The Short List: Jon Budmayr

The most obvious candidate on the current coaching staff isn’t technically coaching on that staff. And that's not even the half of it.

Iowa Football doesn’t really do coaching searches. I just turned 43 years old, and there has been exactly one head coach vacancy in my lifetime. Perhaps more shocking: There have been just four defensive coordinators since 1979 (Bill Brashier, Bobby Elliott, Norm Parker and Phil Parker) and only six offensive coordinators (Bill Snyder, Carl Jackson, Don Patterson, Ken O’Keefe, Greg Davis, Brian Ferentz). So when a coordinator position opens up, we go to FlightAware and try to have some of the fun that everyone else gets when they can their coach like tuna.

Previous Short List Posts:

• Paul Chryst

• George Barnett and Eric Koehler

• Tim Polasek

Tsar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, had a pretty rough time of it. During his 22-year reign, Nicholas advocated for the agrarian and backwards nation of Russia to modernize, tying himself and his empire to the French as a model. At the same time, he tried to preserve the full extent of the tsar’s authority over the government, a task made more difficult by Russia’s loss in the Russo-Japanese War, and a violent response to a peaceful protest in 1905 which triggered the First Russian Revolution. What’s more, his only son and heir to the throne, Alexei, was stricken with hemophilia, a nasty disease even now but a near-certain death sentence then.

On November 1, 1905, Nicholas and his empress Alexandra met a “holy man” from Siberia at their palace in St. Petersburg who was so charismatic that the tsar recorded the encounter in his diary. About a year later, the holy man returned, and was asked to pray for the health of the then-toddler Alexei. And so began the legend of Rasputin.

Alexei suffered an internal hemorrhage in spring 1907, and the tsarina summoned Rasputin as a last hope. Miraculously, Alexei recovered the following day, convincing Alexandra that he held mystical powers. Five years later, Alexandra telegrammed Rasputin when Alexei was near death from an internal bruise. Rasputin wrote back that, “The Little One will not die.” His bleeding stopped two days later.

By this point, both Alexandra and Nicholas believed Rasputin to hold divine powers, and made him an integral part of the tsar’s inner circle. He was first appointed as the tsar’s lamplighter, which allowed him to travel the palace freely. He accepted bribes from outsiders to advocate for them to Nicholas, and acted as a top political advisor or chief of staff would today.

There was just one problem: Everything was coming apart inside Russia. World War I broke out, the traditional feudalistic society of Russia was quickly crumbling, and the economy cratered. The prime minister of the Russian duma, the Russian Orthodox Church (which had launched an investigation for heresy) and political opponents of Nicholas needed an easy target, and Rasputin (and the German-born tsarina) became those easy targets. She was born an enemy. He was a shadow tsar, and a weird one at that. Eventually everyone got executed: Rasputin was killed by a group of nobles a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution, the tsar and tsarina a couple of years later.

---

Jon Budmayr was a backup quarterback at Wisconsin from 2009 to 2011, retiring from football due to medical issues and working as a student assistant. After graduation, he joined his position coach, Paul Chryst, at Pitt for a year, then came with Chryst back to Wisconsin in 2015. By 2018, when the NCAA added a tenth assistant, he was working as Wisconsin’s quarterbacks coach.

As a quarterbacks coach, Budmayr was heavily involved in recruiting quarterbacks. Wisconsin stayed close to home for most positions, but took a more nationwide approach to finding a signalcaller. As such, Budmayr was the primary recruiter pursuing Cade McNamara for a short time before the Nevada-based QB chose Michigan. Among the quarterback commitments landed by Budmayr at Wisconsin were:

• Jack Coan, who had a really good 2019 season as Wisconsin (70% completions, 8.0 yards per attempt, 18 TDs, 5 int’s) before transferring to Notre Dame.

• Chase Wolf, who made one start in Wisconsin’s Outback Bowl win over Oklahoma State last year and left the program immediately after.

• Graham Mertz, a highly-touted recruit posting middling numbers for three years at Wisconsin before performing quite capably at Florida this year.

• Deacon Hill, who you may remember from such films as “Deacon Hill.”

In 2021, Colorado State head coach Steve Addazio needed to replace his coordinator, who had left for Vanderbilt. Addazio chose Budmayr for the job. Ten months, three wins and nine losses later, everyone was fired.