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Two busload of Minnesota Gophers football fans visited Floyd Friday. No, not Floyd of Rosedale, who presumably is under lock and key in the Iowa football complex tonight. Rather, the Floyd in northern Iowa. While on a dinner break in Charles City, one of their fans did some big talking to the Mason City Globe Gazette. Gophers fan Steve Erban, who helped organize the charter, said the group would make a “sidetrack” to Floyd’s namesake, the nearby city of Floyd. “We hope the bar ...

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Hlastradamus was 3-2 last week, which is good enough for you people, and you know it. But just to show what a good and noble prophet he is, he is giving you five winners this week. Starting with ... 1. Iowa -11 vs. Minnesota. The Gophers scored zero at Penn State, 7 at Ohio State, and 16 at home against South Dakota State. Why think they'll hang a big number at Kinnick? 2. Northwestern +7 vs. Wisconsin. Let's see if we have this ...

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We'll get to "Hate Week" at the end of this entry. "I've got to be careful here," Minnesota Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway told the St. Paul Post-Dispatch's Charley Walters in this column, then proceeded to be about as cautious as a linebacker leveling an unsuspecting ballcarrier. "Let's go 35-10, Iowa." Greenway may live in the Twin Cities, but he's still a Hawkeye. "The two best qualities that Ferentz has is that he's able to identify the proper position for a player to come in ...

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I’ve witnessed a few of these University of Iowa football seasons now, and this has easily been my favorite year. Big Ten title? Nope. Rose Bowl? Uh uh. It might even end in a non-BCS bowl against an undistinguished also-ran from the SEC. But no Iowa season has been like this one. I’d bet few schools have ever known a year like Iowa’s. After Iowa defeated Indiana, 42-24, for the last of its nine straight wins to start ...

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It was January of 1989, not 1988 as the video caption says. Don't tell me everything about sports today is better than the past. Take a look at this Youtube video that a friend of mine posted on Facebook this week, and tell me if you've seen an Iowa basketball team do things like this on a consistent basis in the last several years. This game was played on Jan. 5, 1989. Iowa beat No. 6 North Carolina, 98-97, at Chapel Hill. ...

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This week, Minnesota Coach Tim Brewster talked about the pink visitors' dressing room at Kinnick Stadium. From a Minnesota Daily story: In 1982, Tim Brewster was a tight end at the University of Illinois. His Illini, coached at the time by Mike White, went to play Iowa at Kinnick Stadium . When they arrived, the visitors’ locker room was covered floor to ceiling in meat locker paper. Why? Because Hawkeyes coach Hayden Fry had famously painted everything — even the bathroom fixtures ...

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Sometimes, you stumble on gold. That happened to me in late May when, for reasons I can't imagine, I started leafing through Minnesota's preseason football guide. I was looking in the back of the book at the year-by-year results, trying to remember how Minnesota wound down its 2008 season. Besides, its 55-0 loss to Iowa, that is. But in the 2008 game-by-game list, that game was omitted. So I wrote the following: Funny, the Iowa football spring prospectus issued to the media ...

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As I've said here, I have a hard time getting interested in basketball in November. But what's a sportswriting boy to do when Iowa State plays Drake and Iowa is on TV an hour later? Watch, that's what. At least some of it. Iowa State looks like a hungry, aggressive, pretty talented team. Drake doesn't. The Cyclones tore into the Bulldogs like pit bulls in their 90-70 win. Craig Brackins is all man, as his 22-point, 10-rebound effort would indicate. I don't look ...

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  IOWA CITY — It was a coaching move questioned and ridiculed nationwide, but Kirk Ferentz defended it staunchly. "I thought it was a great call," Ferentz said. The subject wasn’t Ferentz’s offensive strategy late in the fourth-quarter Saturday at Ohio State, but Bill Belichick’s late in the fourth-quarter Sunday night at Indianapolis. New England Patriots coach Belichick — Ferentz’s Cleveland Browns boss for a little while in the 1990s — faced a fourth-and-2 at Pats’ own 28-yard line with 2:08 left. Amazingly and ...

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We saw Jake Kelly light it up, shooting-wise, several times last season as a University of Iowa sophomore basketball player. Monday night, neither Kelly nor anyone else in the game was too sharp a shooter in Indiana State's 56-45 NIT Season Tip-Off loss at LSU. Kelly was 2 of 8 from the field (he had 8 points after scoring 16 in the Sycamores' season-opening win over Nebraska-Kearney), and that was par for the game's course. Indiana State shot 30.3 percent from the ...

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Iowa State and Iowa in bowls in the same metropolitan area five days apart? Give it to me. The Cyclones may need another win to get considered for Tempe's Insight Bowl. ISU fans would take over Tempe on New Year's Eve the way they swamped Phoenix back at the first Insight.com Bowl. Iowa State is at Missouri this week, so that's tough duty. Mizzou bounced back a bit from its mid-season blahs by beating Kansas State Saturday. Iowa needs to beat Minnesota to have a chance to ...

