AMES, Iowa — On the Friday before Iowa State's Fourth of July break in 2017, Josh Knipfel took his spot at the bottom of the aisle at the northwest 40-yard-line inside Jack Trice Stadium to run the dreaded 'stadiums.'
When strength coach Rudy Wade's whistle blew, Knipfel sprinted up the stairs until he reached the concourse on the top. One rep. Back down the stairs Knipfel went to set himself up for the next. The whistle blew. Knipfel sprinted back up. Two reps. On and on the workout went, Knipfel pushing himself to the top.
"I've got to keep going," Knipfel thought. "Get the next one."
Wade's whistle blew. Knipfel sprinted up the stairs.
"Hopefully Coach Wade will blow the whistle and call it for the day," he hoped.
By now, Knipfel had lost track of how many times he had run up the stairs and then come back down. A summer arrival from Iowa Western Community College as a late addition to the 2017 recruiting class, Knipfel had been on campus for maybe two weeks and was still working to get in shape. Wade's whistle blew and Knipfel went back up the stairs. He reached the top, rep complete.
He stopped, bent over … and puked.
"I got to become friends with Megan, one of our trainers, and Nate, one of our trainers," Knipfel said. "Great way to introduce myself."
Iowa State had recruited and landed Knipfel after being in dire need of adding an offensive lineman to its roster. While the Cyclones were hoping someone could come in and start, they weren't necessarily putting those expectations on Knipfel. Then coach Matt Campbell saw Knipfel hunched over at the top of the stairs.
"Uhm," Campbell thought, "maybe it'll be a little bit farther away."
But Knipfel did something that everybody figured would give him a chance. After gathering himself with trainers, he eventually finished the day's workout.
"He's not a quitter," center Colin Newell said.
"A lot of guys would have just bagged out, but he never quit, he got all his reps and was able to push himself through some of that," Campbell said. "What you knew about Josh, a guy that loved, loved, loved Iowa State from Day 1 and he's been an anchor to every success we've had so far in terms of offensive line play. He's our leader and he's the best guy on that offensive line right now."
Maybe it should be no surprise that Knipfel finished that workout or that by the time Iowa State began its season two months later he was starting at right guard.
Talk to anybody about Knipfel and the same word emerges: Tough. Knipfel's journey from Hampton, Iowa, where he had Division III and FCS interest out of high school, to starting 20 consecutive games for Iowa State, is defined by that very word.
Going with the 'two-year' plan
In the spring of 2015 before his senior season at Hampton-Dumont, Knipfel felt a pop in his knee. A trip to the doctor revealed he had torn his meniscus and partially torn his ACL. Wanting to play that fall, Knipfel underwent surgery to repair the meniscus and touch up the ACL just enough to allow him to play.
Knipfel was already a man among boys in small-town Iowa, entering his senior season at 6-foot-5 and 315 pounds. There were certainly colleges keeping an eye on him entering his senior season, but the knee injury made things iffy. Still, that fall, playing both ways on the torn ACL, Knipfel recorded 58.5 tackles, including 18.5 for a loss and 8.5 sacks en route to a playoff berth.
A four-year starter, Knipfel was named the Globe Gazette's Co-Defensive Player of the Year and First-Team All-State by the Iowa Newspaper Association.
Then, hardly any interest came.
When his senior season was over, Knipfel prepared to undergo surgery on his knee to repair his ACL. "Toward the end of the season it was getting pretty sore," Knipfel said. The Division III schools stopped by his school and he would sit and talk with them. Before he underwent surgery, around Thanksgiving, Iowa Western stopped in and presented him a plan to help him reach the next level.
Before Christmas break, South Dakota offered and South Dakota State and Northern Iowa followed with interest. But the options were slim.
"That's kind of all I really had," Knipfel said. "I didn't really have much through the winter months or anything before that."
Knipfel wasn't a prototypical JUCO prospect, and so Iowa Western initially didn't look at him terribly hard, figuring he might end up elsewhere. An academic qualifier, the assumption was Knipfel would at least end up at an FCS school. But when Iowa Western coach Scott Strohmeier found out Knipfel was having knee surgery, they went back to the film and then to his school to visit. The Reivers are only permitted to have 20 non-Iowans, making Knipfel a coveted type.
"Any time we get an in-state offensive lineman with his size, we always have to look at him pretty heavily. We liked how physical he was. He passed all the tests from the toughness standpoint," Strohmeier said. "He had some FCS looks, but because of the knee injury, that's why he ended up really falling to us and passed on some of those schools to try to rehab and get a little bit better. He's just a big, Iowa, tough, blue-collared football player. Those kids we win a lot of games with."
