KRUI In The Homecoming Parade
By Kade Grierson | Photos by Cael Ferguson
It was the night before Halloween, which is the day before the national college student hangover day known as All Saints’ Day. I’d been walking out the door talking to a friend on the phone who told me to “break a leg” when I told them I was going to march in a parade.
According to OurIowaHeritage the first homecoming parade was in 1917 with horse-drawn floats. Which would make this homecoming parade a hundred and something—it’s difficult to track down which homecoming parades were canceled due to wartime or pandemics.
They’d placed us just by college green, and because of that, there was no way for us to see if we’d be marching for ten people or ten thousand. There were around eight of us marching for KRUI that night, and we’d brought a pumpkin-sized pail of candy and a large banner the entire radio department had lovingly cobbled together at the end of last year.
Most of the people I was with wore KRUI shirts and proper parade attire; I was dressed as fantastic Mr. Fox while another journalist in the news department was Alvin the Chipmunk. We had been told to arrive at the parade at 5:15, although we wouldn’t end up moving till around 6:30. But Harry brought us all energy drinks from the co-op. Until that time, we sat around playing garbage and talking about what had been a very warm fall.
By the time we began our march, the sun had set. We followed in a very loose formation behind a dressed-up Pancheros car as we listened to the marching band finish their warm-up.
To parade is an ancient right—the first happened far back in 2900 BCE in Mesopotamia. And you can feel this as one begins: the natural electricity that seems to connect all the marchers before and behind you; you are a part of a living train, with each boxcar tugging the one behind it and each pushing the one in front of it.
The Mesopotamians often called these parades, as did the Romans, processions. In these processions, the king would lead, holding the statue hand of the god Marduk—which he had been ritualistically slapped with days before—and his subjects would follow behind him. They followed, bearing statues of many gods, both visiting and at home, through the city streets.
4926 Years later, we’d traded Marduk’s hand for a grand marshal—this year, it was Samuel D. Hunter who graduated from the University of Iowa’s master of fine arts program and also wrote the screenplay for the play The Whale, which would become a hit movie in 2022.
While the people following the head of the parade once carried statues, we now carried banners and rode atop cars that rolled down the road and honked and beeped, and pulled carts full of people throwing candy or toothbrushes—notably, the man throwing toothbrushes never ran out, even at the parade’s end, and we were gifted a few of those. KRUI did not have a car, but we did have spirit as we marched down the road.
There were so many people that we had to ration the candy we’d brought, and even then, we ran out about 3/4ths of the way through the parade route.
Regardless of the candy shortage, the high energy remained all the way to the end of the parade. We regularly found ourselves very grateful when a member of the crowd would call out to us and tell us they regularly listened to the station.
I remember the night before Halloween this year as one of the best nights of the year. Despite the fact that I would later break both my feet in a very ridiculous fashion at the Fishbait show later that night, my and all the other marchers’ weeks were made when we got to celebrate with the community of Iowa City that continued to make our station possible. We love and thank you all, and wish we had brought more candy.
KRUI At The Homecoming Concert
By Elliot Baughman / Photos by Cael Ferguson
After the Homecoming Parade, celebrations continued in the Iowa Memorial Union at SCOPE’s annual Homecoming Concert. This year was my fourth and final year as a member of SCOPE, which was pretty sentimental as this show is the club’s biggest event every year. Over my college years, SCOPE booked Swae Lee, Magdalena Bay, Teezo Touchdown, and now Smino as the 2026 headliner.
The week of the show, rain was forecasted for October 30, the day of the show. What is usually a fun outdoor environment on the Iowa Pentacrest was making out to be a cold, wet, under-attended experience late in the semester. On October 28, SCOPE made the decision to move the concert indoors to the Iowa Memorial Union International Ballroom, which has a built-in stage.
This decision couldn’t have been a better call. From the worker’s perspective, load-in and load-out were miles easier, and we were DRY. From the concert-goer’s perspective, the room felt alive and communal, rather than spread out on the Iowa Pentacrest. Fans started forming a line through the IMU 2 hours before the concert. At 8pm, Jae Stephens opened up the night with dazzling lights, backup dancers, and impressive outfits. She asked the crowd, “Who’s the freakiest?!” and got an emphatic response from somebody on the right side. She invited this emphatic fan on stage, taught her a dance, and they danced together as she performed the song.
I will say I was a little disappointed in Iowa City’s energy during Jae Stephens’ set. It seemed like my friends and I were the only ones out of a crowd of ~200 that felt like dancing, and when we tried to dance, we got the dreaded looks of disgust from fans around us. I’m sorry I want to dance at a dancing concert! Stop making your fun everyone else’s responsibility, make fun yourself.
