IOWA CITY, Iowa — With a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and a bottled sports drink in the other, Gennings Dunker, at first glance, looked ill-prepared for and not interested in taking on a conversation at Iowa’s media day.
But during the next 10 minutes, Dunker held court on a range of topics so broad that it baffled the mind that a sophomore offensive lineman could be that deep while appearing so shallow. He’s sarcastic and comedic yet serious and studious. Dunker’s dimensions — 6 feet 5, 320 pounds — belie the size he seems to pack on that monstrous frame.
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As the only underclassman listed as a starter along Iowa’s offensive line, Dunker has the trajectory to impact Big Ten football. But it’s the anecdotes he’s attached to that stand out. Each one helps form a mosaic of one of college football’s most interesting — and eccentric — personalities.
With fire-engine red hair and a mustache to match, plus the team’s broadest shoulders, Dunker looks like a modern-day Paul Bunyan. His weight room exploits confirm that comparison, with a 680-pound squat and 15 bench-press reps of 345 pounds, all before his 20th birthday. He barely missed the program record in the squat, which was set by center Logan Jones at 700 pounds, but even Dunker’s weightlifting rival acknowledged he wouldn’t be long to hold the mark.
“Dunk is definitely going to get it eventually,” Jones said. “I’m just happy I have it over his head right now.”
There are many reasons Jones likes holding the record. But primarily it’s because of how Dunker celebrated his second consecutive title in the Solon Beef Days hay bale toss, an annual summer ritual Iowa offensive linemen have dominated for a generation. Dunker launched a hay bale, which weighs between 50 and 60 pounds, 14 feet and 6 inches over a bar to set the event record. Jones lost in the finals against Dunker, and the trash talk has intensified since that July evening.
“I really should be better, but I just can’t help myself when it comes to Logan Jones,” Dunker said. “I love Logan Jones. I like to mess with him a lot. It’s a great time. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I just had a large Casey’s coffee right beforehand, and I was ready to roll.”
Gennings Dunker back to back Beef Days hay bale toss champion 💪🫡 pic.twitter.com/naIIaNcvhw
— Jason (@jchesmore) July 22, 2023
Jones offered context to the competition. It was the final day of summer workouts, and he had played 18 holes of golf that day. He said he “was a little worn out” but wanted to throw a little scare into Dunker’s repeat hopes.
“Dunk thought he had it in the bag, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna give him a run for his money here,’” Jones said. “We went up to throw 14-6. We each had three attempts. I was like, ‘I’m gonna give Dunk the win. Let him take it. He’s been preparing for it.’ I let him have the win.
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“He’s just been holding it over me freaking since he did it. He’s very happy about that. He likes to rub it in my face.”
At a team meeting the following Monday, Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz announced the results to the team. Dunker avoided any semblance of humility.
“He was talking a little crap,” Ferentz said. “Gennings exaggerated a little bit. I think he said he was, like, 2 feet in front — it was more like inches. So I think he pissed Logan off, and you may see an upset next year.”
The Solon Beef Days hay bale toss might have given Dunker fame, but his personality has given him cult status.
The origins of ‘Dunk’
Dunker grew up in Lena, Ill., located 100 miles northeast of Iowa near where the state meets Illinois and Wisconsin. With a father who was a powerlifter, weight training came naturally for Dunker. Football prowess, however, did not.
“He was a good-sized freshman but not gigantic,” Lena-Winslow High football coach Ric Arand said. “He was a horrible athlete and a horrible football player his freshman year in high school. Absolutely god-awful. Then he found the weight room, and it’s quite obvious he’s never stopped seeing the weight room.”
Thanks to a disciplined regimen and speed-training workouts with the track coach, Dunker became the starting left tackle as a sophomore for a state semifinalist team. In his junior year, Lena-Winslow won the Illinois state championship.
“I still wouldn’t say I’m a great athlete,” Dunker said. “I came up with a plan and just kind of followed that. I don’t even know what I weighed my freshman year — like, 180. Then I graduated at 280.”
Dunker was undetected as a college prospect until he stumbled upon Iowa’s coaching staff. Ferentz and assistant coach Seth Wallace, who recruits Illinois, were at Lena-Winslow talking with former Iowa signee Isaiah Bruce when Dunker came out of nowhere and made a big impression with his size 17 shoes.
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“We’re standing in the entryway of the school, and our cafeteria is right next to it,” Arand said. “And this tall, red-headed kid comes walking out of the cafeteria, had a legitimate question for me, and it was Gennings. He was wearing bright red tennis shoes — which, again, is not unusual for him. I was standing next to coach Wallace when Gennings came up, and he just said, ‘Hey, Coach’ and asked me a question. Coach Wallace looked right at him, looked down at his feet, and he goes, ‘What is your name?’ That was the only reason that Iowa ever saw Gennings.”
A bale-tossing ‘bookworm’
Dunker has a studious side that contrasts with his outsized personality. He’s majoring in human physiology with a pre-med track. In all four semesters at Iowa, Dunker has earned dean’s list distinction. He doesn’t own a television and is a voracious reader.
