Novack, Gerald “Jerry”

Gerald “Jerry” Novack – (1996)

 

Playing in the Rose Bowl is a jewel in any Big Ten college football player’s career. Making it a “crown jewel” would be coming away with a victory.

That is the prize Lorain native Jerry Novack, now a Lancaster, O., resident, can lay claim to for all time as a member of the University of Iowa 1959 Rose Bowl champions. Only it almost never happened, except for Jerry’s determination to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Standing 6 feet and weighing between 185 and 190, Novack, who played offensive line, was just “too small” to play Big Ten football.

There were other drawbacks. Novack was just a so-so player in grade school football at Irving Junior High School. When he went out for football at Lorain High School, he played junior varsity football as a sophomore, playing both offensive and defensive linebacker, and saw limited action at offensive guard his junior year.

By the time he was a senior, though, things began to click. Tony Misko, his offensive line coach, recalls Jerry as a “real hardnose and one of the most dependable guards I ever coached. He was a terrific blocker.” He would be a force on the 1952 Lake Erie League championship LHS team.

Upon graduation in 1953, Novack was in for disappointment when he requested his transcript by forwarded to Iowa. A high school guidance counselor refused the request, saying Jerry was “not college material.” Undaunted, he enlisted in the military service and, after being discharged, enrolled “on my own” at Iowa.

Since he had no college football scholarship to lean on, Novack paid his own way as a “football walk on.” He would earn a lineman’s position on the reserve team where he progressed at a rate that even Head Coach Forrest Evashevski couldn’t help but take notice. He made the varsity his sophomore year and won varsity letters his junior and senior seasons, including starting at left guard on Iowa’s 1959 Big Ten and Rose Bowl championship team.

Novack recalls how Joe Kapp, a future National Football League all-pro quarterback who was the California quarterback in the 1959 Rose Bowl, unleashed a long touchdown pass over the Iowa defense on the opening play of the game. After that, it was all Iowa as the Hawkeyes stormed back to bury California, 38-12. Jerry graduated from Iowa in 1960 with a BA Degree in urban studies and geography. He later earned a Masters Degree in Sociology at Kent State University in 1970.

While football was his primary high school and college sport, Novack was also heavily involved in amateur basketball and baseball, as a player and as an organizer. Professional football was out of the question—again, “way too small.” So, Jerry returned to Lorain and went to work in the Lorain County Domestic Relations Court. This led to his being hired as deputy director of administration by the Ohio Department of Youth Services in Columbus where his boss was former Cleveland Browns all-pro Bill Willis.

Still active as a professional fund raiser in the Lancaster area, Novack and his wife, Marlene (Hoover), have a son, Thomas, 35, and a daughter, Nancy Ann, 32, both lawyers in the Columbus area.