Grinnell's football program was on the verge of collapse. Here's how it was saved.
GRINNELL — As Brent Barnes sat with a group of Grinnell football players for lunch in December of 2019, he realized quickly how desperate the situation was at the small Iowa college.
Barnes, who was in town to interview for the head coaching vacancy, fielded questions from them as they ate sandwiches. The players being a part of the interview process was odd enough, he thought.
But then came the questions.
The handful of players in the room with Barnes didn’t care about what type of offense or defense he would run. They didn’t pepper him with questions about their playing time. No, the questions they fired off to Barnes had more to do with the long-term future of the program.
How was he going to recruit? What were his ideas to build up the roster? That's what the players wanted to know.
“You don’t see that very often,” Barnes said.
This wasn’t your typical coaching job, though. Grinnell, a private liberal arts college in east central Iowa with an annual enrollment of about 1,700, faced the difficult challenge of saving its football program. The team had already canceled the 2019 season after just three games. Participation numbers dwindled, and injuries depleted the roster further.
The feeling from the players — those that were still left at least — was that the program was on the verge of being cut.
That's if something didn’t quickly change.
“That’s usually the next course of action,” Grinnell linebacker Clayton Burton said.
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Barnes landed the job shortly after the interview and was named the head coach on Dec. 27, 2019. With the help of his players and the school, the program survived. Now they're 2-2 after losing Saturday at Ripon (Wisconsin) College, with five games remaining. The Pioneers' third and final home game of the season is Nov. 5 against Illinois College.
“We have hope,” Grinnell linebacker Adam Khater said.
And that seemed so far from the case just three years ago.
Grinnell football program hits rock bottom
Tough times are nothing new for the Pioneers, who have suffered through losing seasons for over a decade. Their last winning season came in 2011 when they finished with a 5-5 mark.
Then the struggles really began.
Grinnell won just two games in 2012 and only 10 over the next six season. The 2016 season was especially difficult for the Pioneers, going 0-10.
That wasn’t rock bottom, though.
No, that came during the 2019 season when the Pioneers started off with an 0-3 record, following lopsided loses to Lawrence, Lake Forest and Macalester. Their roster, with fewer than 40 players on it, was hit hard with 12 injuries during those first three games.
The Pioneers were forced to use players on both sides of the ball. At one point, the roster was so depleted that even practicing was difficult.
Players and coaches were worried about the athletes' safety for the remainder of the season. Grinnell still had to play teams with double and triple their roster size. It was a no-win situation.
“We just didn’t feel like it was safe to play,” Grinnell athletic director Andy Hamilton said.
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After a 42-3 walloping by Macalester on Sept. 28, 2019, some players met with school administrators, including then-Grinnell president Raynard Kington and Anne Harris, the school’s vice president of academic affairs and the dean of the college.
The players recommended they cancel the remainder of the season. And that's what happened, on Oct. 1, 2019: Grinnell canceled the rest of its season. It made news all across Iowa and appeared in the New York Times in a story titled, "An Entire College Team Gives Up Football."
Except, Grinnell players weren't giving up. Canceling the season was a matter of survival for the football program, they felt.
Hardly any fans were coming to games in 2019. The team wasn’t winning. Players were worried school leaders might view the team as a burden and would decide to drop the program for good.
“We didn’t know what was happening at the time,” said Burton, a freshman at the time. “But we definitely thought that was a possibility.”
However, Harris, who had multiple meetings with the players, was convinced the school should keep the program running. She could tell how much it meant to players and alumni.
"Had I not spoken to any players, I think what was on paper would have said, 'close it down,'" said Harris, who became the school's president in 2020.
But some things had to happen after the team ended its 2019 season early.
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Hamilton, a former Grinnell football player himself, went to administrators with requests on how to revive the program. If the program was going to get its roster numbers up, they needed help recruiting. Hamilton said one of the reasons for the dip in numbers was the lack of coaching.
At one point, the team had three coaches handling recruiting. That number had since fallen to two. Hamilton said they needed to improve that in order to keep up with other Division III programs that were drawing in more players.
And the head coach, who usually worked as an assistant coach for another Grinnell sport, had to focus on football.
“There was still some talented guys; we just didn’t have enough of them to be super competitive,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton needed a new head coach, too. Jeff Pedersen, who coached the team since the 2010 season, was an emerging track coach and decided to focus on that sport.
