Lute Olson and the Iowa Hawkeyes’ Eyes and Ears: Galesburg’s Dick Lindstrom

Lute Olson during his days as basketball coach at Iowa.

Earlier I had set up a time to talk with Dick Lindstrom about some history of Galesburg’s downtown, and about Lindstrom’s back in the era of the 45 rpm records. Our conversations about both those topics was fascinating, but I couldn’t help myself- we had to talk some basketball.

If you know Dick Lindstrom, you know that Dick is a huge Iowa Hawkeye fan. It is a tough one to figure, he lives in Illinois but roots for the Hawkeyes. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in Illinois and not be an Illini fan. 

I asked Dick how he happened to become a die-hard Hawkeye fan. He attended Iowa Wesleyan University in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Evidently there is not a lot to do in Mt. Pleasant, and it is only about 30 minutes from Iowa City. So Dick and several of his buddies would drive up for Hawkeye football and basketball games. He became hooked. 

Dick Lindstrom

After a few years coaching and teaching at Kewanee Wethersfield, Dick came back to Galesburg to be involved in the family business. Thru it all, he maintained his interest in the Hawkeyes. He had season football tickets from 1972 thru 2012. 

One of the neatest stories about a fan becoming connected with their college team, started with a relationship that Dick Lindstrom developed with Lute Olson, when Lute was the head men’s coach at Iowa. 

During the 1974-5 basketball season, Dick wrote a letter to Lute Olson that got the ball rolling. The Galesburg Silver Streaks had two very talented juniors on their roster. Mike Campbell (6’9”), and Scott Kelley (6’8”) were becoming big time college prospects. Dick wrote to Lute to let him know about Campbell and Kelley. Jim Rosborough was an assistant for Olson and chief recruiter for the Illinois high schools. Rosborough was a Moline grad so was familiar with Galesburg and the twin towers. 

It was set up that Coach Olson would come to Galesburg to meet with Campbell and Kelley but he wanted Dick to be able to go along to help start the connection. Lindstrom and Olson’s first meeting was when he arrived at Dick’s house the evening of the visit. Olson came early and talked for about an hour before they head over to GHS. When Dick told the story, he laughed and said, “I think he came to test me about my basketball knowledge to see what he was getting into.”

They road together over to GHS, where Lindstrom and Olson talked with GHS coach Mike Owens before introducing Olson to Campbell and Kelley. After that first night, Lindstrom stayed connected by taking Campbell and Kelley over to Iowa on some visits. 

By the mid-1970’s, companies were just beginning to produce VCR’s with the big videotapes cassettes . Being in the electronics business, Lindstrom had the latest equipment for himself. 

Dick described how one night he was going thru the cable channels and on a PBS network he came across the Indiana vs Purdue basketball game. Dick taped it. The next day he called Lute Olson and asked if he was interested in looking at a videotape of the Indiana vs Purdue game. 

Olson jumped at the chance but asked Dick to explain how he would do that. As Dick started explaining the process of videotapes, it was obvious Lute Olson had no idea about how videotapes worked and at this early point in the development of VCR’s, Iowa did not have one. 

Jack Evans, a family friend from Cedar Rapids was visiting Galesburg that day. Dick arranged to have Evans take a VCR, the cables, a TV, and the Indiana vs Purdue video cassette over to Iowa City. A manager on the staff knew how to work it and set everything up. From that point on, Lindstrom’s was the supplier of video equipment for Lute Olson and Iowa basketball. 

Lute Olson called back and said,”Dick, this is really good. Can you get this Saturday’s game of Ohio St vs Indiana?” 

The ball was rolling. Olson got entire Big Ten network set up. Olson found Iowa alumni in each of the Big Ten cities who would tape games. 

Dick was responsible for all the University of Illinois games. I asked him if his Illinois friends knew what he was doing. His reply with a smile, “No, not until much later.”

Lindstrom would tape every Illinois game he could get. Then about 10 days before Illinois played Iowa, he would put all the tapes he had into a box. He would take the box to the bus station, they would deliver the tapes to the bus station in Iowa City, where an Iowa coach would pick up the game tapes. 

At this time, Lute was one of the first coaches to get into the video scouting and one of the first to set up an entire network to get games. 

Dick even today spoke proudly that Iowa always handled Efrem Winters pretty well. The coaches claimed that they had gotten enough Illinois game tapes that they had broken down his game so they had an idea of where he caught it, what shoulder he was going to go to with the ball. 

The 1980 Final Four was in Indianapolis and the Hawkeyes were there. Dick was set up by the Iowa coaches to have tickets for the Iowa games in the Final Four. He was told what hotel to go to, to get the tickets.   

When he arrived, he ran into one of the assistants who took him up to Lute Olson’s room to get the tickets. When they entered Coach Olson’s room, Olson was watching four games on four TV’s with four VCR’s. With pride, Dick told me, “Every VCR, every TV, and every tape he had in that room were from Lindstrom’s in Galesburg.” 

Dick Lindstrom’s relationship with Iowa basketball and the scouting network continued thru the era of George Raveling and Tom Davis. The scouting network ended as a result of a loss during the Davis era. Iowa lost to SW Louisiana (one of the directional schools). Iowa had not found anyone to successfully get tape on this team. After that point, Iowa moved into the era where they purchased the equipment to tape all their opponents themselves. 

The world of college basketball and technology has changed in the 50 years since Dick asked Lute Olson, “Would you be interested in looking a videotape of the Indiana vs Purdue game?” 

My son, Allen is the University of Tulsa’s Scouting Coordinator. Today, Tulsa and all college programs subscribe to a service called “Synergy.” Every college game played in America is on file in Synergy. Not only do they have video of every game, they have stats and tendencies broken down. If you want to know what a certain player does every time he catches it at the right wing, you can pull up the video and a stat breakdown. 

In 1975 a coach like Lute Olson could create a competitive advantage by out working and out organizing his opponents. And this idea all started at Dick Lindstrom’s house in Galesburg- taping the Purdue vs Indiana game. 

As a basketball junkie and a basketball historian, I love this story. My only regret is that I wasn’t taping both Illinois and Iowa games back then and sending them to the Wisconsin basketball offices. I guess I do know what it feels like to live in Illinois but root for another college team. On Wisconsin!!