My first football interview was with a hitchhiking receiver. Now my ride here ends.

This column is a winding road and it’s more about me than any sensible person would ever want, so thanks for indulging me today. There’s a little news at the end of it.

I graduated from the University of Iowa in 1981 with a degree in English. It occurred to me after my junior year that if I wanted to write and get paid for it -- my reason for going to Iowa -- it would have to be for something more practical than a Great American Novel from a young dope.

So I wormed my way on to the Daily Iowan sports staff, primarily covering intramurals. I worked a couple of Hawkyes men’s basketball games, but intramural flag football was as close as I got to Kinnick Stadium.

After my year at the DI, college was done and I needed a job. The newspaper in Terre Haute, Ind., needed someone to work in sports. I was invited for a job interview. I was ecstatic. All I knew about Terre Haute was that it was good enough for Larry Bird. His college basketball career ended there at Indiana State in the 1979 national-title game.

I got there and found out it was a guild newspaper with employees on strike. Their interest in me was as a scab who basically would work for gum and crackers. That quelled the excitement.

The next day, I was back in the car I borrowed from my dad for the long drive back home to Cedar Rapids. As I drove through Champaign, Ill., I picked up a hitchhiker on I-74 and took him to his Peoria home. (I never told my dad I did that.)

The guy must have looked trustworthy, or probably I was tired of traveling alone on the longest drive I’d ever made to that point. His name was Greg Dentino. Seven months earlier, he had finished his career as a wide receiver on the University of Illinois’ football team, and later that summer he would be on his way to Buffalo as an undrafted free agent going to camp with the Bills.

What fun it was to ask him questions and listen to him talk about his life. It kind of was my first interview of a college football player, one who caught a touchdown pass in Illinois’ 49-42 loss at Ohio State the year before. His quarterback, Dave Wilson, threw 69 passes and set a then-NCAA record with 621 passing yards.

I paid attention to NFL transactions in August, hoping not to see Dentino’s name show up among the many players placed on waivers. Alas, it did. So ended his playing career.

We had never spoken to each other again until this week, when I spent much of a day trying to locate him. He is 67, retired in Hawaii after coaching football and teaching south of Miami in Homestead, Fla., from 1986 to 2018.

He didn’t remember the ride I gave him, but didn’t doubt it happened, saying “My car must have been broken down. That happened a lot.”

Dentino led two teams to state playoffs in his three years coaching the varsity squad at South Dade High in Homestead, but spent most of his coaching career with junior varsity.

“It was never about varsity being better than JV with me,” he said. “To me it was just about coaching kids.

“I brought in a couple of guys who played for me because they understood what the standards were and they understood the commitment we had. I always asked them ‘Do you remember your coaches?’ They said ‘Coach, we remember every one of them.’

“I said ‘Guess what? Now you’re that guy. Be it good or bad, they’re going to remember you. Just be genuine to who you are. They’ll sniff you out. They’ll respect you more for being true to your personality, not just becoming one of those guys who turns his hat around and goes crazy.’ That was never my approach.”

His former players, Dentino said, “all remember me. But it’s how they remember me that’s most important.

“You’ve heard this: They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I learned that early on.

“We had tough kids. These were street kids and these were fighting kids. I think that the attention you gave them once you were able to instill your system and your discipline, the kids thrived on it. They actually loved the discipline.”

Dentino said he “probably was a little too immature” to handle his brief NFL experience. “I think about it from time to time,” he added.

Four years after that ride with a wide receiver hoping to become a Buffalo Bill, I was a Gazette reporter covering the 1985 Iowa team that was ranked No. 1 in the nation for five weeks. Good gig. The Hawkeyes’ first game as No. 1 was a classic of a home win, 35-31 against Michigan State.

Saturday, Iowa hosts the Spartans once again. The Gazette has new ownership effective Dec. 1, and I have been informed I will not be retained. I am working until that day. My final column will be Nov. 30, and Saturday’s game will be my final one at Kinnick for this company.

It was really never the games that mattered. They were just the vehicles for the people you met along the way. I gave somebody a ride once. I got a lot more in return.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com