Saint Angerer

Pat Angerer is coming to your radios, a rare win for the thumbless.

Spencer Hall has always been a fan of Pat Angerer. On the occasion of Angerer playing through torn thumb ligaments for undefeated Iowa in 2009, The Man They Called Orson Swindle wrote the following:

Iowa's Pat Angerer already has the most bar-brawl ready name and plays the most bar-brawlin’ position in college football, linebacker. In addition to those two intangibles, he happens to be quite the angry and angering player, too.

Angerer tore ligaments in his right thumb last week, but even pointing this out makes you look ridiculous in that dress, Nancy. I’m sorry: “dude.”

At the time, Angerer was defensive captain and middle linebacker for Norm Parker, who had lost two toes by then due to complications of diabetes. As a result, a guy with eight toes would be sending play signals to a guy with one thumb, which pretty well sums up the mindset of Iowa’s kickass 2009 defense.¹ The thumb injury was not the reason Spencer took notice of Angerer that day, though. It was the quote that Angerer gave when asked if he would be hindered by the thumb injury:

"You don't need thumbs. My best friend is my brother's dog. He doesn't have any thumbs and he's doing fine.''

And so began the Legend of Pat Angerer, a man beloved by an entire state whose best friend was another man’s dog.

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Iowa Football and Learfield announced Monday morning that Angerer would be taking Ed Podolak’s place as radio color commentator for Iowa football starting this fall. According to Chad Leistikow’s reporting, Angerer beat out a murderer’s row of late-aughts Hawks to get the job: James Vandenberg², Mitch King³ and Nate Kaeding⁴. As part of the interview process, Angerer was asked to call a simulated game with play-by-play man Gary Dolphin, despite never having worked in broadcasting before. It apparently went great.

“Dolph’s a pro. Dolph’s amazing,” Angerer said. “I could have put my dog up there instead of me and would have done just fine.”

So at least we know that Pat has his own dog now.

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There’s a lot to love about Pat Angerer, and a lot about that 2009 team. Iowa played on it heavily this offseason, bringing in Ricky Stanzi to narrate their preseason hype video and sending Hawkeye fans of a certain age into fits of nostalgia-induced ugly crying. Angerer was as much of a cult hero on that squad as Stanzi, with a style of play so hard-nosed that fans were making tribute videos soundtracked by Megadeth.

Norm knew it early. He said Angerer could be a great linebacker for them back in 2006, when Angerer was buried on a stacked depth chart and considering quitting football. It took Pat three years to break through and get his shot, through injury and illness and attitude issues. Pat liked to party and drink and fight people. Pat had to give that up first. He was All-Big Ten as a junior, All-American as a senior. Second round draft pick to Indianapolis.

Pat was always a good quote. There was the dog thing, and his offseason trip to a Bettendorf bowling alley with Marc Morehouse. There was his commentary on fellow linebacker A.J. Edds before Senior Day:

"We are pretty different," Angerer said. "He's ugly, I'm not. I'm athletic, he's not. I'm stronger, he's not that strong. Those are probably the biggest differences with us. I think his biggest accomplishment is that he is so ugly and he managed to get a girlfriend in college."

But as much as I love the 2009 team, that’s not why Pat Angerer is the man for this job. Because after four years in the pros, Pat came back to Iowa City. He took an assistant strength coaching job, and in between bench presses and blocking sleds, he helped out everywhere he could. He straightened out George Kittle:

Kittle found a role model in assistant strength coach Pat Angerer, a former Hawkeyes linebacker who'd recently finished a four-year NFL career with the Indianapolis Colts.

"He had a very similar story: Didn't play for three years, and then he figured it out and got drafted in the second round," Kittle said. "And I just asked him, 'Hey, what was it that was keeping you from the field, and what did you change?' He said, 'I partied a lot, I drank a lot and I liked to fight people when I was drunk. That's what kept me from playing.' And so I looked myself in the mirror and I said, 'Those are the three things that are gonna stop me from playing and achieving my dreams.'

"I don't really fight people, but I definitely did the partying and stuff like that, and I was like, alright, well, I'm gonna just try that and see if it works. And that's what I did. I just kind of woke up and got out of bed one morning and said, 'I'm not doing this anymore, I want to play football.' "

One of Kittle's close friends, former Iowa fullback Steve Manders, gave a similar account of the epiphany: "We were all partying too much, and one morning he was like, 'Man, I gotta step my s--- up.' Pat Angerer ripped into his ass at a workout: 'You've got all this talent. You've gotta get your s--- together!' And he did.

His former teammate, Brett Greenwood, suffered a brain injury during a workout in 2011. Angerer had previously credited Greenwood for straightening him out back in 2008. And so Pat went to work with his friend, helping him to simply walk again. By 2015, Greenwood was leading the team onto the field, Pat Angerer at his side.

Kirk Ferentz said, “I don’t know that we’ve had a better leader or a guy with a better heart than Pat come through our program.”

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Ed Podolak was that kind of guy at Iowa, a man who endeared himself to the fan base through aw-shucks humor, a dollop of nostalgia, and a never-ending well of pride in being a Hawkeye. It was that attitude, far more than anything he said on air, that got Ed through 42 years in the booth, through a minor scandal that threatened to end his career early, through all those Bud & Mary’s promos the last couple of years. Dolphin told Leistikow, “You’re certainly not going to duplicate Ed Podolak. He’s such a unique bird. But I think in Pat Angerer we got about as mirror image as you’re going to find.”

Pat Angerer has proven himself worthy of being our voice on the radio, time and again. That role doesn’t require polish or experience. That role requires the enthusiasm for this program that he has already shown, over and over. That job is being a Hawkeye first, and there is nobody who has put being a Hawkeye first quite like him.

1. Iowa won anyway.

2. Who once killed a bear.

3. Who was like a proto-Angerer.

4. Who technically wasn’t late aughts, but whatever.