Stray Hawkeye

Just 10 more football-less weekends after this one…

Via Black Heart Gold Pants.

Also, this video points out something that I hadn’t thought of before – the first thing the players see when they walk out of the tunnel is the water tower.  We really need to paint that thing.

There seems to be a lot of talk around the shifting college conference landscape lately. So, I thought I would take it upon myself to try to clear things up.

So far, we know for sure that Colorado is leaving the Big 12 for the Pac-10.  If things were to stop with this, the Pac-10 would then have 11 teams, as would the Big 12 (11). However, it would seem a lock that Nebraska will be leaving the Big-12 (now 11) as well. They would be headed to the Big 10, which currently has 11 teams, which with Nebraska would be 12.  So, we would have 12 Big 10 teams, 10 Big 12 teams, and 11 Pac 10 teams.  One would have to assume this would beget renaming the conferences to align with their new number of institutions, to make the Big 10 the Big 12, the Big 12 the Big 10, and the Pac 10 the Pac 11 unless we throw out USC for their recent violations making the Pac 10′s 11 10 again.

However, it doesn’t stop there. There’s more talk that the Big 12 with 10 teams (not to be confused with the Big 10 with 12 teams that had 11 before) could further loose more teams to any mix of the Pac 10 (11), the Big 10 (12), or the SEC (number withheld to protect the innocent). If, from the remaining Big 12′s 10 teams, Texas and Texas A&M were to leave for the Pac 10 (11 carry the two for 13) that would leave the Big 12 with 8 teams, not to be confused with the former Big 8, which became the Big 12 when they added 4 teams (how reasonable), and would make the Pac 10 13, the Big 10 12, and the Big 12 8 (but not, mind you, the Big 8).

With all of this, there is of course speculation that both the Pac 10 now 13 and the Big 10 now 12 (but not the Big 12, or 8) would then want to continue to expand to 16 teams each, further dissolving the Big 12 to the Little One. This would thus make the Pac 10 16 and the Big 10 16 and the Big 12 one, and we could then just rename them all to the Pac 16, the Big 16, and the Big Nothing Plus One (presumably Iowa State on both accounts), removing a lot of confusion.

And, never failing to look long term, one could see a day where the Pac 16 and the Big 16 would want to merge into one super-conference which would of course be known by one of two names.

In the first case, the conference would be known as Every Relevant Football Team – West, which would then compete with Every Relevant Football Team – East, aka the merged SEC/ACC, aka SAC, and thus replacing the BCS with the ERFT playoffs, which the ERFT-West would dominate.  The yearly playoff would thus be nicknamed The Annual SAC Kicking Contest.  The beer commercials at half time would be epic.

In the second case, the merged Pac 16 and Big 16 would choose to combine their names to form the Pig 32, which the still excluded and horribly confused Iowa State would attempt to mate with, producing a new, wildly deformed chimera offspring conference. The new Monster Conference would by genetics consist half of relevant football teams, and half of Iowa State, thus mirroring the current Iowa / Iowa State rivalry, but on a much larger and more horrifying scale. I’m also pretty sure it would be a signal of the end times.

Notre Dame (still independent) would then attempt to engage in a battle (football) with Monster Conference in a final contest of good vs evil (I’ll let you be the judge as to which side is which in a half-pig/half-ISU vs Fainting Irish contest) in order to bring about the Apocalypse as foretold in the book of Revelations.  However, Monster Conference would be confused as to whom “Notre Dame” is, as it would have long since been relegated to little more than a folk tale among devoted Catholics and viewers of NBC, with little recognition in the outside world.  Monster Conference would then assume the challenge from “Notre Dame” was just a prank phone call and hang up, thus avoiding the Apocalypse and making the world immortal.  Logically this would cause my Iowa Hawkeyes to be crowned The World Champions Of All College Football Forever Amen.  This would of course take place at the Rose Bowl.

Hope that clears everything up.

