Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Former Iowa WR Matt VandeBerg joins the show to talk about his recruitment, the memorable 2015 season, and more - Part 1

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Former Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver Matt VandeBerg joins the show to talk about his recruitment, the memorable 2015 season, and much more. Part two of our interview will be airing Monday morning! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are listening to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Locked On Sports Network, hosted by Andrew Wade, editor at DearOldGold.com. Welcome to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. I am your host, Andrew Wade, editor over at DearOldGold.com, fansite at Iowa Hawkeye website. And today's show is brought to you in part by Hotels.com. Don't hate like your friend strip. Book your own with Hotels.com and get rewarded basically everywhere. Hotels.com. Be there basically everywhere. Hotels.com.

Be there. Do that. Get rewarded. All right, and we are back for our third consecutive episode of the week. Again, I apologize for last week not giving you any content, but we have a lot of great stuff coming up. Reach out to a few people. Have some great guests coming on the show.

Over the next couple weeks, we had a fantastic guest. Yesterday morning, we had Matt Crawford, the GM of the Iowa United, the team that is playing in the TBT tournament, or just otherwise known as TBT, the $2 million winner-take-all basketball tournament. We had him on the phone yesterday and joining the podcast, talked to us about Iowa United's draw, talked about the meet and greet,

and talked a little bit about Megan Gustafson. And if you stayed with us to the end, we talked a little bit about the Bachelorette, which I'm not sure if I'm happy about or ashamed about. Either way, though, today's guest is a great person. You're going to love listening to this episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. We are joined by Matt Vandenberg, the former Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver, part of that fantastic group of Iowa Hawkeyes who had the unbelievable 2015 run.

So he's joining us on the show today to talk a little bit about his life, talk about growing up in South Dakota, kind of what he had to deal with in terms of a recruiting process, why he may end up going into coaching someday, and also give us a little bit of insight to that 2015 season. We're going to be doing two parts to this interview, want to make sure we're breaking it up and not giving you too long of an interview. So we're going to be talking to Matt on today's episode and on a Monday

morning episode. I know we haven't done that in quite some time, but we're going to be giving you a Monday morning episode of the lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. So stay tuned for part two of that next week. We've also had some really great guests on the show in the past couple of weeks. If you haven't had a chance to listen to them, I highly recommend you doing that. We've had Ricky Stanzi, Drew Tate, Kavante Martin-Manley, Nicholas Bayer. Again, we've had Matt Crawford on a couple of times. We also have Marcus Fizer, Matt Tybee, a former UW Milwaukee player, a couple of Drake guys, Reed Timmer, and Nick McGlynn. Lots of great guests we've had on the show.

So make sure to tune into some of those later podcasts we've had in the past couple months and couple weeks. Also, if you are tuning in for the very first time, make sure to follow us wherever you downloaded this podcast at. Whether that's on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the brand new Himalaya Podcast app, that'll make sure that you can get the latest episode of the podcast downloaded directly to your phone the moment it isalaya podcast app. That'll make sure that you can get the latest episode of the podcast downloaded

directly to your phone the moment it is released from my computer. That is the easiest way to get the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. Also, if you are on social media, on Twitter or Facebook, we are there on both mediums. We are on Twitter at Locked on Iowa and Facebook on the Locked on Hawkeyes. If you follow us there, you're going to get the most recent updates about what's going on with the podcast. I'll let you know if we're not having shows a certain day.

I'll let you know when we do have shows, and I'll kind of tease some of our special guests that are coming on the show. So that's really how you can stay in the know of what's going on with the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. That being said, though, I want to jump into the interview with Matt Vandenberg, fantastic guest, like I said. I really enjoyed talking to him, really had a great conversation with him. Again, I divided it up into the interview with Matt Vandenberg. Fantastic guest, like I said. I really enjoyed talking to him. Really had a great conversation with him.

Again, I divided it up into two parts. Part one begins right now. All right, I am joined here by Matt Vandenberg, former Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver. Matt, how are you doing today, man? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And what are you up to right now?

You're in Iowa City, right? Well, essentially. Laura and I live in Tiffin currently, which is a stone's throw from Iowa City. So essentially, but I do got to give Tiffin a shout out. I can respect that small town, Iowa. We're getting our first stoplight though, so we're on the up and up. Oh man, do you guys have a Casey's? We do actually have a Casey's. I mean, that's ultimately all that matters. As long as you have pizza and a place where you can go grab a cheeseburger and beer as well, then you're good to go.

