Ron Maly has been following University of Iowa football games since the 1940s. He was named sports editor of the Albert Lea Tribune in Minnesota, and then, for nearly forty years, covered major events for the Des Moines Register . Maly was named Iowa's Sportswriter of the Year in 1977, 1978, 1994, and 1996. Since his retirement from the newspaper business in 1999, Maly has written for magazines, and he covers Hawkeye games as a columnist for his website.