👋 Inside Iowa’s Heartwarming Tradition

The Kinnick Wave will be hitting the road with the Iowa Hawkeyes this week. Here’s why it’s so important. [View in browser]( [FOX SPORTS INSIDER WITH MARTIN ROGERS] In today’s FOX Sports Insider: The emotion of the Kinnick Wave makes a trip to the Holiday Bowl ... a former player has the most hilarious response to the NFL 100 list ... and the massive Christmas Day NBA slate is finally here. Most sporting traditions have some kind of positive sentiment going for them, which is usually why they carry on long enough to become traditions in the first place. That’s why we have good traditions and great traditions across athletics, traditions that are probably past their use-by date but persist regardless — cheesy traditions and silly traditions and everything in between. And then, in a league entirely of its own regarding awesome things sports fans do at games, is the Kinnick Wave, the greatest, sweetest, noblest, simplest and most heartwarming activity that football supporters have come up with in the 150 years or so since the game was invented. The Wave is something that television companies suspend commercial breaks for, players and coaches pause to witness, that onlookers openly weep at. It is just a wave. But when it is being carried out by 70,000 Iowa Hawkeyes fans at Kinnick Stadium and directed to a group of breathtakingly courageous children fighting cancer at a hospital overlooking the arena, it is everything. * Krista Young didn’t know what she was starting back in 2017, and she can still scarcely believe what it has become. On an online fan forum — and “on a whim” — Young suggested that the Hawkeye masses should turn to salute the cancer-afflicted patients at Stead Family Children’s Hospital, many of them watching the game from a 12th floor observation deck that peers into Kinnick. “I think with the new U of I hospital addition open,” the post read, “Kinnick should hold a ‘wave to the kids’ minute during every game.” The idea grew from there, via word of mouth and through the internet. At the home opener on Sept. 2 that year, there were actually two waves. First, the fans did it themselves, but then, to Young’s surprise and delight, the crowd announcer encouraged those in attendance to do so with an appeal over the loudspeaker. “We are trying to start a new tradition here at Kinnick,” the address began. What a tradition it has become. [STORY IMAGE 1] The Wave has taken place 20 more times since, growing in lore with each rendition. Young is a realtor and mother of three from tiny Anita, Iowa, a town of 900 people three hours’ drive from Iowa City. She loves what the Wave has turned into, but is humble about her role in the process. “I played such a tiny part in it all,” she told me via telephone last week. “I had seen the building going up forever and then when it opened, I saw the kids looking down. I just typed out a little comment. I have gotten far too much credit.” Yet the beauty of the Wave is in its simplicity and how organically (and quickly) it came about. One woman, one kind thought, sparked a movement that has garnered worldwide attention. It is a tradition that should continue forever, or at least until a day, generations from now, when medical science renders it obsolete for the very best of reasons. For now, it doesn’t just carry on. The Wave is going on the road. * Iowa, ranked No. 16 and coming off a 9-3 season, plays No. 22 USC in the Holiday Bowl (FS1, 8 p.m. ET) on Friday. And as the Hawkeye program heads west, so too does the Wave. At the end of the first quarter, fans at SDCCU Stadium in San Diego will be encouraged to turn eastward and gesture to a video board broadcasting images of children and families at Stead. Beneath the board will be sat 200 representatives from Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, in seats purchased by the family of Holiday Bowl president Paul Hering. Also in attendance will be a group from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, courtesy of USC. “This might very well end up being the coolest moment in our bowl game’s history,” Holiday Bowl CEO Mark Neville said, in a statement. The Iowa football program is excited for the power of the Wave to spread far afield. To say college football is important in this part of the Midwest is an understatement of epic proportions, but for a few moments in each game, there is a jolt of perspective. “Everyone feels a special anticipation towards the end of the first quarter,” assistant athletics director Steve Roe told me. “So many members of our team and staff and our fans have had a relationship with someone affected by cancer. It’s a moment to stop and reflect. Now we are getting to share that more broadly.” Inside the hospital, the power of the Wave is treated with reverence. It is an awesome sight, as thousands turn en masse and extend nothing but loving thoughts. In the lead up to each wave, Child Life managers at Stead work in unison with doctors to arrange for the more weakened patients to be maneuvered up to the observation level so that they can fully experience it. [STORY IMAGE 2] “When the Wave starts, you don’t know where to look,” Child Life program manager Jodi Bauers said, via telephone. “Waving is such a simple and genuine gesture and when so many people are doing it, it’s magical. I’ve experienced it from both (the hospital and from the stadium). It is so moving for the families who have been through a lot and shown such courage.” As the Wave begins, the adults stand back and let the kids move forward to the very front, to press against the window. When the room clears, Bauers looks back at all the tiny handprints, which tell their own story. * The Wave has made the Iowa football program stand out in a unique and special way. The Hawkeyes are in a slightly odd spot, members of a Power Five conference but with nowhere near the same level of national recognition as the