That's right, that's right. I love it, man. And you actually are from a small town in South Dakota. Not as small town as Tithon, I don't think, but you are from a small town in South Dakota. Is that kind of a similar vibe for you then? I mean, yes and no. There's like 12 people in the state anyway. So, I mean, I understand that every town is rather small. But my graduating class, I still graduated with 260.

So it wasn't like we weren't, you know, super small. I mean, that was still, I want to say it was like top five graduating classes in the state that year though. So even though it's a big town, South Dakota, it's still a small town anywhere else wait so you had 260 graduating people in your town when i last looked at the census was around 10 000 people how how a lot of surrounding small towns or how does that work yeah so in south dakota there's a well when i was going to school there's open enrollment and so even though some people might live in a Sioux Falls school district,

they were closer to Brandon. So then they would drive over and go to Brandon just because it's easier for a lot of the rural students that were farming and things like that. That makes sense. I can, I can understand that. And being from small town or, you know, well, let's just go with Brandon, South Dakota, being from Brandon, South Dakota, how did it, how did you grow up kind of wanting to play football? Was that something you dreamt up as a little boy? And did you ultimately think that you were going to be able to play college football uh I mean yeah growing up that was the dream I mean I remember playing Madden 2004 with Mike Vick on the cover he was amazing man he was unstoppable and uh you know just playing football my whole life I mean growing up you know my mom and my stepdad did a

great job of getting me to camps and things like that. My dad would play catch with me anytime I was with him and things like that. So, I mean, football was just definitely in the blood. You know, and I was happy to, obviously, once I got to high school, things started to kind of click for me. And I had a lot of really good coaches that helped me out and kind of developed me. And thankfully, I was given the opportunity to play at Iowa nobody else gave me an opportunity so I'm thankful to the university for that. Absolutely and on your rivals profile you're actually listed as a safety was that kind of the intent coming into Iowa or did Iowa tell you

you're going to be a wide receiver from the get-go I know sometimes rivals can be a little bit off and I also know that sometimes Iowa does a pretty good job of looking at a player and thinking, yeah, you're not going to play here. You're completely changing positions. Yeah, so in high school I played both ways. My entire career played free safety, so I was pretty much able to do whatever I wanted back there. And then obviously receiver on offense.

But when I got here, I was actually going to be number 38. My first year at camp, I was rooming with Tanner Miller because I was supposed to be on defense. And I remember right before I came in, Coach Ferentz had a lot of players over. We were talking, and he asked me if I wanted to play offense or defense. And I said, I'd rather play offense. He's like, okay, we'll start you out there, but if anything happens, don't be surprised if we move you to DB. I'm happy that I was able to stay on the offensive side of the ball.

That's awesome. When you hear about people making position switches, being on the outside, you never know whether it's an actual conversation or more of a, you're going to do this and we're going to make it seem like it was our choice together. So it sounds like he actually had that conversation with you. He didn't have to make you make a sacrifice move over the defensive side of the ball, which is pretty cool. Right. And I mean, he made it clear that like, because we were pretty short staffed at DB. The year I was coming in, I know that a lot of freshman DBs came in with me, and we were short-staffed at that time for the older guys.

So it was just kind of a matter of numbers, too, making sure that we had guys that could play on that side of the ball. If anything would have happened, though, I'm sure I would have switched. But like I said, I'm happy that I stayed on offense. Yeah, man, I think you carved out a pretty nice career as a wide receiver for the Iowa Hawkeyes. So what was your recruitment like then? I've heard a lot of really good things about the way Iowa recruits.

I actually had a couple of former, or not former, current Class 2020 recruits on the podcast a few months ago. Elijah Yelverton, the tight end recruit, and then also Deuce Hogan. Both stellar kids, great head on their shoulders. But one of the things they really talked about was how fantastic the recruitment process was with Iowa, especially compared to every other school they talked to. So what was that like for you? So outside of Iowa, my recruitment was almost nonexistent.

