TIM DWIGHT IOWA'S ALL-PURPOSE DYNAMO

Tim Dwight was swimming with some buddies in the Wisconsin River
a few summers ago when he looked up at a cliff towering above
him and knew instantly what he had to do. Dwight climbed the
bluff, waited for a tour boat to pass and then took a flying
leap over the edge. "It seemed like a day before I hit water,"
says Dwight, the Iowa senior wide receiver-return man-daredevil.
"I landed right in the middle of a group of guys Jet-Skiing.
They were, like, 'Where did you come from?' I said, 'From up
there.' They said, 'You're crazy, dude!'"

Dwight takes the same approach to football. Though only 5'9" and
185 pounds, he has used his 4.4 speed to jump in wherever needed
by the Hawkeyes, who finished the regular season 7-4 after last
Saturday's 31-0 victory over Minnesota at Iowa City. Dwight
leads the nation in punt return average (19.3 yards), and with
48 return yards--including 44 on a touchdown scamper--in his
farewell home game, he surpassed Northwestern's Brian Musso to
become the Big Ten's career punt return leader, with 1,086
yards. His 29 receiving yards on four catches pushed him past
Danan Hughes, now of the Kansas City Chiefs, into first in
career receiving yardage at Iowa (2,220). "He's the most
exciting player I've had in 18 years here," Iowa coach Hayden
Fry says.

Not that Dwight hasn't tested Fry's patience--racing
motorcycles, jumping off apartment balconies into snowdrifts,
running headlong into oncoming tacklers and generally behaving
like Evel Knievel. "Tim's a great athlete," says Iowa tailback
Tavian Banks, "but he's a little crazy."

As a football and track phenom at City High in Iowa City, Dwight
so dominated his opponents that some took one look at his
prematurely receding hairline and figured he was either older
than he said or was using steroids. He vehemently denies the
latter and has a birth certificate to refute the former.

In four college seasons Dwight, an Iowa City native, evoked
memories of another homegrown Hawkeye, 1939 Heisman Trophy
winner Nile Kinnick (SI, Aug. 31, 1987).

Last year Dwight broke the oldest standing Hawkeyes
single-season or career record--Kinnick's one-year mark for punt
return yardage, set in 1937--when he got 440 yards on 24
returns. This year, in Iowa's 28-24 loss to Michigan on Oct. 18,
Dwight zigzagged 61 yards with a punt for one score, returned a
kickoff 72 yards to set up a field goal and caught a pass for
seven yards. Afterward Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr praised
Dwight's all-around game and called him "the best blocking
receiver" he'd ever seen. The following week against Indiana,
Dwight caught a 29-yard touchdown pass, threw a tight spiral for
a 64-yard TD pass and returned a punt 92 yards for another score
as Iowa won 62-0. Early this season Dwight even played
nickelback on defense, before Iowa coaches halted the plan for
fear that they would burn out their dynamo.

Dwight, who is on course to graduate in May with a degree in
sports management, hopes to play in the NFL next year. Scouts
have compared him to All-Pro special teams player Steve Tasker
of the Buffalo Bills, and he's projected as a second- or
third-round draft pick. But if a pro career doesn't pan out,
Dwight won't sit still. "There's a ton of stuff I haven't done
that I want to do," he says with a wicked grin. "Bungee jumping,
skydiving, whitewater rafting...."

--MARTY BURNS

TODD WARSHAW/ALLSPORT In gonzo style, Dwight has rewritten the Hawkeyes' record book. [Tim Dwight in game]