A visit to Raeckers’ historic Iowa Hawkeye football tailgate party, a classic sports event!

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

IOWA CITY, Iowa, Nov. 12, 2025 — I can’t wait any longer to get this column written and delivered out Northwest to people in the states of Oregon and Washington, lest they think that University of Oregon Ducks football fans Timmy and Cindy Harris are making up what happened to them here last weekend.

You all know that the highly-rated Ducks came into Kinnick Stadium on Saturday and won a last-minute heartbreaker over the Iowa Hawkeyes, 18-16, in “weather that was more suited for a duck,” as my pal Scott Raecker, of the Des Moines area, characterized it in his follow-up post on Facebook.

The Raecker family, which has its roots in Waterloo, is legendary among University of Iowa fans because they’ve been attending Hawkeye football games since 1924 — and have had season tickets as long as those have been sold.

Thus, they rightly claim that “The Raecker Family Tailgate” party was established in 1924, and for decades now has operated pre-game at the north entrance of the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. They put up a banner on Saturdays temporarily designating that area as the “Raecker Family Tailgate Plaza.”

The Raecker brothers (Scott on the left, Steve on the right) with their latest special guests at the tailgate party — Oregon fans Timmy and Cindy Harris. (Most photos in this column are by Mary Riche)

The late Dr. Jim Raecker, a second-generation Waterloo dentist, was probably the founder of the tailgate party, in the 1970s. His sons Scott and Steve Raecker inherited it and now operate it with great help from their own families.

“One of my dad’s traditions — it’s really become a rule — for the tailgate party is that we always try to welcome somebody who is a fan or representative of the opposing team,” Scott explained.

So, last Friday, Scott and his wife Martha Raecker were at Des Moines International Airport to pick up their son Maxwell James Hawkeye Raecker (actual name), who was arriving for the weekend from his home in the Phoenix area.

Arriving on that same flight were the Harrises (see the first paragraph here to remind yourself), from Kennewick, Wash. They were dressed head to toe in the Oregon Ducks’ colors of green and gold.

“Welcome to Iowa!” Scott Raecker said enthusiastically — he does nearly everything enthusiastically — as he chased them through the luggage claim area. They talked briefly, learned about The Raecker Family Tailgate, and received their personal invitation to attend it on Saturday as representatives of the Ducks.

Thus, Timmy and Cindy Harris really did become the stars of the party, making a couple dozen new friends among the Iowa fans, and sticking around for about four hours before the 2:40 p.m. kickoff.

The Harrises meet a local storyteller.

“What a deal!” Timmy Harris said. “We got a car, stayed overnight Friday at a motel in Grinnell, and hadn’t planned on doing anything special Saturday before the game in Iowa City. We meet this guy in the Des Moines airport, and now all this!”

Timmy said part of his reason for making the trip to the game was “now that Oregon is in the Big Ten, I’d really like to see all the stadiums around the conference.”

Then Cindy Harris jumped into the conversation.

“But the main reason we came to this game at Iowa,” she said, “is that we want to experience ‘The Wave’.” That’s the grand tradition, now a few years old, that at the end of the first quarter has everybody in the stadium — players, coaches, officials and all the fans — turn toward the university’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital just beyond the east grandstand and wave to the young patients, their families and the medical staff.

The Raeckers are on to something with their welcomes of fans or reps of the visiting school. You get to experience what can be one of the best parts of college athletics — meeting people and swapping stories.

When the University of Albany (NY) Great Danes opened this season here in late August, their Athletics Director and his whole staff came to The Raecker Family Tailgate. Lisa Bluder, the just-retired Iowa women’s basketball coach, and her husband Dave Bluder, are regulars at the party, and the Hawkeyes’ cheerleaders often swing by, too. We RicheBurgers — that’s my wife Mary Riche and I — made our first appearance Saturday, and loved it.

Mary Riche and Martha Raecker, longtime friends.

“What a fabulous way to start the day — at the famous Raecker tailgate party,” Mary wrote for us afterward. “Oh-mm-gee, the food! From the ‘McRaecker’ breakfast sandwich to the wings with that yummy Charleston Dry Rub, finished with those ribs and the special (hot) Charleston sauce. Only to be outdone by the company — you two, Steve and MJ and Jake, Michael and Brooklyn, Max, Emily and Alyssa and Alyssa’s mom — I didn’t get to visit with Emily’s husband! And the special guests from Oregon! So grateful and thankful. You’re the best!”

State officials also frequently attend, drawn by longtime friendships with Scott Raecker, who served as director of the State of Iowa’s Sesquicentennial celebration in 1995, and then his 14 years as a member of the Iowa House of Representatives. He now directs the Robert D. and Billie Ray Center at Drake University, leading the “Character Counts” and other programs emphasizing public civility and leadership.

Speaking of: Another of the great traditions at The Raecker Family Tailgate is what I’d call “the Nile Kinnick moment” before the party breaks up and everybody walks to the game. Scott Raecker, wearing a No. 24 Hawkeye jersey with “Kinnick” across his shoulders on the back, reads an inspiring quote from Kinnick, who was the Heisman Trophy winner in 1939 and then tragically died in military service in 1943.

Scott, an emotional sort, can barely get through those Kinnick quotes without choking up, and everybody else there is choking up, too, just listening to the readings. This past Saturday, it was about service to America.

Scott Raecker doing the reading during “the Kinnick moment.”

Then at the end, per tradition, Scott elevated to another kind of emotion.

“OK, ‘Defense’ on 3!” he says. “1, 2, 3” — and they all jab a fist into the air and yell, “DEFENSE!”

Alas, the game didn’t go the Hawkeyes’ way on Saturday.

But in his recap of it on Facebook, Scott found consolation. “We move forward knowing we have never lost a tailgate,” he wrote, “and we have one more opportunity this year to extend our record!”

Now, to all you readers out there in the Northwest, the home area of Timmy and Cindy Harris, I swear — it all happened in Iowa just like the Harrises are telling you it did!