I had a preferred walk-on offer to Wisconsin, and I talked to them a little bit, but during my recruitment, they went through two or three different head coaches. So it's hard to really even say that I was recruited because as soon as I was, somebody else was in charge, and when they come in, they have their guys that they're looking at. But I knew that wasn't a problem with Iowa, and that was a big part of it too, just knowing that I'm going to a program that's established that's uh got guys that have been there since kf got here back in 99 i mean that's that kind of stuff sticks with you um that kind of that kind of feeling of a family you know i mean if guys aren't turning over every two years

they're doing something right i mean there's a definite buy-in in what's happening in the program that otherwise people leave. I mean, that's just the way it is. So for them to have that kind of tenure, I mean, that really spoke volumes to me that everybody enjoyed and embraced everything that was happening. Yeah. Well, I'm personally glad you did not go to Wisconsin. I lived in Madison for four years after school and I cannot stand the University of Wisconsin anymore. So I'm thankful you didn't go there and then torch the Iowa Hawkeyes for multiple seasons.

So I can respect and appreciate that. I'm pretty happy with my decision. I mean, like I said, Iowa was the only school that really gave me a shot. I was happy that they gave me that. Definitely. And you were a two-star recruit, at least per your rivals' profile. Also, Kevontae Martin-Manley were a two-star recruit at least you know per your rivals profile also Kavante Martin Manley was a two-star recruit you guys played a little bit together overlapped some time there you know what are your thoughts on on his kind of success in the Iowa football program and also you know he's very adamant about that two-star plead the fifth or

earn the fifth mentality what are your thoughts on kind of both of those things you know KMM and also his two-star earn the fifth mentality. One thing that was awesome about Kavante when I showed up, you know, being an older guy, you know, you kind of had, you can go one of two ways. You can either not care about the new guy and just focus on you, or you can kind of be a team guy and try to bring everybody up. And Kavante was definitely the latter, trying to bring younger guys up, you know, helping me with different schemes when I first came in, helping me helping me with you know different routes that are unique to a

system you know i mean on paper this is the route but now that we got guys out here our route changes you know i mean that that kind of stuff he really was instrumental and helped me with uh with understanding the game better and then talking about a guy that you know would always want to come in and do extra cone drills extra ball drills uh that was definitely cavante and it paid off you know i mean obviously most catches uh in the history of the program i mean that doesn't come without some hard work so yeah he was he was definitely one of those guys that brings everybody up and wants to make sure that he's going to lead by example to do it did you use that as an opportunity for when you were a senior as well i know when you were a senior as well? I know when you were a senior, there was a lot of younger guys.

Nick Easley was just coming in as well. What was that like for you? Did you kind of take the mentality that Cavante had and implement it as a senior being that leader of the wide receiver group? Yeah, it almost started a year earlier for me, my first senior year. Because when I broke my foot after the fourth game of 2016, I mean, I kind of got thrown into it.

I mean, at that point, you're no longer leading by example. You're no longer out on the field with everybody. You can lead by how you conduct yourself off the field, of course, but obviously you can't do that when you're out on the field. When they're in battle, you're over, you know, you're over on the sideline trying to keep your foot away from everybody. So I kind of molded into that leadership slash coach role uh from the sidelines so I'd already gotten that uh you know that kind of feel earlier than just my fifth year makes sense

and is coaching something that you'd ever be interested in now that you had a little bit of that uh unfortunate experience that you know senior year that had to kind of get replaced the next year absolutely I'm I'm one of those guys that I get fired up for just about anybody that does something great. You know, I mean, it's actually funny. My wife said that I was part of the high five committee because after somebody scored, I'm out giving high fives, making sure everybody knows that they did a great job. Because I mean, that's, it's tough, you know, when you're out there, it's tough to score touchdowns and to and to be an impact player at a division one program, especially, you know, big 10 Iowa. So, you know, I mean,

I'm happy for the guy's success and I would love to be a coach and kind of, you know, live through them, so to speak. Yeah. I'll be honest. I mean, I had a, I played high school sports and whatnot. And after that finished, I, I wondered if that was, you know, if I was ever going to have that kind of experience or that passion for the game again. And then I coached a Little League baseball team, and holy hell, I didn't realize I could ever be so freaking excited for a 10-year-old to hit a ball. That's right.

