Former UI football player’s song a contender for new Hawkeye Wave anthem

Dalles Jacobus’ song, “We Wave,” is in the running as the new Hawkeye Wave anthem.

Jerod Ringwald

Dalles Jacobus, a former Iowa football player who graduated in 2020, performs his song ‘We Wave’ in front of the University of Iowa’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital on Sunday, April 24, 2022. Jacobus is pushing ‘We Wave’ to become the new song playing during Iowa’s wave to the children’s hospital at the end of the first quarter.

Marandah Mangra-Dutcher, News Reporter
April 24, 2022

While playing for the Iowa football team, Dalles Jacobus wrote a song about the Hawkeye Wave.

This week, it became a contender for the tradition’s new anthem.

When the University of Iowa announced on April 21 on Twitter that it was looking for a new song for the Hawkeye Wave, multiple people tagged Jacobus in the replies on the Twitter announcement.

“I had no clue about any of this until … people started tagging me in the post,” he said.

Jacobus posted a shorter version of the song on Twitter that gained a lot of attention.

“I went on Twitter and I was like, ‘I think I can help you out here,’ and I posted a little snippet of the professionally done version of the song,” he said. “That just blew up. Like, I think it has more interactions than the original tweet does.”

Jacobus said he has always been into music but never thought of pursuing it.

“I’ve always enjoyed it,” he said. “I did show choir, chamber choir, acapella choir, all that stuff in high school, but athletics was where I strived.”

RELATED: University of Iowa to change the Hawkeye Wave song

In an email to The Daily Iowan, UI Public Relations Manager Chris Brewer wrote that the former wave song, “Wave on Wave” by Pat Green, was recorded in 2020 by the Hawkeye Marching Band to own the rights to that song.

“As our fans select a new song, the university will navigate the next steps with song usage. This will happen in the first vetting process when eight songs are put up for the first fan vote,” Brewer wrote.

While he was a Hawkeye, Jacobus pursued his love of music by learning to play guitar.

“When we go to bowl games, we get a $400 gift card that we can use on anything,” he said. “So, I bought a guitar with it.”

After the purchase, Jacobus started learning to play by watching YouTube. He said it wasn’t until 2021, after initial closures of public spaces because of COVID-19, that he started playing live shows.

“It was the perfect time for me,” he said. “Everybody’s excited to get out, I can go bomb a show, and people are just happy to be out — so I decided to go for it.”

Jacobus said the idea for his first song, “We Wave,” came to his mind on a fishing trip.

“The chorus popped into my head just out of the blue, like no particular reason — just popped in my head,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Guys, I am writing a song.’”

Jacobus performed the song for his friends and family at a bonfire, where someone recorded and posted it on Facebook.

“It just blew up,” he said. “I mean, I think the original video had something about 250,000 views.”

The university then asked to post the song, which Jacobus said gained a lot of traction as well.

Shaun Beyer, Jacobus’ teammate and current tight end for the Denver Broncos, said hearing the song was emotional.

“One of the first times I heard it, like when he sang it fully, just makes you emotional because it brings you back to those moments and kind of puts you in those family shoes a little bit,” Beyer said.

UI second-year Kenzie Kroll was one of the first to tweet about “We Wave” in response to the UI’s post. She said the song offers a unique perspective on the Hawkeye Wave.

“I thought that the song was great, and it really kind of encapsulated the feeling that you have when you’re in the stadium and you kind of take a pause at the intensity of the game,” she said. “You get to wave and just appreciate that for a moment.”

The Hawkeye Wave fostered her love for the Hawkeyes, she said.

“It’s a pretty emotional time,” Kroll said. “Some of our really close family friends had spent a lot of time with one of their kids over at the hospital… they’re really honestly the reason why I’ve always been such a big Hawkeye fan.”

Beyer said the song is especially meaningful because it comes from a former player.

“I think the lyrics really depict the meaningfulness of  ‘The Wave,'” he said. “It kind of gives the true meaning and an experience from a former player and how it is for them and, you know, a fan as well. It kind of encompasses everything you can think of, in a way, but it has a personal aspect to it too.”

Beyer said he remembers the first time he waved from the field.

“You just get to take a couple moments away from everything and just kind of realize that there’s bigger things in the world than just football and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “It’s a really cool moment.”

Jacobus said the attention he has gained baffles him, and he doesn’t want to lose the reason behind “The Wave.” The song is finished, but a release date for the full song is yet to be announced.

“The past couple of days have just been unbelievable,” he said. “But, you know, at the end of the day, it’s not about the song that’s playing, it’s about the act and the actual wave.”