Inside college football's coolest new tradition: Iowa's hospital wave

Posted before but who cares? Stories like this make Mondays not suck as hard.

I love this so much. This is really classy and heartwarming and it looks like it'll be a lasting tradition there.

Absolutely love this story. Too many onions close to where I'm sitting right now.

I hope Iowa beats Penn State.

Rarely have I seen something like this that is so appropriate, meaningful, and cool.

There are a lot of contrived "heartwarming" moments that are nice but are overdone or go to absurd lengths to set up. And they're fine. But they don't always represent "real life."

But this is a tradition using sad circumstances that already exist. The hospital is there, the kids have a view. Kids are always going to be there, with their families, dealing with heartbreaking health issues. The waves they get are always going to be meaningful. It's always going to be a bright, good memory and experience for those involved.

100% awesome.

As someone who's 2-year old niece is currently battling leukemia in the Children's Hospital at Wake Forest, I cannot commend Iowa enough for this. This incredible and really, really cool. She would absolutely LOVE this if she were able to see a football game from her hospital window, let alone have the entire crowd waving up at her.

Oh, and fuck cancer.

Hopefully that will be the only reason I have tears in my eyes that evening.

I was just talking about this with someone at the tailgate on Saturday and I had to expend real effort not to start tearing up. This really is the coolest thing.

When I first saw this (as in, read the headline) a couple weeks ago, my initial response was "'new tradition' is an oxymoron, you can't do that."  Helps to read the article.  Iowa's always been my favorite Big Ten team without winged helmets, so I hope this one sticks for good.

When I went to the Iowa game last year, I was really amazed to see that hospital so close to the stadium.  Not that they planned for it, but now I can see how it must be good for the sick kids and their families to see the game from the upper floors.  Also, on this board, many of us have wondered why Iowa keeps Kirk Ferentz despite them having mixed results on the field.  Now it's pretty clear why.  He sounds like a great person who has made a real difference in many peoples' lives in Iowa City and the state through the generosity of him and his wife.  There really are more important things than winning football games.