But I 100% understand exactly where you're coming from on obviously a much lesser scale as well, which is pretty cool. As long as you're uplifting people, it really doesn't matter what kind of scale it is. It's just a matter of understanding the kind of work that goes into that kind of stuff i mean practice is practice everybody's got to go out there in order to get better and to see it pay off i mean that's that's an exciting feeling regardless of level regardless of sport it's just a matter of that culmination of everything getting together definitely man and you talked about the the route tree piece and obviously you see the route tree on paper but you like you said it's different when you get on the field it's also different per quarterback as well every

quarterback kind of has a different feel for where they're going to throw the ball and where they want you to be at a certain time so you kind of spanned two quarterbacks jake rudolph and cj bethard what were your thoughts on playing for both of them yeah so uh jake i was obviously a little bit less less of a risk taker than cj um i mean yeah we i think we all saw that what it is i mean yeah you know jake was a jake was a really good leader you know he was able to you know hold down the fort but cj ended up beating him out and um and cj had a had a really good job with ball placement when he was conducting the guy, and he realized it was his team and took it over. Yeah, Matthew's been doing great.

I know out in San Francisco, but, I mean, even when he was here, ball placement was a big thing with Coach Davis and making sure that, you know, we understood where the ball was coming. Like, if I'm running this route, I'm striking on my outside shoulder. I'm running this route, he's going to try and throw me inside. If they're in the zone, I'm looking at this. If they're in man, this is what I'm going to do so that he knows where he's putting the ball.

I mean, it's a lot more than just you run the route and then they throw it, obviously. But, you know, he was really good about anticipating where we were going to be, and we knew where he was looking to put the ball so that we could help him on our end. Yeah, and you guys had a pretty fantastic connection. That 2015 season, you caught 65 balls for 703 yards you know you were an integral part of that season what was it like playing in 2015

you know with cj and with the you know the hawks and going on that 12-0 run man and that was that was an incredible year i mean it's i don't know if you can really put that put that season into words i mean we had so many guys i mean tamon smith great player obviously uh you know, he had the big catch in the Big Ten championship game, but. That was freaking amazing. Oh yeah. I mean, I can still hear, I can still hear the commentator yelling. He's going on the ADR touchdown,

but he had the big touchdown at North Texas, big catch against Pitt. I mean, anytime you need a big, deep ball, Tavon was your guy. And then he goes down, Germany Smith has to step in for a few games. You know, he did well. You know, we've had a lot of different, we had a lot of different pieces of Northwestern game to lose. Kanziri and, you know, Akram obviously goes crazy. It's just one of those things where we had such a complete team. And that's why we were able to be in, in every single ball game that we played in, in the regular season and into the Big Ten Championship. The bowl game obviously didn't go the way we wanted, but leading up until then, it was just fun to be a part of that team.

It was a truly amazing season, man. I actually was in Vegas during the Big Ten Championship, and we were down in the sportsbook, and Devon caught that pass, and I just went nuts. Obviously, there was not a lot of Iowa fans in the sportsbook, so they're looking at me like I was freaking crazy. But that was a ton of fun, man. That game was so fun.

But I'll never forget one part of it. We ran a double move on the outside. It was after the Fonz touchdown. We got the ball back. And I ran a double move on the outside. And the corner hooked me just enough and cj let it go and i didn't get to it could have been another big play but unfortunately there's a pass interference call at least i got the call on them um but that that's what i still

think about quite often in that game yeah that the pass interference rules in college are kind of garbage i hate the hate the fact that it's 15 yards and that's it, man. That's unfortunate depending on the throw and the play, and especially the impact of it. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I had my eyes on the end zone. I got excited when the play was called. But just one of those things that got enough of me, and that was it. It happens. But at least, I mean, that 2015 season will probably go down as one of the top,

I would say, five or ten seasons in Iowa football history. Oh, absolutely. Incredible, man. I mean, do you think, looking at the football team this year, I think Iowa has a pretty good chance. They have a lot of talent. And I think one of the things with Iowa is that they always are in a lot of games, but they need the ball to go the right way one or two times

and not go the wrong way one or two times typically win the game. But I think this year they have some incredible playmakers. do you think this year's team can maybe rival the 2015 team I think I mean everything on paper you know is one thing that's why you play the game but it's it's they've definitely I mean obviously this weekend recruiting wise has been crazy for the future but as far as like this season I mean obviously there's a lot of older guys in the room. Obviously Stanley, you know, going into his third year as a starter and being able to really conduct that offense the way he wants to, you know, being settled in a system. I mean, it was tough.