likes of Ohio State or Michigan. The best quarter-time show in sports, however, appeals to everyone from the most hardened and unsentimental football fan to those with zero interest in the machinations of the gridiron. For the university and its followers it has become a point of fulsome pride. San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Bryce Miller is an Iowa alumni and covered Hawkeye teams as a journalist for a quarter of a century. This week, [he wrote a wonderful story about the Wave and its deeper meaning](. “I had so many responses, many from people who are not even college football fans,” Miller told me in a phone conversation. “It’s a story of shared humanity, just of people opening their hearts. Iowa doesn’t have the kind of national megaphone that other Big Ten programs do, but this is something truly special. “I’m more proud of my alma mater for this than for anything the football team could ever do.” * Iowa’s season ends when the Holiday Bowl concludes and it will be eight months before the Kinnick Wave is performed again. It always sounds so long, football’s offseason, yet it passes so quickly. The reality at Stead is that eight months likely means there will be children who don’t make it through that interlude, a reality so horrible that it doesn’t leave a lot more to say, even though you’d give anything to say something that can make it better. The fact is, a wave can mean so many things, a greeting, a goodbye. Or, in Iowa City, an unspoken message from thousands of hearts towards innocents beset by cruel fate. A message that means this: “we are rooting for you.” [STORY IMAGE 3] Here’s what others have said ... Tom VanHaaren, ESPN: “Affectionately known as the Iowa Wave, the Hawkeyes' best tradition started only during the 2017 season. The University of Iowa's Stead Family Children's Hospital overlooks Kinnick Stadium and has a viewing area where patients and their families can watch Iowa football games. During that 2017 season, fans started to turn away from the football field at the end of the first quarter and wave to the children in the hospital. It has grown so popular that the Iowa team and coaches, as well as the opposing team and coaches, are now turning and waving to the children during the game.” Jordan James, 247Sports: “Iowa Hawkeyes football supporters organized a special holiday edition of the ‘Iowa Wave’ on Monday night. People gathered on the street outside the stadium on Monday evening to shine lights and wave to children looking down from the windows. Phone lights are typically used during the Iowa Wave on days there are night football games. People in attendance for the holiday edition of the wave brought flashlights to the stadium.” Trevor King, The Garrett County Republican: “The wave has vaulted ‘Attend an Iowa football game at Kinnick Satdium’ near the top of my sports bucket list, and I’ll be watching the Hawkeyes as many times as I can this season. Even if you’re not a college football fan, I hope you at least check them out for that reason. It also makes me think of all the different ways any sporting event can be used as an instrument of good. The Kinnick Wave is simple in execution but yields the most powerful, wholesome result. I believe that the popularity of that ‘wave’ last season will snowball throughout the sporting landscape and inspire programs everywhere to come up with their own ways to give people hope.” [IN OTHER WORDS] - Sports are constantly evolving, but as Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci explains, [Major League Baseball changed much more than you might realize in the 2010s](. - Paolo Uggetti at The Ringer shines a light on [how Kawhi Leonard turned “load management” into a style of play](. - Bleacher Report’s Mike Tanier believes [the big-spending Rams have trapped themselves in a no-win situation](. [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED] [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED]( As the official NFL 100 greatest players list has rolled out over the past weeks, the inclusions and omissions of players have sparked intense and passionate debate among football fans. But perhaps the best comment of all came from Ryan Leaf, who is widely considered the biggest bust in NFL history. Leaf had a bevy of personal and legal troubles after leaving the sport, but has managed to turn into an inspiring story, currently working as a college football analyst and as a program ambassador for a network of sober living houses. And as you can see, he has a tremendous sense of humor about everything that he’s experienced in his career. [VIEWER'S GUIDE] Los Angeles Clippers “at” Los Angeles Lakers (ABC, 8 p.m. ET) The last time these two Western Conference favorites met, on Opening Day, the Clippers emerged victorious, 112-102. Kawhi Leonard has been load managing in the early months of the season as the Clippers have stacked up an impressive 22-10 record. They’ll hope to move one notch closer to the Lakers, who are best in the West at 24-6. WWE NXT (USA Network, 8 p.m. ET) If you’re not interested in checking out one of the five NBA Christmas Day games, perhaps sports entertainment is more your speed. Roderick Strong will issue an open challenge for his NXT North American Championship. [BET OF THE DAY] [BET OF THE DAY] Odds provided by [FOX Bet]( LeBron James over 34.5 points and Lakers to win: +900 The Lakers and Clippers will enjoy a Christmas Day tilt at Staples Center, where neither team and both teams enjoy home court advantage. (Although, let’s be honest, the Lakers fans will far outnumber Clippers supporters.) The King might want to go off, but he has slowed his scoring torrent of late. He’s averaging 25.9 points in December and hasn’t scored more than 32 points in a game yet this month, but you can bet he’s going to want to bring it to his cross-arena rivals and Kawhi Leonard. 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