Hamilton had plenty of people apply for the football job.
He said most candidates weren’t equipped to coach at a small, private college. But one was.
Brent Barnes.
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Barnes pitches a plan to get Grinnell back on track
Barnes isn't your typical football coach.
He was a triple major at Rice in economics, history and mechanical engineering. Barnes was also an unconventional football coach as an outside-the-box thinker who embraced analytics.
The players, who got to be a part of the interview process, were impressed by it.
"He was really smart with the x's and o's of football as well as the analytical side," Burton said.
What really sold them was Barnes' plan of attack. During his sit down with players, he outlined how he was going to go after players and build up the roster.
He knew recruiting at a private Division III college required different tactics. He had plenty of experience at the level. Barnes not only had to find players that could get into the school but wanted to attend it and could play football.
That meant moving on from players quicker if they didn’t show interest in them. It also meant overlooking what many coaches viewed as deficiencies in players. Barnes knew they had to be different.
“We’re getting kids that might be a little bit smaller, a little bit shorter and maybe a touch slower, but are good football players and can make things happen,” Barnes said.
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In that lunch session, his prospective Grinnell players loved his ideas and got behind Barnes. So did Hamilton and the rest of the administration who hired Barnes and gave him help. They let him focus on football and added two more coaches to his staff who could assist with recruiting.
When Barnes hit the recruiting road, he used the Pioneers’ problems in his favor. He pitched playing time to recruits and explained they’d have plenty of opportunities to get reps in practice. It worked, with Barnes quickly building the roster up into the mid-30s by the 2020 season.
"It's not fun going to a practice or going into a week knowing you're not going to play that weekend and having no chance of playing," Grinnell wide receiver Nick Rhinehart said. "You get kind of down on yourself like, 'I'm going to practice for 10 weeks and get nothing out of it.' The draw of playing in a game is pretty big."
Sorting through the 'rubble'
Barnes knew the program wouldn't be fixed overnight.
He looked at it as multi-stage process. Barnes had to first "sort through the rubble" of the program that collapsed in 2019. There was even more to go through after his first season was canceled in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The team had already lost some players with the coaching change. A few more left when there wasn't a season in 2020. It added enough tough dynamic for Barnes, who had yet to coach a game but had to find a way to retain his players and bring in new ones.
"It was a lost year for us," Barnes said.
But it's beginning to look promising. After missing the end of the 2019 season and all of the 2020 season, the Pioneers returned to the field for their first game on Sept. 4, 2021.
They lost 48-13 at Rockford. But the day was considered a win after all they'd been through.
"Coach (Gene) Blalock, who is our recruiting coordinator, special teams coordinator and coached our D-line said, 'I'm disappointed we lost, but it was still a good day for Grinnell,'" Barnes recalled. "I think that summed it up."
Grinnell finished the season with a 2-8 mark. But interest in the program was growing. The Pioneers survived 2019 and moved past the last season of 2020.
By getting back on the field for a full season, they showed recruits that the program wasn't going anywhere.
"It's pretty incredible to see," Burton said. "We still have a long way to go."
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Like Barnes planned, they've found foundational players. The Pioneers brought in Grayson Woodhouse, a 5-foot-11 quarterback, and Rhinehart, a 5-8 wide receiver. Both were players who lacked the traditional size many colleges look for in those skill positions.
But at Barnes' Grinnell program, they fit right in.
On Oct. 1, three years after the school announced most of the 2019 season was canceled and it became clear the future of the program was in doubt, Grinnell beat Beloit 28-21 to move to 2-1 on the 2022 season. It's the best start for Grinnell football since 2010.
"Seeing that and knowing that we have another big class coming in is really encouraging," Rhinehart said.
Barnes said the roster is now in the mid-50s and expected to grow next season. The hope is the experience his team is getting right now will pay off later.
There's newfound interest in the program.
And excitement.
And most of all … hope.
"We're really energetic and really optimistic," Khater said.
Tommy Birch, the Register's sports enterprise and features reporter, has been working at the newspaper since 2008. He's the 2018 and 2020 Iowa Sportswriter of the Year. Reach him at tbirch@dmreg.com or 515-284-8468. Follow him on Twitter @TommyBirch.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: This Iowa college's football program was dying. Here's how it survived