His favorite book is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. Dunker prefers nonfiction, although when he was younger, he read “Harry Potter” and other books. His aptitude for reading began early, and he won prizes for Lena-Winslow’s accelerated reading program.
“He was actually a bookworm. He was a nerd,” Arand said. “He was always the top kid, not only in his class but in the entire school. He was a nonstop reader, and probably so much to the extent that he was actually a distraction to teachers in class. Rather than doing a math assignment, for example, he’d always have a book in his hand.”
That scholarly nature has spilled over to football. At Iowa, he has bought into the style of play and weightlifting routine. Dunker credits offensive line coach George Barnett for his development but said former offensive lineman Matt Fagan was “the only reason I played a snap last year.” Dunker rotated snaps last fall and started at guard in the Music City Bowl as a redshirt freshman.
“His upside, obviously, is what you think it is,” Barnett said. “He’s very talented. He cares a ton. He has an energy and pace about him that you just want to be around and you want other kids to see and you want recruits to see. Then you put on the size, and you put on the ability, and it’s like, ‘Holy crap.’”
Dunker’s raw ability has allowed him to get by physically as he refines his fundamentals. The staff has chosen to keep him at right tackle during camp rather than shift him around.
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“There’s a lot to be encouraged about,” Ferentz said. “Even when he was doing things wrong technically, it still looked OK. So if you can get him to do it right and get him the way he needs to do it, it might look really good.”
“Dunk is all strength all the time,” Iowa football strength coach Raimond Braithwaite said. “He’s a force-driven athlete, so a lot of that stuff comes naturally to him. There’s areas of development that he still has to undergo. People see a big, hulking mass of a man, and he’ll even acknowledge that he has to develop more fluidity, which he understands. I think that’s the next step in his physical evolution.”
The best Dunk stories
There are numerous Dunk stories at Lena-Winslow. Dunker wanted a new shirt for max power clean day, so he went to the local Goodwill and found matching Hawaiian shirts. He cut off the arms for himself and handed the other to Arand, who Dunker said “really loved that shirt.”
“He always shopped at thrift stores,” Arand said. “You’d say, ‘Where did you get it?’ And before you even get that out of your mouth, you’d know that he got it at the thrift store.”
On his final day of classes at Lena-Winslow, Dunker let animals loose inside the high school as a senior prank. He considered mice or gerbils but wisely opted for ducks. Dunker put them in a dog kennel, packed them in the back of his pickup, “drove smartly” and then let them loose.
“When ducks get freaked out, they just poop everywhere. So they were just pooping all over the hallways,” he said. “The principal told me I wouldn’t get my diploma if I didn’t clean it up.”
Dunker still has three years of eligibility at Iowa, but he already has filled a barrel with college stories, most of which are untapped. Yes, he drank 14 protein shakes a day as a freshman. He chose ducks over mice for his senior prank, not because he was afraid the mice would scurry away and become a problem but because “they might get kicked, and that wouldn’t be great.”
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“He’s one of the smarter guys we’ve had, based on the courses and grades,” Ferentz said. “The courses he takes I can’t pronounce, and the grades he gets. But he really hides it well. Like, when you talk to him, it’s like, ‘Really?’”
“Sometimes he’ll make you want to think that he’s not thinking. But he’s thinking; the wheels are spinning,” Barnett said. “My son comes to the facility after practice during the spring, and I can’t find him. I’m like, ‘James, where you at?’ Well, he’s in the meeting room with Dunk, just laughing. But that’s who Dunk is. He can be with a 60-year-old and make their day, and he can be with a 14-year-old and make their day.”
“Gennings is an interesting study,” Wallace said. To Arand, Dunker is “like a little kid in a huge man’s body.” As a seventh-grader, Dunker said his father dropped him off at a family friend’s farm and told him not to come home until the hay was baled. “I won’t mention the name of the farmer because I think there’s child labor laws or something,” Dunker joked.
“The funniest thing is you’ll be talking to him, and if he doesn’t know what to say, he’ll flex at you,” Jones said. “He’ll give you a bicep flex or he’ll just start blinking really fast. It’s hilarious.”
As for preferring reading in his downtime, Dunker said, “You learn a lot more (from reading) than just watching TV and watching SpongeBob.”
If there’s a way to summarize Dunker’s whimsical ways, it’s the nontraditional manner in which he catches catfish. One day, he took fellow offensive lineman Mason Richman to catch bluegill on a lake near Hills, Iowa. Afterward, Dunker fileted the bluegill, and they left for the Iowa River that cuts through Iowa City. Dunker used portions of the bluegill as catfish bait on large hooks, attached them to 2-liter bottles, stripped down to his shorts and shoes and waded out to the middle of the river.
“He just looked like the funniest dude ever,” Richman said. “I think coach Ferentz likes that guy more than anyone else on the team. Obviously, offensive line is a good part of it, and just the way he acts.
“We love that guy. He’s just a really, really good character for us and just brings something different to the room each and every day. We appreciate him for it.”
(Top photo: Scott Dochterman / The Athletic)
