The student becomes the teacher

Eighteen years later, when then-athletic director Bob Bowlsby called Gable — who was nine years removed from his head coaching days — into his office with a drive to uphold the national status of the program, it was hard to disagree with who he had in mind.

On April 5, 2006, four days before the brothers’ 38th birthday, Tom was named the head coach of the Iowa wrestling program.

“The Iowa program is one of the most decorated sports programs in all of intercollegiate athletics, and with that comes very lofty expectations,” Bowlsby said in his introductory press conference. “We feel that Tom is capable of meeting those expectations and further contributing to our achievements.

“We also feel that Coach Brands will lead the program with high integrity and that he will support our team members in all areas of their experiences on our campus.”

Iowa was coming off a seven-loss season — the program’s most since 1966-67 — but from the moment Tom stepped into the role as head coach, he didn’t feel pressure to return the program to what it once was under Gable.

After Tom left his first head coaching job at Virginia Tech to come back to Iowa, talent followed. Wrestlers he had recruited transferred to Iowa and risked a year of ineligibility, a testament to him both as a coach and as a man.

“When he came in, it was exciting,” former Iowa wrestler and current assistant coach Ryan Morningstar said. “It was like he came in, and it was a new sheriff in town. Everybody bought into what we were doing, and there were some transfers that came in and it was just like we all bonded together.

“Just the leadership and the accountability and straightforwardness that Tom brought to the table was awesome, and just the leadership and the fearlessness that he had was unbelievable.”

Even now, there’s something about Tom and his recruiting efforts that is special, that makes athletes flock to him.

“I’ve had phone calls with recruits where my first phone call is, ‘Hey, you want to be an Olympic champion?’ They go, ‘Yeah,’ and I go, ‘Alright, Iowa’s the place. Any questions, I’ll be in touch later. Goodbye.’ ” Tom said, hanging up the imaginary phone with a clicking noise. “And they’re like, ‘What the heck just happened there?’ And they tell those stories later.

“I think kids want to be talked to that way. Then, let them think about it.”

Accountability, both on and off the mat, is introduced right from the start.

Tom and his staff tackle self-accountability head-on, talking directly to recruits about making good decisions in all facets of life. That paves the way for what is to come in their Hawkeye careers, setting trust up early and planting the seed for stepping up in the room.

“If they want to be a part of a program that isn’t necessarily better than other programs, but is different in that accountability, then sign up for it, because you’re going to thrive,” Tom said.

That accountability showed itself on the mat in a big way last season. On Dec. 1, the annual Cy-Hawk dual meet returned to Iowa City for a matchup between the No. 3-ranked Hawkeyes and the unranked Cyclones.

Iowa State had taken four of the first seven matches and led 15-12 with Iowa’s 285-pound lineup spot coming up. Aaron Costello was listed on the probable lineup prior to the match, and that’s who Tom was expecting to come out of the tunnel.

Instead, when the lights lowered and the Imperial March from Star Wars started blasting from the Carver-Hawkeye Arena speakers, the 6-foot-3 senior heavyweight Sam Stoll walked to the edge of the mat. After a quick exchange that seemed like nothing out of the ordinary to the 9,000-plus people in attendance, Brands gave Stoll a slap across the mouth to get him ready.

Stoll then tied up the team score at 15 with a 5-1 win over Gannon Gremmel.

“He made the call,” Tom said after the meet. “I wasn’t going to let him go, and he explained it to me that it was his last time [in a Cy-Hawk meet], he explained it to me that he wanted to go, and I popped him in the mouth and he went.”

Iowa packed a one-two punch in that meet when Spencer Lee — who went on to win his second national championship last season and is currently seeking a bid to the 2020 Olympics — returned to the mat after a week off and took a major decision over Alex Mackall to give Iowa the bonus point it needed for the win. The Hawkeyes won the dual, 19-18.

Lee shows similarities to the Brands brothers as a wrestler — not only successful on the mat, he shows what it means to be a Hawkeye in life.

A Pennsylvania native, there’s a big wrestling powerhouse school in Lee’s home state where he could have gone. He, like some of his Hawkeye teammates from the same part of the country, chose Iowa.

“[Tom and Terry] want us to be good human beings, not just good wrestlers, and they want us to go and be successful in the future on and off the mat, whatever that means to you,” Lee said. “They’re the best. That’s why I’m here.”

Lee lives through the Hawkeye state of accountability, which helps push that onto his teammates.

“Here’s a guy that’s wired to win the highest level in the sport wrestling matches, and he’s talking about the things that are most important to us,” Tom said. “And it’s not winning at all costs. It’s winning at all costs with integrity and winning at all costs with self-accountability.”

That inaugural 2006-07 season with Tom at the helm culminated in a 14-5 regular-season record, a third-place finish at the Big Ten meet and an eighth-place finish at NCAAs for the second time in five years. Before 2003, the Hawkeyes hadn’t placed that low on the national stage for 30 seasons.

The fear — if any — that Iowa would continue to drop nationally wasn’t something at the forefront of minds in the organization.

“You always have that fear a little bit, because that fear is what lights some fires,” Gable said.