Honored to stream at Don Howell Field
Upper Iowa 37, Hillsdale College 28
Were there any bowl games yesterday in Indiana?
I know what you’re thinking. Indiana’s historic upset of Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship counts as a bowl game. That’s not what ChatGPT says:
This is technically a conference championship game rather than a “bowl game.” It is a major postseason matchup that significantly impacts bowl selections, but it is not a “bowl game.”
Yesterday’s game was amazing. The whole state of Indiana is on fire with enthusiasm, not only for the win against Ohio State but for Curt Cignetti and Hoosiers football in general. In a few hours, polls will come out. Indiana will be the number one team in the country - in FOOTBALL. We’re a basketball state. How the hell did that happen?
As good as this game was - Indiana 13, Ohio State 10 - and as many listeners as it brought to our radio stations - WJOB am 1230 and FM 104.7 - it still wasn’t a bowl game. As a matter of fact, according to ChatGPT, the only bowl game that happened on Dec. 6, 2025, in Indiana wasn’t in Indianapolis. It was three hours north in Hobart, Indiana.
It was a game that pitted Hillsdale College, a representative of the GMAC (Great Midwest Athletic Conference), against Upper Iowa of the GLVC (Great Lakes Valley Conference). It’s called the “Albanese Candy Bowl.” We streamed it live as part of the newly-named Heartland Sports Network (formerly the JEDtv Sports Network). I got up and took a shower and drove out to the field in Hobart.
The first thing you’ll notice about Hobart’s football field is that it’s really nice for a high school. Hobart has a long tradition of great high school football, so they eventually built a state-of-the-art field to replace the “Brickie Bowl.” When I played there in 1979, the Brickie Bowl was a run-down stadium with brick stands built into a hill. On top of that hill were train tracks and during a game if a train would come by, you couldn’t hear the quarterback call out signals.
At least that’s how I remember it. It’s a Sunday morning. I don’t have anything that I have to do, so I’m setting out to tell you about how Upper Iowa beat Hillsdale College 37-28 on a field surrounded by huge piles of snow. It looked really cool on TV. I went up to the booth and talked with announcer Brian Jennings and stood behind producer Ben Cowart, who doesn’t talk to anyone during a game. It looked really cool on the monitor to have a field surrounded by snow.
I'm setting out to tell you about Upper Iowa’s victory. Instead, I all of the sudden feel the pull to tell you about another Hobart football field and what happened there in 1979. It was my final high school football game, and it happened at the “Brickie Bowl.”
Back then, there was only one class of football, and the IHSAA only took eight teams to the state football tournament. On the strength of an All-American quarterback named Bill Howarth, we made it to the playoffs. That was the good news. The bad news was that we had to travel to the Brickie Bowl and face legendary coach Don Howell.
It wasn’t as big a deal as Indiana vs. Ohio State, but it was a big enough deal that, like Indiana yesterday, we got a police escort to the game. Red lights flashing and sirens, and we didn’t have to wait for stoplights.
We arrived at the Brickie Bowl at 5pm for a 7pm kickoff. The Brickies side of the stands was already packed. They booed when we got off the bus. By game time, there were people standing several deep all around the field and people up on the railroad tracks and guys in trees. It was bedlam.
Sometime in the first quarter, we faced fourth and a couple yards near midfield. To everyone’s dismay, coach John Friend decided to go for it. Howarth rolled out to his right and hit me on a sideline pattern. It was one of our favorite plays. I would run out of the backfield and head for the sidelines. Howarth had an arm like a rocket, and I could usually outrun the linebacker. I caught the ball and got tackled by the linebacker and rolled out of bounds. First down.
The odd part of this sequence is that I rolled up on the feet of legendary coach Don Howell. He was exactly what you think of when you think of a successful football coach in the middle of the country in the late 1970s - scowl, gray hair, strong arms, grovelly voice.
I laid, with a first down, on Howell’s feet. There were several thousand people at the game, but for some reason my mental awareness had narrowed to just three people - me, Don Howell, and the referee.
This was 45 years ago. But I still remember it, can still picture it, as if it were yesterday. There was me laying on the ground on Don Howell’s feet. There was the referee. And there was Don Howell, standing there, glaring.
“Get the hell out of here,” Howell said. Then he did something I’ll never forget. He kicked me. He full on reached back and kicked me in the chest.
The ref looked from Howell, standing, to me, laying. He did this a few times. Time stopped. There were all these lights and people yelling, but for what seemed like a long time Howell and I stared at the ref, who quite obviously didn’t know what to do. He was stunned. There was the winningest coach in Indiana. He had just kicked a player. There wasn’t anything in his training that had prepared him for this.
I stood up and flipped the ball to the ref, who was in such a daze that he let the ball hit his chest and fall to the ground. Howell picked it up and handed it to him, said nothing.
And that was that. We lost 35-30.
If you’re from Hobart, I know what you’re thinking. I’m telling this because I’m still bitter about the loss and getting kicked and wanna make Don Howell look bad. It was a different time. Not to go into it too deeply, but I had been dealt with accordingly by own high school coaches, John Friend and Mike Niksic. I deserved it. I was a punk. Without several tough men driving the punk out of me - and showing me what it was like to compete at a high level - I don’t know where I’d be. I have the utmost respect for Don Howell and always have.
Anyways, as I walked onto Don Howell Field yesterday, I ran into Hobart current athletic director, Mike Black.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I said to Black.
“Oh, I don’t know, hosting a college football game,” he said as we shook hands in the cold. We were standing under the sign - “Don Howell Field.” Black and I talked about the game and how a data center might be coming to Hobart. I asked if I could buy him a coffee and he said something that I couldn’t really compute - “I don’t drink coffee.”
Without coffee, I’m not sure I could do anything. But that’s another story for another silly little substack. Years after this classic game at the Brickie Bowl, my stepson, Steve Holzbach, played for another football powerhouse around here - the Griffith Panthers coached by Russ Radtke. In week 5, my stepson, a defensive end, won the Post-Tribune player of the week. At the end of the season, they held a banquet for award winners. That’s where I ran into Don Howell.
Always restless during speeches, I got up to go to the bathroom. Howell got up to go too. We ran into each other in a hallway.
“Hey, coach. How you doing?”
“Okay. These speeches can go on a while, though.”
“Hey, coach, can I ask you something? Do you remember playing Munster at the Brickie Bowl in 1979?”
“Of course I do,” Howell said. We went on to have a conversation about the crowd that night at the Brickie Bowl, what a crazy game it was, and how great of a coach John Friend was.
“I’m not sure if you remember this,” I said. “But I was the kid who rolled up on your feet in the first quarter.”
Howell got a strange look on his face. “That was you?”
“Yeah. That was me.”
I’m not gonna recount the rest of that conversation. It was between Don Howell and me. Suffice it to say that Howell remembered the moment in much the same manner as I recounted to you… that I came out of that conversation with even more respect for the man… and that I was proud 45 years later that my company was streaming the Albanese Candy Bowl at Don Howell field.
Howell died a year or so after that Post-Tribune banquet of a massive heart attack while working out. He was 64. RIP, coach.