He was Iowa's leading scorer in 1896 and led the Hawkeyes to their first football conference title in school history.
It was in this season of uncertainty that Frank Holbrook first participated in the Hawkeye football program as a freshman.
The Ivy League was the premier conference in college football at that time, so Iowa hired former Pennsylvania star A.E.
Bull's arrival made Hawkeye fans optimistic that Iowa could bounce back from the disastrous 1895 campaign.
The conference, titled the Western Interstate University Football Association, had four members: Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri.
[2] After another easy non-conference win, Iowa carried their 4-1 record into Columbia, Missouri, for a game with the Tigers.
The Vidette-Reporter continued, "There was hardly a man on Iowa’s team who did not receive a cowardly blow from the Tigers.
"[4] Iowa won the game, 12-0, on two touchdowns, one by halfback Joe Meyers and one by Frank Holbrook.
But Hawley later vowed that his teams would never face Missouri again, and the schools did not meet again on the football field until the 2010 Insight Bowl.
[5] Two and a half weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day, the Hawkeyes carried a 6-1 record into a game against Nebraska to determine the Western Interstate conference champion.
However, a mixture of rain, sleet, and snow prevented any scoring, and the game ended in a scoreless tie.
Athletic officials from both schools, therefore, agreed to replay the conference title game two days later on Saturday.
The apparent misinformation may have begun around 1939 when the University’s athletics department released a commemorative publication about Iowa football referring to "C.W.
Frank 'Kinney' Holbrook (called “Kinney” by his teammates, according to one edition of the Hawkeye yearbook) was a sophomore when he competed as a halfback in the fall of 1896.
Numerous publications subsequently repeated the error, including the McGrane and Bright titles cited below.
Bright's work has no citations; McGrane quotes an undated Chicago Times-Herald article which uses only Holbrook's last name.