An Army of Pink

With the Iowa football team sitting at a precarious 2-2 heading into this weekend's Homecoming game against Illinois, the biggest news coming out of Iowa City has been the "controversy" over the color of the visiting locker room: pink.

Those of you who are Iowa fans recall that former coach Hayden Fry, a college psychology major, painted the Iowa football locker rooms pink during the 80s, claiming that pink is a calming color, capable of lulling opponents into less aggressive play on the field. Over the years, the visiting press from ABC, ESPN, et al, have enjoyed telling the story and showing the Pepto-Bismal pink walls. Visiting coaches have occassionally made comment, and some have even thrown up butcher block paper to hide the paint.

The Kinnick Stadium locker rooms have recently been refurbished, and the pink walls remain. They are joined by pink sinks, showers, and urinals.

The big news isn't the pink sink. The big news is a liberal, feminist, easter, visiting professor at the U of I who is making claims that a pink locker room is an insult to women, and makes an "anti-gay" statement. This visiting professor has got a few other politically sympathetic supporters at the University to agree. Everything out of Iowa City this week is over the color pink.

Are you kidding me?

I don't personally know anyone in the athletic department, nor coach Fry, nor coach Ferentz, nor any player, nor this professor. But I'd be willing to bet that absolutely no one ever sat in a meeting and said, "You know, we want to make a socio-political statement by painting our locker rooms pink, even if it offends our female and homosexual friends."

On the contrary, those locker rooms are pink for two reasons: A) Fry liked to play psychological games with opponents, not only in the locker room, but on the field with his "bag of exotics," and b) The "lore" has simply been continued under Ferentz. Fry is a legend in these parts, and that pink sink is a tribute to Fry as much as it is a distraction fro the Illinois linebacker who has to lean over a Pepto-colored urinal this coming Saturday.

Enough already. The only course of action needed in Iowa City is to send a certain professor back to Boston, and for the Hawks to beat Illinois this weekend.

Score prediction: Iowa 24
Team in the pink locker room 13