His first year starting was starting with a new system and everything. So, I mean, that's tough to ask for your quarterback, but being able to three years deep now, understanding concepts, understanding what he wants to do with the ball and what they, you know, what coaches are trying to tell him with where to go with the ball. Brandon Smith started to come on late last year. Amir's a threat in the return game. He's kind of a three-headed monster, a running back, led by Torin. Obviously up front, everybody's talking about our offensive-defensive line.

I wouldn't go up against that Vanessa i mean that's for sure but i also don't know if i want to rush against uh Jackson or uh Tristan either so i mean it's you know that kind of stuff i mean really helps you and the fact that there's that much buzz around a lot of different positions tells you that if they come together and the culture's right that that that team's going to be good. Yeah, those guys up front are absolutely crazy. They are absurd. I mean, just the general size, the speed, the quickness of all those guys. I mean, like you said, I would never want to go up against Epinesa. That guy is just an absolute beast. Do you listen to Stick to Football, that podcast?

I am not aware of that, no. Okay, so it's led by Matt Miller. He's an NFL draft analyst, and they were going through some of their top position groups, and he actually called Iowa's offensive line the best in the nation and Iowa's defensive line the best in the nation because of Wirfs, Jackson, and Epines. Just three absolute game changers with first-round potential.

That's pretty cool. I mean, obviously we've got to go out and do it, but it's pretty cool that they're getting that kind of recognition now. Definitely. And you talked about the wide receivers, you know, Brandon Smith, Amir Smith-Marset, both guys I think could really break out this year, especially now that the tight end position is a little bit lighter with, you know, less experience.

But from the other side of the wide receiver position, they've added a couple couple guys in this year, three transfer wide receivers, including Oliver Martin, which I'll get to in a few moments. But I want to get your thoughts on kind of this weird topic of do you think Iowa could ever move to the spread? They're really recruiting hard on the wide receiver front, man. I mean, as a receiver, I'd love it.

But I don't foreseeowa going away from the run game i mean as much as um i mean brian ference coach brian ference was the run game coordinator back in 15 and obviously i mean although we had cj and we had some great weapons on the outside like we were talking about earlier uh you know you can throw henry kirk coble george kittle those names in there too um i mean we were still affected from running the ball and it didn't matter who was back there because of the way in which it was set up. So as much as we'll be throwing the ball, I mean, it's still Iowa football. At the end of the day, they're going to run.

They're going to run down your throat, and then once they're done with that, then they'll start going to the air, and then once they kill you 10 times doing that, then they'll go back to the ground. It's one of those things where they want to be as balanced as possible, but I mean, Iowa's still going to run the football. All right, and that concludes part one of our interview with matt vandenberg a special shout out to him he spent 45 minutes talking with me about iowa football talking a lot about kind of what he's up to now and all that all that fun stuff so really appreciate

him taking the time out of his you know i believe it was tuesday evening yeah so tuesday evening taking the the time out of his tuesday evening to talk to me about Iowa football and everything in between. Absolutely love the conversation with him, and you're going to really enjoy part two of the interview with Matt Vandenberg coming up on Monday's episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. If you did like what you hear, make sure to follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the brand-new Himalaya Podcast app. And if you are one of our dedicated listeners, I would love to get a review from you,

whether it's positive, negative, whatever. I love getting that feedback to let me know what I can do to improve the show for you. So definitely make sure to go and leave a review wherever you downloaded this podcast app and also go follow us on Twitter at locked on Iowa and Facebook at locked on Hawkeyes.

We have some really great giveaways coming up. I have a few things I've been kind of working on. So make sure you're following us on there. That's how you're going to know about the giveaways we're going to be doing. We just gave away a signed autographed Kevante Martin Manley picture a few weeks ago to a great listener. So make sure to check us out there. Otherwise, you're not going to be in the know about that.

I mean, I'll try to let you know on the show, but that'll be the place where we're going to be really trying to drive people to get involved in those contests. So again, I appreciate you tuning in on this Thursday morning episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. I hope you enjoyed part one of my interview with Matt Vandenberg. A special thank you again to him. Really appreciate that. And we're going to be having part two on Monday morning. I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. Be safe out there. Enjoy yourselves. Don't let the heat get to you.

And you know what? Let's go Hawks. We'll see you next time. you