It came to my attention a little while back that there was the potential that this coming season, Iowa would have a few more players at the running back position than is usual for a team.  Now granted, with our history with running backs (including a training regiment which I can only imagine from the results involves hitting each of them in the knee with a crowbar after every play in practice), I can see where we might want to stock up a little at this position.  But, ummmm,… NINE OF THEM?!?!?

Now, that number has trimmed down slightly, and there’s always potential for injury and suspensions/legal issues, but if you actually count all the players listed in that first article that could play running back, we’re still at something like 13 or 14 guys who could play the position.  Which got me thinking, why could we possibly want that many running backs?

And then it struck me, this could be nothing other than the absolute offensive genius of Ken O’Keefe finally coming to fruition.  (In case you were wondering, yes, it was actually physically painful to even ironically type the phrase “the absolute offensive genius of Ken O’ ahhhhhhhh.)

Obviously, while Ken was watching tapes of the Georgia Tech’s unstoppable Triple Option offense to prepare for the Orange Bowl, he saw something he liked, but saw room for improvement.  (Yeah, I don’t know why an offensive coordinator would be watching tape of the other team’s offense to prepare for a bowl game, but it’s Ken O’Keefe we’re talking about here, so let your mind float a bit, it’ll help.)

During the Orange Bowl, we saw the much praised Triple Option of Georgia Tech absolutely stuffed, held to a mere 155 yards of total offense.  And with this, O’Keefe’s suspicions were confirmed.  He had seen the fatal flaw in Georgia Tech’s otherwise perfect offensive scheme.  It wasn’t that, as many have claimed, the Triple Option is a gimmicky offense which relies on poor defensive tackling mixed with ill-prepared opponents being caught off guard by it’s novelty.  No, as Ken realized, the its one fatal flaw is that it’s not gimmicky or novel enough.  It’s not that focusing almost exclusively on lateraling the ball makes a team one dimensional.  Well, actually, it is, and that’s where the genius comes in.  Don’t be one dimensional.  No, no, not what you would think- actually having a balanced running and passing game.  That’s crazy talk.  We need to be not only two, but three dimensional.  We need to be not just twice as good as Georgia Tech, we need to be exponentially better.  And that’s when our new offense crystallized in Ken O’Keefe’s mind.

The Triple Option… Squared.

Here’s how it will work.  The ball will be snapped directly to a running back, who will in turn have a running back on either side of him.  He’ll have the option to hand it off to either of them, keep it himself, or start running with it, and then lateral it to one of them, who will then have all the same options.  Sounds just like the Triple Option so far, but you’ve forgotten that we’ve raised this offense to the second power.  This is where those 9 running back start to make sense.  They’re all going to be on the field at the same time.

After the first three running back do their magic, if somehow the defense hasn’t completely fallen apart by this point, there will be another row of three more running back behind the first three that we can lateral the ball back to.  Oh, and it doesn’t stop there.  Oh no!  Yes, there will be ANOTHER row of 3 running backs behind the second row to whom the second row can lateral back to.  Or maybe one of them will pass it forward to one of the first waves of running backs.  You just don’t know do you?  It will be like D-Day on a football field.  Wave after wave of running backs crashing over the defense.  Chaos and bodies flying everywhere!!

Now you may be saying, “Don’t you have to have at least a few guys on the line of scrimmage?  I mean, it’s in rules.”  Why yes, it is, and we will.  Some of the running backs will actually line up on the line of scrimmage, and then run backward to get behind the first wave to form the second and third waves.  Or will they?  See how confused the defense will be?  Nine potential guys to carry the ball, some running forwards, some running backwards, some doing jumping jacks in place just to fuck with you.  And wave after wave after wave of bodies crashing and lateraling and faking and running and passing and reversing!!!  There’s just no way to defend against this!!!!

