten basketball is about more than wins and losses. It’s big business, and that’s where McCaffery failed. McCaffery had the backing of Iowa’s diehard basketball community of longtime supporters, but there was little connection for the average fan. McCaffery’s explosive sideline demeanor and gruff personality rubbed some fans the wrong way. They tolerated it until they no longer believed he could lead the team to a Big Ten title or the Sweet 16. Then, they tuned him out.
McCaffery’s ouster is yet another gust of wind on the erosion of Iowa men’s basketball over the past quarter-century. It’s not just on him; the foundation is cracked, and the entire operation needs razing. A department can’t do that without a leadership change.
No matter who coached or supervised Iowa men’s basketball, the overall marketing philosophy has consisted of listing the schedule on the school’s website and guilting people into buying tickets. For some fans, buying tickets and attending games is akin to others attending church and sneaking out of services as soon as they receive communion. In other words, Iowa basketball became an obligation, not a celebration.
It wasn’t like this 35 years ago when Iowa men’s basketball was a religious experience. From 1988 through 1996, only once did Iowa average fewer than 15,000 tickets sold per game. In 1988, RCM/Raycom agreed to pay Iowa a national record $6.5 million over five years to syndicate non-national games and coaches shows throughout the state. Iowa collected more from its secondary rights than what the league distributed from its national contract, which led the Big Ten toward implementing a grant of rights.
In 1988, Iowa’s men’s basketball team qualified for its fourth Sweet 16 over nine seasons. It went to the Final Four in 1980 and was a blown 20-point lead in the Elite Eight from reaching it in 1987. As recently as of 2009, ESPN/Sagarin ranked Iowa as the No. 10 greatest men’s basketball program based on its historical success. Yet, it has reached just one Sweet 16 since 1988, and that was in 1999, the year former athletic director Bob Bowlsby chose not to renew coach Tom Davis’ contract. Since then, 97 other programs have reached the second weekend, including 13 teams in the current Big Ten. Since Davis, Iowa has employed three coaches, and none of them earned a Sweet 16 trip.
McCaffery inspired the fan base early in his tenure with a fast-paced offense and fiery demeanor. He coached seven first-team All-Big Ten players, including two first-team All-Americans (Luka Garza and Keegan Murray). Garza was the consensus national player of the year in 2021. But the program constantly falling short in big moments with good teams and great college players led to fans turning from frustration to indifference. Three times McCaffery’s squads reached the top 10 of the polls, but they won a combined two games in those NCAA tournaments.
When they rose to No. 3 in 2016, they dropped six of their final eight games. In Garza’s senior year, the Hawkeyes were a No. 2 seed and fell 95-80 to seventh-seeded Oregon in the NCAA Tournament’s second round. In 2022, Iowa won the Big Ten tournament and then was upset as a No. 5 seed by No. 12-seeded Richmond.
Those failures failed to build equity for McCaffery to use during the down years, like this one. But more than the losses, McCaffery took away opportunities for fan interaction and never replaced it with equal value. McCaffery ended The Prime Time League, which consisted of bi-weekly games in the summer with fans in attendance. The “Shirts and Skins” scrimmages before home football games vanished. The Black-and-Gold Blowout faded off the calendar. McCaffery ended the round-robin among the state’s four Division I programs for a singular event in Des Moines (2012-18) before shelving it altogether when the Big Ten expanded its schedule to 20 games.
Instead of replacing those interactive events, Iowa men’s basketball — and the department supervising it — chose nothing. Everything revolved around the product on the floor, which was good but never great. Attendance dropped, and rather than unhappily tithing at the Church of the Hawkeyes, men’s basketball fans stayed away or switched to women’s basketball.
It’s going to take a new, inclusive approach for Iowa to bring men’s basketball fans back after the new coach wins the opening news conference. Fans understand championships are difficult to attain, but if you win their hearts, they’ll stick with you forever. McCaffery chose to make his entire Iowa career about only the play on the floor. In the end, that zero-sum philosophy cost him his job.
(Photo: Jeffrey Becker / Imagn Images)
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