It happened in the press box at Kinnick Stadium, and any sportswriter will tell you how difficult that is—especially when it happens during a BigTen football game.

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’ll tell you the rest of the story.

I was dividing my time between the press box and the sidelines during the Iowa-Illinois game—which the Hawkeyes won easily. When I returned to my seat late in the third quarter, the guy sitting next to me asked, "Are you Ron?"

"Yes, I am," I said.

"I’m Eldean Matheson," the other guy said.

"Hey, I’ve been looking for you for months!" I told Matheson. "I wanted to check a story out with you."

[This is what I mean by getting lucky in the press box. May the Internet police cleanse your mind of those R-rated thoughts if you figured I meant something else. After all, this is still a family website. Well, once in a great while anyway].

Now, getting back to being lucky. Listen, it’s not every day that someone I’m trying to find is sitting next to me in a press box. All I had to do with Matheson was place a tape recorder in front of him and let him talk.

This, folks, is the same Eldean Matheson who came out of tiny Lake Mills, Ia., to step up and play alongside guys such as Eddie Vincent, Jerry Reichow and Earl Smith for Evashevski’s outstanding Hawkeye teams.

There was some thought that the Iowa-Michigan State game in 1954 was maybe the Hawkeyes’ first on TV. But Phil Haddy, Steve Roe and the others who edit the Iowa Football Media Guide, tell me otherwise.

The book says Iowa’s first TV football game was against Indiana on Oct. 24, 1953. The game Matheson starred in against Michigan State was the Hawkeyes’ season opener in 1954, and it indeed was televised.

Grady agrees with Matheson that TV missed Eldean’s 53-yard punt return. Grady thought that maybe "Laraine Day, who once was married to Leo Durocher, was doing a commercial for Amana refrigerators" when Matheson took the ball to Michigan State’s 3-yard line.

"Or it might have been Betty Furness doing a commercial for Westinghouse," Matheson said. As for how his big play didn’t make it on the tube, he added, "TV wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now."

In other words, he meant that a big run like Matheson had wouldn’t have been missed by the networks today.

Grady mentioned Matheson and his big play that wasn’t televised when I was interviewing him for my book, "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines." It would have been a great story for the book, but I ran out of time on trying to contact Matheson.

"Those were the two-platoon days," he explained, "and I was a defensive back. With us ahead, 14-10, Michigan State was driving late in the game. They were at midfield when I picked up a fumble and ran it in. But, in those days, you couldn’t advance a fumble.

"So the ball came back to the 50, but we ran out the clock."

Matheson’s seasons with the Hawkeyes were 1953, 1954 and 1955. Consequently, he was out of eligibility when Evashevski’s 1956 team won the Big Ten title and Rose Bowl and finished 9-1.

It was in the 1953 season that Iowa went 5-3-1. The 14-14 tie was with Notre Dame in the finale at South Bend, Ind. That was the game in which Notre Dame was called the "Fainting Irish" after various players faked injuries before the half and the end of the game to stop the clock.

"I can remember how the officials were huddling, trying to discuss the fainting," Matheson said. "At the time, Notre Dame tackle Frank Varrichione was lying on the field, winking at his teammates. We were all standing there, knowing what was going on."

I asked Matheson if Evashevski said much about the fainting at halftime or after the game.

"Not at halftime, but after the game he complained to the officials," Matheson said. "Then, when we got back to Iowa City, we had a pep rally at the Iowa Memorial Union, and Evy came up with that famous poem."

Evy paraphrased the words of sportswriter Grantland Rice with this:

"Wally Schwank was Iowa’s freshman coach, and came up to Lake Mills to talk with me and my parents," Metheson said. "In those days, they recruited greater numbers of players and gave out partial scholarships.

"I’ll bet they brought in 100 freshmen that first year. When I graduated, 15 were left. I had a partial scholarship the first year, but then I had a good spring practice and I got a full scholarship."

I asked if it was intimidating to a kid from the tiny school to be recruited by Evashevski, who had been a standout at Michigan and would later go on to coach the three best teams—1958, 1956 and 1960—in Iowa football history.

"I weighed 165 pounds and played at 170," Matheson said. "If they had to platoon in those days, I’d probably have been a defensive back because Earl Smith and Dusty Rice were very good halfbacks with a lot of speed."

"Iowa State looked at me a little bit, but not too much," he said. "Smaller schools like UNI and Luther did, too. I wanted to take a chance here at Iowa."

Although Evashevski was an outstanding coach, he was disliked by a number of his players. Alex Karras said he hated him. Randy Duncan said he almost quit the team early in his career.

"I never had any sort of situation with Evy," Matheson said. "Sometimes you’d see him and he might not say anything. He was a moody individual. Sometimes he’d come over and shake your hand and ask how things were going in the classroom. I really respected him."

After his playing career was finished and he got a degree in business, Matheson coached at a number of high schools in Iowa before spending 10 years as a middle school principal.

He now lives in Mason City and does commentary on high school games broadcast by radio station KGLO.

"I have season tickets to Iowa’s games, and occasionally watch them from the press box," said the man who will celebrate his 70^th birthday in about six months.