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With 52 seconds left of a tie game at Ohio State, Iowa went conservative and played for overtime, which it lost. America responded. My feelings on the subject are documented in the previous post here. But there's no right or wrong here (in my mind), so let's hear from some who think Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz did his team wrong, not right. From Jason King, who covered the game here for Yahoo Sports. Even more embarrassing was the decision by Iowa coach Kirk ...

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Saturday’s Iowa-Ohio State football game gave us a lot to chew on, so here are some bites: 1. Were you as shocked as apparently the rest of Western civilization when the Hawkeyes tucked it in when they had the ball at their 33 with 52 seconds left in the fourth quarter and two timeouts remaining? Give human beings credit for being optimists. In that situation, they see only the possibility for bullet passes to receivers straddling sidelines and brilliant ...

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Oh yeah. Mr. Brave swapped out Alabama for TCU at No. 3. Why? Because TCU has beaten just as many teams I think are good as 'Bama has, and TCU has destroyed them. This isn't about style points. It's about having a wicked good team. TCU has one. The ballot: 1. Florida. Winning at South Carolina counts for something. 2. Texas. Can really screw up the BCS for Iowa if it loses the Big 12 title game to some Big 12 North afterthought. 3. TCU 4. ...

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Iowa doesn't want to leave the Top 14 of the BCS. Why? Pride? Vanity? Try getting to a BCS bowl game. You have to be in the top 14 of the final BCS standings to gain admittance into a BCS bowl unless you're a champion of one of the six BCS conferences and you're a mediocrity. Like if Nebraska beat Texas in the Big 12 title game. (Yeah, right.) So if Iowa beats Minnesota Saturday  and stays in the top 14, the Fiesta Bowl ...

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Those roses that were in Ohio State fans’ hats and hands, that were in bright red on the Ohio Stadium video screens – what a cruel and thorny tease to Iowa. How close could you come to a Rose Bowl berth without gliding to Pasadena next month? How could you respond so positively and purposefully to weeklong doubt from the outside world and a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit against an OSU dynasty, and not see those roses thrown at your ...

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Those roses that were in Ohio State fans’ hats and hands, that were in bright red on the Ohio Stadium video screens – what a cruel and thorny tease to Iowa. How close could you come to a Rose Bowl berth without gliding to Pasadena next month? How could you respond so positively and purposefully to weeklong doubt from the outside world and a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit against an OSU dynasty, and not see those roses thrown at your ...

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Blank slate. We wake up Saturday morning, and it's 0-0, Hawkeyes and Buckeyes. So ... where do we go from here? Well, here are the national gurus' forecasts: Jon Solomon, Birmingham News: Ohio State 23-9 Says Jon: At some point soon we're all going to look back in amazement at this statement: "Iowa actually was No. 4 in the BCS standings in the month of November." Adam Rittenberg of ESPN.com: Ohio State 21-10 Terrelle Pryor scores two second-half rushing touchdowns as the Buckeyes win to reach their first ...

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Iowa-Ohio State is Sports Illustrated's Game of the Week. Cory McCartney writes: The Hawkeyes fell out of favor after falling to Northwestern and losing Stanzi, both with the pollsters -- who dropped them from eighth to 13th in the AP and sixth to 13th in the coaches -- and in Vegas. Iowa opened as a 15-point underdog to Ohio State, and that number has swelled to 17 at some sportsbooks. Caesars bookie Mark Tutino, who boasts 20-plus years in the business ...

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The over/under on the Iowa-Ohio State football game is at 37.5 or 38 points depending on which Las Vegas casino you use for all your shopping needs. No other college game has an over/under that low this week. Notre Dame-Pittsburgh is at or around 59. Stanford-USC is 57. Wisconsin-Michigan is 56. The next-lowest games to Iowa-OSU are Boston College-Virginia at 42.5/43 and Nebraska-Kansas at 43. To see all the numbers for this weekend's college games, click here. Does this mean anything? Nah. I post ...

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A few reasons. 1. I don't watch college basketball in November. No matter who is playing. Football season isn't over yet. Thanksgiving isn't here yet. The World Series is barely over. The 21st Century has barely begun. (That last one has no bearing, but it's a fact all the same.) 2. I need the Hawkeyes to prove to me they're more interesting before I get, uh, interested. That may happen this season. I'm willing to wait to find out. Willing and quite ...

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It's two days until Iowa-Ohio State. A Rose Bowl hangs in the balance. A Rose Bowl. I've covered 19 bowl games, 17 involving Iowa. Three of them have been Rose Bowls, two involving Iowa. It's the stadium, the backdrop, the tradition, the aesthetics, the hokey traditions like the Beef Bowl at an L.A. steakhouse, the Rose Parade, and sunny southern California. Before we get to all the links, how about a song from the great Randy Newman? There are other bowl games. But ...

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