IOWA CITY, Iowa — Bill Brashier, the iconic defensive coordinator under coach Hayden Fry who guided Iowa’s defense for 17 years, died Friday at age 93.

Brashier arrived at Iowa with Fry from North Texas in 1979 and guided some of the best defenses in Big Ten history. The Hawkeyes led the Big Ten in defense three times under Brashier and won three league titles. In 1981, Iowa led the Big Ten in total defense (265.5 yards per game) and scoring defense (11.5 points a game) to earn a league title.

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In 1978, Iowa allowed 186.7 rushing yards per game. In 1981 that number fell to 86.9. In 1985, Iowa was ranked No. 1 nationally for five consecutive weeks and won the Big Ten title outright.

Five different defenders under Brashier were named first-team All-Americans, including College Football Hall of Fame inductees Andre Tippett and Larry Station.

“He was awesome,” said Bob Stoops, a College Football Hall of Fame head coach who played for Brashier and then coached under him. “I credit my career to Coach Brashier. He’s the one that got it started for me as a graduate assistant. He would put me on the board and tell me to explain and show me what I was talking about. So, he is incredibly special to me, no doubt.”

Fry grew one of the greatest coaching trees in college football history with Bob Stoops (Oklahoma), offensive coordinator Bill Snyder (Kansas State), linebackers coach Barry Alvarez (Wisconsin), defensive line coach Dan McCarney (Iowa State), graduate assistant Mark Stoops (Kentucky) and offensive line coach Kirk Ferentz (Iowa) all becoming the winningest head coach at six different football programs. Brashier never left Iowa and stayed loyal to Fry, his lifelong friend, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in the same category as his colleagues in coaching prowess.

“That was a phenomenal staff,” McCarney said. “I loved my time with Bill Brashier. And to this day, I’ve said it many times, he may have been the smartest Xs and Os football coach that I was ever around. He didn’t get a chance to be a head coach, but it sure didn’t mean that he didn’t have a major, major impact on the Iowa program. Even in the first years, when we build the foundation in 1981, we went to the first Rose Bowl with one of the two best defenses I was ever around in my 45 years of Division I football, the only one that was that as good or maybe a little bit better as the national championship one that I was a part of at Florida (2008).”

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“Coach Brashier definitely was, if not the best coach we had; he’s right there with any of them,” Bob Stoops said. “He was incredibly special, smart, very detailed with us on how we played. He was a great communicator with us and what we needed to do.”

Fry left Brashier alone to coach the defense without interference. Brashier then helped mold McCarney, Alvarez, Bob Stoops and later Bret Bielema, Bo Pelini, Mark Stoops and Mike Stoops into quality defensive minds. Iowa’s 5-2 defense was simplistic but fundamentally, it had few peers.

“Coach Brashier was really the ultimate,” said Mark Stoops. “He was our defensive coordinator, position coach, and really an old school, tough guy. But he also was very caring, and a very influential person in my life.”

“It was such an honor to work with him and work for him and we were together in the trenches on defense for 11 years,” McCarney said. “You really find out about someone who spent that much time and 16-hour days and round-the-clock year round and that’s what a lot of people don’t really get sometimes.

“They see big salaries nowadays and the contracts and everything, but the commitment and the workload that you have year-round, it really never stops. So, you really have to get along with people and enjoy the staff that you’re around.”

(Top photo: HawkeyeSports.com)

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