After Jae’s set, Smino and his crew took the stage. Since it was Halloweekend, his DJs wore costumes: Spiderman, a Luchador, and Bob Marley were Smino’s backup for the night. The crowd participation between Jae’s set and Smino’s was night and day. Everyone was dancing with people they didn’t know, and multiple pits opened up in the crowd at once. Smino felt the energy during his hit song KLINK, and performed it again later in the set because of how well the crowd reacted. This show felt reminiscent of the SCOPE of the 2010s, when they would book rap shows in the IMU for the student body. I could only imagine what students felt like seeing Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, or Childish Gambino on their campus. Attending the Smino concert must have been a little slice of that 2010s energy.
For the second half of Smino’s set, KRUI all-star Tarik Krob and I were scheduled to work the barricade security postitions. This is one of my favorite ways to experience a concert, because it’s your job to watch the crowd. Watching people dance, have fun with their friends, and forget about their troubles for an hour reminds me why I work in music. Seeing your friends pop in and out of the crowd as it moves is a fun bonus. After the show, Smino die-hards were begging Luchidor for the set lists, so he gave Tarik and I the set lists off the stage to give to the fans. When I asked him who to give them to, he said “I don’t give a shit”, so it was then up to me to give the set lists to the “most deserving” fans screaming at me for a souvenir. To cap things off, I acquired some vintage SCOPE “Security” shirts, so Tarik and I wore them to look the part. This homecoming show was fantastic, and I can’t wait to see where SCOPE goes with the project in the future. To see more SCOPE shows, visit scope.uiowa.edu.
KRUI At The Game
By Collin Carrithers
KRUI Sports crew broadcasting The Rusty Toolbox game pictured with former NFL star Melvin Gordon after the game
The Game Before the Game: Blood, sweat, tears. Broken bones and torn ACL’s. Fans flocking in to observe a trophy game. I’m talking, of course, about the Rusty Toolbox game.
This year, homecoming week got a special look at this incredible rivalry. For the first time since 1998, Iowa was hosting the Wisconsin Badgers during homecoming week, meaning this too fell on the calendar.
Every year on the Eve of Iowa and Wisconsin’s football game, the student managers of each program meet for a flag football game. They battle for a trophy called “The Rusty Toolbox,” which is exactly how it sounds: a toolbox with both school’s logos, stickers to signify the winners of each annual game, and final scores written in sharpie on the inside of the tin holding cell.
This game is all but friendly. It includes practices, it showcases massive hits and contact, and it even features a sea of fans that flood the field with screams of cheers. Some of those fans were even celebrities this season, like Melvin Gordon and Jon Gruden.
Our KRUI Sports team put on the first true broadcast of this game since its inception in 1991. We witnessed an explosive start from the Hawkeye Managers that led to a 14-0 start. Iowa would go on to hold Wisconsin to just 12 points as well with some massive defensive stands down the stretch. The conclusion of the clash found the invisible dam on the sideline breaking for the faithful in black and gold to swarm the players midfield as they hoisted the trophy for all to see. They would go on to celebrate an inverse of last year’s score with a 14-12 win to avenge the 2025 loss in Madison and set the tone for the larger trophy the next day.
The Heartland: At the heart of homecoming, there is a football game played on the gridiron within the brick walls known at Kinnick Stadium. On top of homecoming, the festivities kept stacking on themselves with a black out theme, the century mark of this rivalry, and Halloween. With a dreary start to the day, the heavens opened in Iowa City just in time to watch the Big Ten foes duke it out for the brass bull.
It also seemed to open up the Iowa offense from rigid to a near-perfect afternoon of football. Hank Brown produced a Manning-Star of the Week performance, throwing for 222 yards as he completed 20 passes on 24 attempts, as well as two passing touchdowns.
Then the fireworks. On Halloween, Iowa’s playbook was dressed as that of an alien from futuristic times. A flea flicker, a tight-end sweep, a 45-yard reception for both DJ Vonnahme and Tony Diaz. On top of the reception, the transfer with the most fitting nickname for the holiday, “The Boogeyman,” finally located the endzone for the second time during the 2026 campaign.
The Iowa Hawkeyes capped off a terrific homecoming week with a dominant victory through all folds. In route to retaining the Heartland Trophy is Iowa City, the Hawk’s 30-0 win marks five consecutive successful missions against the Badgers, the longest streak in history between the two institutions since 1996. It was also the first time either team had been shut out in back-to-back meetings. Speaking of another blank slate for Wisconsin, Luke Fickell’s squad is now going on nearly 800 days since they last squeaked and scored on the Phil Parker defense, as Iowa has now outpaced them 81-10 in the last three contests. Needless to say, it was an all-around great afternoon of football to conclude homecoming week and send the university into jubilation for the remainder of the Halloween evening.
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