It's impossible to be a fan of the Iowa Hawkeyes -- or any other very-good-but-not-quite-great football program -- without eventually making peace with the feeling of existential dread. Certainly Saturday's game against Penn State felt like the old feeling of chronic impending disaster creeping back into our collective psyche. Yet, in the end, the offense didn't screw it up (uncharacteristically, it was the special teams that drug the Hawks down) and the Hawks held the lead at the only point it mattered, the final whistle. It was a nice, fitting end to one of two games that I had marked as "a certain loss" before the season began. The other one is Oregon, and I'm sticking with that one. Maybe. Did you notice that no team has played Indiana any closer than Iowa did? Or that the Hawkeyes held the Hoosiers to their lowest point total of the season?
Or did you let the creeping sense of doom move into your attic, causing you to write off an unranked team that nearly beat this season's college football It Girl the week after that same It Girl blew the doors off a ranked Illinois team? I don't know where this all ends this season but it looks like Ferentz has held it together pretty well despite Gronowski's early season struggles. But what do I know? I've only been doing this for 23 seasons, after all.
TIRED: Matt Rhule's 2025 season will get him the Penn State job.
WIRED: Matt Rhule's 2025 season will keep him from getting the Penn State job.
The Hidden Game of Football, Part 1: UAB 31, (formerly) No. 22 Memphis 24. As with UCLA, sometimes firing the coach midseason turns out to be a good move.
The Hidden Game of Football, Part 2: UCLA 20, Maryland 17. Both teams in this game prove the point I made above. Maryland hasn't fired Mike Locksley, but if he was going to do anything else in College Park, he'd have done it by now.
And finally ... Like me, Floyd of Rosedale is a Fort Dodge native. The pig belongs to Iowa. Let's keep him home. I don't want to see anything that even looks like a fair catch signal.
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