In a room with the Big Ten's best football players, Kevin Kasper still manages to stand out.
It's not just because Kasper is the conference's top receiver, although he is quite distinguished in that respect. But it is the way Kasper is identified.
At Big Ten Football Media Day, players and coaches sit at wooden tables as reporters gather to discuss the upcoming season. Kasper's table is empty at first, but as players and coaches file into the Chicago hotel's banquet room, Kasper soon draws a crowd.
Kasper is distinguished with his earings, but mostly, with his yellow hair. It's not blond. It is like the color of a lemon.
"Kevin is just an individual," said his high school coach, Jim Kirwan.
Maybe it's Tim Dwight's influence. Yeah, that Tim Dwight. The speedy Atlanta Hawks wide receiver who holds the football to his mouth after he scores a touchdown as if he were downing a brew.
That's not like Kasper, though. They might share the same hair color, but Kasper lives a clean lifestyle and never, never did the smoking or boozing thing. Still, it was hard for Kasper to escape his freshman roommate's impact.
"Just from being around him, I knew what it was like to win games," Kapser said. "He was so intense, mentally and physically."
So is Kasper. There is another side to the man who gives off a happy, go-lucky persona. See, Kasper works hard at football. He did not become Iowa's all-time single season reception leader overnight.
Kasper has worked for the pub he has generated. And he does not garner attention just because of his hair color.
See, Kasper was a late bloomer. Sure, he had the work ethic to earn all-conference and Hinsdale South High School Most Valuable Player honors as a senior. And he had the athletic ability to dunk a basketball as a high school sophomore.
But after playing wide receiver for a school that ran the ball as much as Penn State, few schools wanted to take a chance on Kasper as Eastern Illinois was the one school offering a scholarship. And it was a partial scholarship.
But Kasper knew he could play Big Ten football, and walked on to Iowa's team in 1996. Soon, he had a scholarship. Last season, he became a starter. Now, he is among the top wide receiving prospects in the upcoming NFL Draft.
"Kevin has hands like glue," Hawkeyes linebacker LeVar Woods said.
Kasper loves football. Kasper loves it like he loves the older brothers who put him in line.
For Kasper, there is nothing like lining up one-on-one against the best defensive backs, juking a bit and then racing to get open. Well, almost nothing.
Catching touchdowns pales in comparison for Kasper to getting his bell rung when he collides with the Big Ten's imposing defensive backs. And he has a passion for blocking upfield.
"I love the game of football. I go out there every day and put everything out on the line," Kasper said. "When you love something that much, like I love football, you just want to go out there every day and just give everything you've got."
Kasper has given everything he has and started nine games last season after fellow wide receiver Kahlil Hill was suspended last season for an unspecified reason.
He stepped in and stepped up his play with 60 receptions for 664 yards and three touchdowns.
He did all that despite a nagging ankle injury that plagued Kasper all season. That was not enough to demote Kasper's love of the game.
After all, this is a guy who is the first to show up to practice, drops buckets worth of sweat and then is one of the last to leave.
"Boy, what a football player," Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz said. "He is a guy that just loves to play and he loves everything about football. We thought we were going to dock him when he had some injuries. But he's done a great job and is an excellent receiver. And I think he is a little better physically than people give him credit for."
Kasper has been baffling defenders without the props that comes along with standing tall as the Big Ten's leading wide receiver — 65 receptions for 762 yards and 6 touchdowns. But Kasper has been denied credit all his life. Even for his poetry.
He wrote a poem called "Life Without" for an English class that found its way in the hands of the wrong people. It made its way March 3 to the stage of No Shame Theatre, an Iowa City sketch show in the parking lot of E.C. Mabie Theatre.
The audience who listened to it and the performers who read it mocked Kasper's work and panned it up as something a jock would do.
It didn't have a proper rhyme scheme. It didn't make much sense to the artsy crowd. But it speaks volumes about Kasper's passion for football and came from his heart.
It goes like this:
I often wonder what the world would be like
If the words new existed, to the sounds of hut-hut hike
The feelings of sorrow, would flow through my brain
Maybe too often, I'd feel quite insane
Then again, I'm only, one snap-crack away
Could there really be life, without the one true love
Not a human by any means, but a sport which is tough
The pain and agony, may discourage the weak-hearted
What could be next, may never wish to be followed
It makes one's sole, act not human like
Trying to destroy another, may be what others find not all right
I sleep without fully being put to rest
Every minute I'm not training, I feel not at my best
So why risk everything, when it could be gone in a flash
You would not understand, so just leave it at that
To play on the field, one must realize its true beauty
Or someone like me, will cause your death in a hurry
For me, I embrace, the challenges which lie far beyond
Cause without the pigskin, I might as well be gone!
But as long as he wears the Old Gold and Black, Kasper is not going to quit. He is not going to settle — not even if he is the best right now in the Big Ten. He wants to be better than Dwight. And he is going to maintain the same work ethic in his final three collegiate games that made Kasper this successful in the first place.
All because he has a devotion for football.
"He loves it," Kirwan said. "He has a true love for it."
