Best Moments in Big Ten Football History #9: Nile Kinnick, Icon

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

ABOVE: This plaque at Kinnick Stadium depicts Nile Kinnick's game-winning touchdown run against Notre Dame in 1939.

When Nile Kinnick graduated from the University of Iowa in 1940, he held three great distinctions. He was the student body president, he held a Phi Beta Kappa key, and he was the reigning Heisman Trophy winner. The last of these is the least relevant to understanding who Kinnick was.

It's not that he wasn't a tremendous football player. Hearing a description of his 1939 season is like reading one of those lists of Chuck Norris facts, except all this stuff actually happened. He played all but 18 minutes of the entire Hawkeye season. He was responsible for 16 of Iowa's 19 touchdowns, passing for 11 and running for 5 more. And those 11 touchdown passes came on only 31completions.

Kinnick wasn't just the Heisman winner in 1939; he was also named the AP's Male Athlete of the year. He beat Joe DiMaggio for that honor in a year Joltin' Joe hit .381. That's how good Nile Kinnick was.

For all he accomplished on the field, however, the real legacy of Nile Kinnick is found elsewhere. It's a story both inspiring and heartbreaking, one filled with what John Greenleaf Whitter called the saddest words of all: "It might have been."

Kinnick wasn't the first Heisman winner to decide not to pursue football as a career. Indeed, Jay Berwanger, the very first Heisman winner, never played professional football. Kinnick instead intended to devote his life to public service. He had lofty political aspirations, even writing to a friend that he one day hoped to be become a senator or Congressional representative.

There is little doubt he would have achieved that goal. Kinnick was smart, thoughtful, eloquent, and wise beyond his years. Moreover, he had this alarming habit of achieving anything he put his mind to. So, forsaking the NFL, he enrolled in the University of Iowa's law (where I imagine he didn't have to sweat out his acceptance) and became an assistant coach on Dr. Eddie Anderson's football team.

After one more year in Iowa City, however, Kinnick chose to enlist in the Naval Reserve, noting that "[e]very man whom I've admired in history has willingly and courageously served in his country's armed forces in times of danger." Kinnick was called to active duty three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, beginning his training to become a fighter pilot.

On June 2, 1943, while on a training mission off the coast of Venezuela, Kinnick's plane lost all its oil. He crashed into the Atlantic Ocean just four miles short of his carrier, the USS Lexington. Kinnick's body was never recovered. He was 24 years old.

Nile Kinnick was the first Heisman winner to die, but you get the sense that we lost so much more than that when we lost him. We lost a role model, an inspiration, an indomitable spirit who might have achieved everything he'd ever dreamed, and even more. Forget the Senate. There's a better than good chance that Nile Kinnick might well have become President of the United States. Just insert him into any campaign between 1956 and, say, 1984, and try to imagine how he might have done.

The university wanted to rename Iowa Stadium in his honor immediately. Kinnick's father refused the honor, noting that his son was only one of thousands of American men who lost their lives during World War II. He would keep on refusing for almost 30 years, finally relenting in 1972. There's also a street named after him in his hometown of Adel, Iowa. Children of American military personnel on Okinawa attend Nile C. Kinnick High School. Those are some high honors indeed for a man who didn't even live a quarter century.

But of all the honors bestowed on Nile Kinnick, perhaps the most touching is this. The coin flipped before every Big Ten football game bears his likeness. He is the icon of Big Ten football, even today.