touchdowns while Kinnick was in the game; when he sat on the bench, they mustered just one first down. Kinnick rejected several lucrative offers to play professional football. He was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the team owner offered to pay him a $10,000 annual salary or on a game-by-game basis for $1,000 a game. Instead of going into professional football, he entered the University of Iowa College of Law. After one year of law school, Kinnick ranked third in his class academically. He also had an interest in politics. Kinnick, himself the grandson of a Governor, spoke before the Young Republicans and introduced 1940 presidential candidate Wendell Willkie at a campaign rally. Kinnick said, "When the members of any nation have come to regard their country as nothing more than the plot of ground on which they reside, and their government as a mere organization for providing police or contracting treaties; when they have ceased to entertain any warmer feelings for one another than those which interest or personal friendship or a mere general philanthropy may produce, the moral dissolution of that nation is at hand." The Marion Sentinel proposed in an article to endorse a presidential run for Kinnick in 1956, the first year in which he would be eligible. While at the University of Iowa he met sculptress Dora Eaton Mason and agreed to pose for a bust. Nile had seen a bust of his grandfather in the state house and stated he hoped that some day he would merit the honor to be like his grandfather. While Kinnick took a year of law school in 1940, he also served as an assistant football coach for the Hawkeyes, aiding the freshman team and scouting upcoming opponents. He accompanied the team to South Bend to see Iowa upset the Irish for the second straight season. According to The Daily Iowans account, "Nile Kinnick, cool, calm, and collected while he's on a football team, pranced up and down the dressing room almost jabbering in his excitement." He was also an assistant football coach at Iowa in 1941. Naval service Kinnick left law school after one year and enlisted in the Naval Air Reserve. After completing a speaking tour of Iowa communities and visiting his parents in Omaha, he reported for induction three days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He wrote, "There is no reason in the world