IOWA CITY - Gary Dolphin is about to hit a milestone that would have seemed hard to imagine when he first landed the job in 1997.
When Iowa opens the season Sept. 5 against Northern Illinois, Dolphin will be on the headset for his 30th season as the radio voice of Hawkeye football and men’s basketball. The role came to him at 45, while he was working in local radio, and it grew out of a lifetime spent listening to Iowa games in Cascade.
For a lot of young Iowa athletes, hearing Dolphin know their name and describe their plays was a big moment. Pat Angerer remembers that feeling well. The former Hawkeye linebacker, who played from 2005-09 and became Iowa football’s radio color commentator in 2024, said it felt like a kind of arrival.
“When you get to Iowa and you’re playing, he’ll come up and say ‘hey buddy, good game,’” Angerer told The Gazette. “And that’s when you’re like, all right I made it - Dolph knows who I am.”
That connection is part of what has made Dolphin such a fixture around Iowa Athletics. His voice has become one of the most familiar sounds in the program, but Angerer said the job is bigger than just calling games.
Dolphin shows up for Hawk Talk radio shows with football coach Kirk Ferentz, men’s basketball coach Ben McCollum and women’s basketball coach Jan Jensen. He also makes time for I-Club events and conversations with fans.
“There’s some weeks where he’s doing multiple games all across the country, and then on top of that, he’s doing I-Clubs, he’s going out, he’s representing the university,” Angerer said. “And then when you know he gets on the radio, and he’s not worn down, he’s not tired, he’s enthusiastic, he’s in it, he loves it.”
Dolphin said the work still means as much to him now as it did when he started.
“It’s still a labor of love, and I still have the energy,” Dolphin said. “I still look forward to being the voice of the Hawkeyes every day.”
He earned the job at a time when Iowa’s broadcast landscape was still tied to a longtime group of voices. Dolphin joined Bob Brooks, Ron Gonder and Jim Zabel as part of the original Learfield Communications broadcast team.
Gonder had already called Iowa football and basketball on WMT, while Brooks had done broadcasts across KCRG, KHAK and KMRY. Zabel had been calling games for more than 50 years at WHO.
Ed Podolak was also part of that original group before retiring after 42 years, and Angerer later joined the booth.
Over the years, Dolphin has watched college football change around him and has called plenty of the program’s biggest moments. He remembers Iowa’s defense shutting down Georgia Tech’s triple option in the 2010 Orange Bowl. He was on the air when Iowa men’s basketball snapped Kansas’ 62-game home winning streak at Allen Fieldhouse in 1998.
He also has more recent memories to pull from, including Iowa football’s upset of Penn State in 2021 and Iowa men’s basketball’s run to the Elite Eight.
“I do get asked that question a lot,” Dolphin said of his favorite games. “Iowa fans are so passionate about their Hawkeyes … I’m happy to say there’s a lot of games now.”
Dolphin expected the job to last 25 years. He is already five years past that mark, and he says he is still not ready to put a final timeline on retirement.
“I’m thinking it’s year-to-year,” he said. “It might get to a point where I have to give up one or the other, simply from a physical wear-and-tear perspective, but that could change.”
When that day comes, Iowa has already made sure his name will stay attached to the program. This year, the university renamed the radio booth inside Kinnick Stadium the Gary Dolphin Radio Broadcast Booth.
Angerer said that says plenty about the broadcaster’s place in Iowa history.
“He loves Iowa as much as anybody,” Angerer said. “He’s a guy who never played for Iowa, but he sure as hell fought for Iowa, and he loves it as much as I do.”
For Angerer, there may never be another voice quite like him.
“I don’t know if there will ever be another Dolph,” Angerer said. “He’s as good as it gets - he’s a living legend.”
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