[3] Fry was an American history teacher and assistant football coach at Odessa High School for a year in 1951 before joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1952.

[4] During his time in Odessa, Fry met and befriended a young George H. W. Bush, who would become the 41st President of the United States.

Arkansas won the Southwest Conference co-championship with an 8–2 record and narrowly lost the 1962 Sugar Bowl to Bear Bryant's Alabama squad.

After one year at Arkansas, Southern Methodist University tabbed Fry as their next head football coach for the 1962 season.

In 1963, SMU opened the season with a 27–16 loss to a Michigan team coached by Bump Elliott, Fry's future boss at Iowa.

In 1966, LeVias made his debut, one week after John Hill Westbrook of Baylor became the first black player to play for a conference team.

[6] Fry received abuse for recruiting a black player to SMU in the form of hate mail and threatening phone calls, but he downplayed the treatment, because the harassment of LeVias was much, much worse.

As it turned out, SMU would be hit with NCAA sanctions five times after Fry's departure before having its program completely shut down for the 1987 season due to a massive litany of misconduct.

Fry wanted to go to a school where he would be assured of a bowl game with a solid record and where he did not need to also serve as athletic director.

Iowa had had 17 straight non-winning seasons, but Fry was impressed at the fan support for a program that had struggled for so long.

He hired a marketing group to create the Tigerhawk, a logo to represent the University of Iowa's athletic programs.

Fry had the team "swarm" onto the field together as they left the locker room, holding hands in a show of solidarity.

Visiting head coaches, particularly Bo Schembechler of Michigan, would occasionally try to cover the pink walls with paper to shield their players from the color.

Fry retained some of the Iowa coaches from the previous staff, including Dan McCarney and Bernie Wyatt.

Finally, Fry hired the head coach at Mason City High School, Barry Alvarez.

Iowa quarterback Chuck Long scored a last minute touchdown on a bootleg run to clinch a 35–31 victory over Michigan State.

It was just the 12th time in college football history that the top two teams in the AP Poll met for a regular season game.

The Hawkeyes set a new school record for wins in 1985, and Long finished second to Bo Jackson for the Heisman Trophy by the narrowest margin in the history of the award.

It was also Fry's tenth at the school, making him the first Iowa football coach to lead the Hawkeyes for a full decade.

The title character, created by Iowa alumnus Barry Kemp, was loosely based on Hayden Fry (Fry later appeared in commercials for the NCAA with the female lead of the TV series, Shelley Fabares), and exterior scenes for the show were shot on campus, mainly around Hillcrest Dormitory.

Fry, who was secretly undergoing radiation treatments for prostate cancer all year, announced his retirement on November 22, 1998.

In 2002, Fry reportedly expressed an interest in the open head coaching position at his alma mater, Baylor University, that ultimately went to Guy Morriss.

Fry had a 143–89–6 record at Iowa, giving him the most wins in school history until he was passed by Kirk Ferentz on September 1, 2018.

In 2009, prior to the first football game of the Hawkeyes' season, First Avenue in adjoining Coralville was co-named Hayden Fry Way in his honor.

[12] On December 30, 2010, Fry was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Pasadena Convention Center.

In the Rose Bowl game during which Fry was honored, his former player Bret Bielema's Wisconsin Badgers lost to the TCU Horned Frogs.

In January 2016, it was announced that Coralville's City Council was set to vote on an agreement with a company to design and create a life-sized bronze statue to honor Fry.

The following week, the statue was permanently installed at the northwest corner of the First Avenue and Ninth Street intersection in Coralville, and serves as both an entrance to the Iowa River Landing and a foreboding presence to opposing teams visiting Kinnick Stadium.

The series starred Craig T. Nelson as Hayden Fox, head football coach of the fictional Minnesota State University Screaming Eagles.

The show's creator and producer, Barry Kemp, a University of Iowa alumnus, named the main character Hayden Fox as a tribute to Fry.