You may also be saying, “Triple Option Squared…  Nine Running Backs… but… who will the other guys on the field be?  We need 11, right?”   Well, isn’t it obvious?  First we need someone to snap the ball.  And there’s only one guy who can make this offense any more terrifying than it already is – Adrian Clayborn.  You just wet yourself a little, didn’t you?  Just imagine what defenses will do.

Okay, that takes us to 10 players.  We need one more.  And this is where we get practical.  At some point, in all likelihood, with all the confusion, and defensive players’ tears getting on the ball, it’s going to get slippery and pop out.  And as we saw this season, there is no player better at magically appearing under, or magnetically attracting, a loose ball than Tyler “Jimmer-Jamming” Sash, so, we’ll line him up at wide receiver.

With that offense, and most of our 2009 defense returning, I predict the 2010 college football season will actually end not with Iowa in a BCS Championship Game, or the introduction of playoffs, but in week three when all 118 other college football teams decide to universally forfeit the season to Iowa.  Further play will be suspended until enough running backs can be recruited by all opposing teams so that they can implement the new scheme as well to have any chance at competing.  This will lead to Iowa being declared National Champion by collective forfeit in 2011 as well.

Thus it has been said, thus it shall be done.

This was going to be a brief little post of a couple of things from the Orange Bowl / Miami trip.  However, instead of being brief and little, it somehow got really, really long.  I thought about breaking it into a few more little posts, but I figure at this point most of you are probably sick of hearing about my vacation, and it’s already close to a month after the fact, I so I figure I’ll get it all out of the way here in one last post on the subject.  Some topics covered – compare and contrast Iowa fans and the locals, tangent on advertising, pictures of some Hawkeye fashions, a lengthy deconstruction of fan turn out / ticket sales for the two teams, various non-dino game pictures, and some videos I took along the way.

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The contrast between the Hawkeye fans the the natives of South Beach was both awesome and hilarious (to me at least). (Note that this whole description engages in huge, broad, sweeping generalization to try to illustrate the point, there’s lots of exceptions, but we’re going for a general feeling here.)

South Beach and it’s residents seem to see themselves as (and may well be, I don’t keep track of these things) the center of fashion and stylishness for America and possibly the world.  They’re all very, very well dressed in whatever the latest style is.  At the same time that this would probably make them noticeable anywhere else, in South Beach, everyone is so in tune with the latest fashions, that they all end up looking basically the same (at least to my uncultured eyes).  It’s almost like there’s a dress code / uniform for the whole area, which probably changes about every two weeks.  They also seem to tend to be very fit (and dress to show it (or maybe cover it up where lacking)) and very tan.  I also don’t usually tend to notice plastic surgery, but wow, plastic people everywhere in South Beach.  There was also the highest concentration of Ethiopian refugee grade skinny girls that I’ve ever seen in one place.  Like walking skeletons in mini-skirts.  Super gross, but still trying to show it off.

In addition, it was also *by Miami standards* really cold while we were there.  Highs around 60-65, and lows around 40.  Yeah, I know, it was about 5 (above) when I got on the plane to go down, there was frozen puke (New Year’s morning) at the bus stop on the way to the airport.  But 40′s are apparently near record lows for them.  The natives were bundled up, in layers and layers and layers.  Sweaters, stocking caps, gloves, the whole bit.

They also all seemed to be rather serious and self-conscious.  Not in an unconfident way, just a being very aware of how they look and how others are looking at them.  And, perhaps because we were in an area pretty heavy in shops and restaurants, so lots of service industry people, they tended to all be in their 20′s and 30′s.  Though that could be the plastic surgery talking.

In contrast to that were the Iowa fans, who I love.  Totally on vacation, and caring about fashion and style even less than Mid-westerners normally do, which is already basically not at all.  Tigerhawks and “IOWA” on every shirt, fuck Dolce and Gabbana – our defense would kill them both, whoever they play for.  T-shirt stretched over a beer gut and stained jeans?  Sounds like an outfit to me.  XXL t-shirt on a XL frame and athletic short?  Let’s head to the beach!  It’s not that Iowa fans look bad by any means, it’s just that by and large, they couldn’t care less about designers or the latest trend.  Especially when on a vacation that centers around a sporting event.  And they’re not necessarily unfit (though, I would say on average we’ve probably got 25-50 pounds on South Beachers), but fitness for us is centered around being able to do the job at hand (usually farming) even if there is some padding over the muscle, rather than centered around looking toned at the beach.