For Knipfel, it was one last chance at football.
"After the surgery I wanted to keep playing and I kind of gave myself a deadline of two years," Knipfel said. "You've got two years to see if this is going to work for you or if this is not going to work for you. I went with it. Obviously there are days like during physical therapy where it's just like, 'I don't know if this thing is ever going to get healed,' but I kept going through it. I thought going to a two-year would give me enough time to realize, 'Can I keep playing?' and if I'm good enough to reach my goal of what I wanted to do."
Emerging at junior college
When you arrive at junior college there is no depth chart, and so during Knipfel's first days and weeks in Council Bluffs he had no inclination where he stood among the other offensive linemen on the Iowa Western roster.
"Immediately when he got here he put himself in a position through camp that, 'Man, this guy is going to be a good player,'" Strohmeier said. "By no means was he a finished product, either. His best football was ahead of him. He had some learning curve still, it wasn't easy, but you could see he fit what you were looking for as an offensive lineman and understood the game. He came in and just his want and his desire to be good gave him a starting spot right from the beginning."
There were early tests for Knipfel. He had to lose weight gained following his surgery and he needed to get quicker. The college level brought the need to learn schemes and blitzes. But Knipfel started from the beginning of 2016 and by the time his freshman season was over, FBS interest was already rolling in. That winter, both FAU and Memphis offered immediate scholarships. Knipfel mulled them, but decided to return for his sophomore season.
"He wanted to play higher," Strohmeier said.
Some 160 miles northeast in Ames, Iowa State's need for an offensive lineman was beginning to heat up as Knipfel returned to Iowa Western. That January the Cyclones had signed graduate transfers David Dawson and Khaliel Rodgers to come in and bridge the gap on the offensive line, but by late spring things had fallen through and the staff was in need of another player. "We were on a massive hunt," tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator Alex Golesh said.
Iowa State began scouring the country for JUCOs. The staff had been well aware of Knipfel from the previous fall and would occasionally receive a message from Iowa Western coaches. 'Hey, this Knipfel guy is playing well,' they'd say. But the Cyclones didn't have a scholarship then and Knipfel was trending toward being a 2018 prospect, so things hadn't progressed. Plus, it isn't easy to evaluate a true freshman offensive lineman, at the JUCO level no less.
"He was a freshman O-lineman. That's really hard, you rarely see that in college and obviously that's what you're watching at the junior college level," Golesh said. "We had kind of left it that fall with Josh like, 'Hey, he's pretty good. But man, it's really hard to evaluate those guys.'"
By the spring, though, the need had resurfaced and a scholarship might open. Junior colleges are permitted 20 spring practices, and Iowa State was glued in from afar, tracking Knipfel as the days and weeks passed. Three or so practices at a time, Golesh, Campbell and then-offensive line coach Tom Manning would pull up Knipfel's spring film on HUDL and dissect every single rep.
"OK," Golesh would ask, "you want to watch some more Josh film?"
They'd pull up a few more practices.
"You want to watch some more Josh film?" Golesh would ask the next week.
Through the entire spring, that process went on and on. The group watched every single rep Knipfel played across each one of the 20 spring practices.
"They both slowly fell in love with the film," Golesh said. "On top of falling in love with the kid, when you talk to him you realize he's just a no-nonsense football guy. That's the only thing he cares about is school and football and his family. You could see that Coach Manning and Coach Campbell fell in love with the film as it went. We watched it probably over a month and a half span as we were still honestly trying to sort numbers out and make sure we had one."
What the trio saw was vast improvement from the fall to the spring. If Iowa State hadn't made its decision on Knipfel from its evaluation alone, then the stories from those who knew and coached the offensive lineman would.
Before a game against Garden City the previous fall, Knipfel had gone out and bought a new pair of cleats. "They're low-top, skill-guy cleats," Strohmeier said with a laugh. "I didn't even know it." During an early series, the cleats gave and Knipfel rolled his ankle. He came to the sideline, got it taped and re-entered the next series.
On that drive, Knipfel rolled his other ankle.
"So now he's got two rolled ankles," Strohmeier said.
Knipfel returned to the sideline and got his other ankle taped. Within one or two series, he had returned to the field, now playing on two bad ankles.