To sum up the fitness part, I noted a few times from looking at the size and build of the Iowa fans and at the locals, that if a fight were to break out between the Iowa fans and the locals, every dollar I have or could borrow would be on the Iowa fans, and I’d gladly take 2 to 1 odds on that.

The Iowa fans also skewed more towards the 40-ish and 50-ish age range.  I would assume because that’s more of who has the resources to be able to fly down to Miami for a quick vacation.

So, needless to say, seeing the two groups mixing and passing on the street while you sat and ate was one of the more entertaining things on the trip (aside from the game of course).

The really weird part is that both groups have this same air of pride about them, but at the same time, a totally different form of it.  South Beachers have a sort of pride in appearance and their own perception of their social place at the forefront of culture and fashion.  Iowans I have a harder time analyzing, since I am one, but sort of a pride in being strong, independent, resilient, tough, caring, good people.  A sort of hereditary German pride in some sorts.

Anyway, an interesting compare and contrast while you’re sitting at a sidewalk cafe eating pizza and watching people walk by.

Now, on to some pictures.  First, this was still up in the Minneapolis airport when I flew out on the first:

Though Accenture was the first sponsor to drop Tiger Woods when he started hitting the news (and stationary objects such as trees and fire hydrants), apparently airport ads are on a bit of a slow rotation.  Also, all of their Tiger Woods posters went from sort of “eh?” to being downright insightful.  Someone also pointed out the new Accenture ads to me after I mentioned this.  Perhaps it’s just me, but when I first saw this one, I saw a rather small, blurry version like below, from a bit of a distance, and I thought to myself, “Why would they want their image to be a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica?”  That makes no sense, and I’m pretty sure there is no part of that which is the image they want to get across.

Then I realized that it’s not a terrified elephant crouched on a melting iceberg off the coast of Antarctica.  Rather, it’s a bi-pedal, hunchbacked elephant on a surf board riding a crappy wave.  Because that makes waaayyyy more sense.

Anyway, back to Miami.  We were walking on the beach, and my sister pointed out this great shot:

What’s that?  It’s just a bunch of hotels on the beach you say?  Ah, look closer…

Now, I also generally think it’s sort of weird and creepy to take random picture of people you don’t know, but sometimes you just see things that are too awesome to resist sharing.

And, hell, while we’re being creepy and posting some of my favorite fan apparel (which I’m now also noticing is probably a fair example of my above statements about Iowa fans and fashion and the cultural difference with the locals, especially, especially the second one below), here’s two more.

What more can I say?

The team buses were also styling:

Now a couple of pictures which illustrate as clearly as one can the distribution of fans for the game.

Admittedly Exhibit B was taken a little while before kick off, but Exhibit A was during the game.  And here’s the seating chart for the game:

As you can see, each team’s athletic department is responsible for selling out about a quarter of the stadium.  This ensures some revenue for ticket sales for the bowl, and makes sure it feels like each team has a side.  These seats are indicated in grey in Exhibit C to illustrate that they’re not available through the Orange Bowl website, just through that team’s athletic department.  Now you may be saying, “Wait, Iowa left that many seats empty in their section?  No way!!  Well…, I guess it is a long trip, and it’s a recession and all, and they might have had their hopes up for the Fiesta…”.  No. No. No.

We were sitting in section 414.  Let’s orient those pictures for you:

The Iowa sections was full.  Maybe not quite 100%, but at least 85%, and probably closer to 90%.  Plus there were lots of Iowa fans like myself who bought tickets in the neutral areas between the two (the colored seats in the above pictures).  In fact, basically all the fans in the neutral areas were Iowa fans.  Not exaggerating, probably 85% of the fans in both of the neutral corners were Iowa as well.  Granted, those sections weren’t completely sold out, but they were pretty well populated.  This means that Iowa, the traveling/visiting team, with no particular tie to the Orange Bowl (the ACC does have a tie in with the Orange Bowl), sold out at least half of the stadium, and probably more like 60-65% of the seats.  Now you’re saying, “So, Georgia Tech must have sold out the other 35-40% seats?”  No.  Not at all.  See Exhibit A.  In fact, let me clarify Exhibit A a bit with…

So, Georgia Tech was tasked with selling, at minimum, 25% of the seats IN A BCS BOWL GAME.  In the picture above, I’ve circled a couple not so small holes in that 25% of the stadium.  And mind you, this was DURING THE GAME.  It’s not like these holes filled in when people came in from tailgating.  They stayed like that the whole time.   And then, there’s the elephant in the room, and it’s not even on a surf board this time.  What are those black bits?

Those are huge black tarps that were covering the upper half of basically all of the upper Georgia Tech sections.  I have no confirmation on this, but I would assume that their purpose is to make it less apparent to a TV audience that the stadium was not sold out.  This would make sense given the fan concentration just below these tarps, and the fact that they’re almost all in the Georgia Tech dedicated seating area.  Which means aside from the gaping holes circled in red that are sparse to empty, that not one single ticket was sold in the black tarp sections for the ACC CHAMPIONS to see their team compete in a BCS game BEING PLAYED THE NEXT STATE OVER.

As best I can tell, the tarps cover about 15 rows, and they’re over 14 sections, and each row is about 25 seats wide.  That means that by a back of the envelope calculation, that there were 5,250 seats under tarps in the Georgia Tech section.  Aside from that, there’s the holes in the lower section, the club level seating (the blue seats) are about 50-50, and the upper section outside the tarps is about 60% full.  So, let’s say that when we balance that out that Georgia Tech sold about half of the tickets in their quarter of the stadium, and we add in any stragglers they had in the rest of the place.  So, that puts us at around 15% of the tickets.  To Iowa’s 60-65%.

This is why I love my Iowa fans.  And why we always get invited to a bowl game one better than what our football team’s record would otherwise merit.

Anyway, the band was looking good, with the usual HAWKS formation:

As well as a new one that I hadn’t seen before.

We always talked about wanting to make a Tigerhawk while I was in band, but it never happened because we weren’t very good at big, field wide curves while I was in, and that’s basically all a Tigerhawk is.  Have you ever tried drawing one free hand?  It’s impossible to get it right.  Drawing a perfect circle free hand would be easier.  But the band seemed to pull it off pretty well.  Hopefully it will become a mainstay of the pre-game show.

And a few pictures of the post-game festivities:

And I quite like that last one, so I played with it in GIMP (free PhotoShop) a little bit, and squared it up to look more straight on, and cropped out the rest.

You can click on the image to get a bigger version of it.  It would make a great desktop background.  On every computer you touch.  Just saying.

I also tried taking some video while I was at the Hawkeye Huddle and at the game.  Random fact – the Orange Bowl has only ever had two occasions on which teams did their own pep rallies before the game, in 2003 and 2010.  Both times it was Iowa.  Apparently we’re the only team that does Hawkeye Huddles or equivalents.  So, on that note, here’s the Hawkeye Marching Band playing the short version of On Iowa at the Hawkeye Huddle from about half way back in the crowd:

A clip from Thriller:

I have no idea why that has become a sort of band tradition now. They play it all the time. The only reason I can think is because the dance is kind of fun to do. And it pisses me off to no end that they play it after the third quarter of games instead of Hey Jude. But don’t get me started on that, or any of the many other HMB traditions that Kevin Kastens and Myron Welch have combined to destroy.

Deep Breath.