"Never came over and said, 'I sprained my ankle,' or 'Hey, I can't go,' or anything like that. He played a little bit like that," Strohmeier said. "He wasn't himself. They were really good and he just couldn't move."
Strohmeier took Knipfel out. Because Iowa Western doesn't practice on Mondays, Strohmeier didn't see Knipfel for several days. That Tuesday before practice he came across his freshman.
"He's got a boot on one foot because he couldn't have boots on both so they put a boot on the worst ankle," Strohmeier said.
"Josh, if we play tomorrow, can you play?" Strohmeier asked.
"Absolutely," Knipfel said.
"That's just a test," Strohmeier said now. "Sometimes you ask players that and you just see what their mindset is, me knowing he can't play. If I said, 'Josh, let's tape it up and let's try it,' he would have done it."
When Iowa State heard the stories, it only solidified their decision. Knipfel was the offensive lineman the staff would offer and target.
"At that point in our program, at really any point but at the point specifically for us, that's all you really needed to hear. A tough kid who was getting better and better," Golesh said. "If we didn't have the relationship we did with the guys at Iowa Western, a lot of coaches say, 'My guy is tough.' They swore by it that he was one of the toughest human beings to ever walk through that place."
Developing into Iowa State's best
Growing up, Knipfel and his family would frequently attend Iowa State games. He and his friends would go to the southwest hillside inside Jack Trice Stadium, sit on the generator and watch the game. He stormed the field when Iowa State beat Colorado to clinch a bowl berth in 2009 and remembers Cy-Hawk games.
Knipfel was an Iowa Stater through and through.
Up until Iowa State extended him an offer in May 2017, Knipfel had every intention of returning to Iowa Western for a second season. Knipfel had signed up for classes and had begun plotting offseason workouts. "I went there like every other junior college kid that was going there, a year and a half, two years," Knipfel said. "I was banking on coming back to Iowa Western."
When Iowa State offered, Knipfel's recruitment exploded. He received offers from Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Michigan State while others showed interest.
Now the Cyclones would need to close the deal.
On May 25, Knipfel took an unofficial visit to Iowa State. West Virginia had extended its offer a few days earlier and Michigan State that very day. None of the offers would end up mattering. Knipfel drove home that night and called Iowa State the next day to commit, just weeks before the start of the school's summer session.
"If he would have come back he'd have had every offer in the country," Strohmeier said. "Everybody would have been on him. But he didn't care. He wanted Iowa State, and that's the offer that he wanted and that's just the type of kid he is."
"He went there to get recruited by the one school he wanted to get recruited by and he got recruited by that one school," Golesh said. "I remember his parents and him coming down for an unofficial visit and it was like, 'Wow, he is a Cyclone, his parents are Cyclones, they dreamed of being here, he dreamed of being here.' I don't want to say it was too easy, but it was a matter of him canceling his other visits and deciding to be here three weeks later."
And so there Knipfel was on the late June day in 2017, on the top step straight up from the 40-yard-line at Jack Trice Stadium. Knipfel had hardly been in Ames, and now he was hunched over, post-puke, to gather himself.
By the time Iowa State's season rolled around two months later, Knipfel was the Cyclones' starting right guard. He started all 13 games as a true sophomore and has started the first seven games in 2018, owning a 20-game streak ahead of Iowa State's road trip to Kansas on Saturday.
"There's no question about the day he is going to have," said Newell, who has lined up next to him the last six games. "He's going to come in and he's going to give everything that he's got and he's going to work his ass off."
According to PFF College, Knipfel's seven-game grade of 74.5 makes him Iowa State's highest-graded offensive lineman this season. Knipfel has played 245 snaps in pass protection in those games, allowing 10 pressures and no sacks.
"We've been really fortunate to coach some great interior linemen and he's one of the best we've ever been around," Campbell said. "I think it's that combination of consistency and toughness and power that he can generate to move people that's really impressive."
It was three years ago Friday that Knipfel played the final game of his high school career on a torn ACL and soon after set a two-year clock for himself. As coaches from the Division III schools came in and out of Hampton-Dumont, Knipfel could only wonder how long his football career might extend, if he would ever reach his goal of playing at college football's highest level.
Saturday, Knipfel will do it for the 21st consecutive game.
"It's crazy to think about," Knipfel said. "I look back on it and I just never thought I'd get to this point so I'm lucky and grateful every day I come here and get the chance to work out, even though they might be really crappy times working out and you may not have a good practice or a good game, but I'm doing what I love and what I wanted to do and not a lot of people can say that."