And here is a full version of Hey Jude:

Ah, that makes me feel better.

And a small chunk of the series as the band marches out. Admittedly probably the most boring clip of the bunch. I was expecting them to march out through the crowd, but they went out through the back of the stage. Probably makes a lot more sense, but not quite as entertaining to watch.

And I did a quick 360 panorama of the crowd at the end of the Hawkeye Huddle to show about how big it is. This was right at the end, so people were starting to filter out:

And, the last few plays of the Orange Bowl, starting with a Georgia Tech 4th down, then an orange Gatorade shower (a little early) for Ferentz, a few kneel downs, and the starting of the post game celebration, with a bit of In Heaven There Is No Beer in the background:

This is a part of the dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

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After a good night’s sleep, we got up early to go tailgating.  Okay, not that early, it was an 8:00 PM game, but the point here is we went tailgating, and Parker got things started off right.

Does anyone else ever wonder if the beer (Land Shark) was named after this really old Saturday Night Live skit, and for that matter, if they had this particular clip in mind when they got naming right for the stadium where the Dolphins play?

No? Just me? Okay, moving on with tailgating then…

A few hours of tailgating later, night falls, and we learn that Parker can apparently hold his beer substantially better than Sinclair.

Yes, Parker was also standing on the car.  Life lesson?  Never buy a used car that was a rental.  Ever.

So, it was getting closer to game time, and we decided to head into Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium, up the giant spiraling corkscrew ramp, which gives a pretty good view of the tailgating festivities.

Now you may be saying, “Kearn, those last two pictures don’t have Parker in them at all, and tailgating seemed to go by rather quickly.”  Did I mention we were tailgating, and I was drinking?  Good, now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to point out that arepas may be the best drunk food ever.  It’s like you took cornbread, but made it into a sort of pancake form, and then once that was cooked, you heated it up on a grill with cheese (um, a kind that’s white, I have no idea which kind) between two of these cornbread pancake things until it was all gooey and warm.  Delicious.  They serve them at Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium.  Anyway, after that delicious break, we made it into the stadium, and back to Parker.  Luckily we left ourselves plenty of time to get to our seats.

“To be in the Hawkeye section, yes.  And to be on about the 45 yard line on the Hawkeye side, absolutely.”

Now, you may notice that between those two pictures, Georgia Tech went about 40 yards on offense.  This was basically the only time this happened during the game.  This was also basically the only time Parker was watching.  Now, I tend to not be too superstitious, but this was enough to make me convince Parker to stay in my pocket for the rest of the game, thus the lack of more game pictures with him.  Once it was safe again, he came came out to watch some more.

Previous post in the dino-saga here and here.  And yes, it took me forever to get around to downloading the pictures from my camera for this episode, so it’s a little behind the times, but it keeps you up to date with the saga.

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Sinclair has been hanging out at my place for quite a while now, and after getting rested up after his long journey from Florida, we started our search to see if we could find Minne.  So far we’ve had no luck, but it appears from her twitter account that she’s planning to come back in the spring.  After much consoling and a few cookies, I got Sinclair to accept that he won’t be able to see her until then.  In the mean time I’ve been distracting him with Hawkeye sports.

Sinclair took me up on the suggestion that we go down to the Iowa vs Minnesota game this year and go tailgating.  Nessie sent me a letter and said that she was going to swim up to meet us there, but that Mississippi current was too strong for her, and unlike Sinclair, every time she asked a barge captain for a ride, he’d scream in fear and mutter something about needing to “cut back” and run away.  However, she told me that she had a certain feeling we’d meet another Iowa fan at the game if we told her where we’d be tailgating, so I sent her the address.

We drove down to Iowa for the game the night before so we could sleep a little there and go tailgating.  We got up early, but Sinclair was pretty restless.

So I told him to go for a little walk to burn off some energy, since he seems to be good at that.

“Come to think of it, Sinclair, are you old enough to drink?”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense, kind of.  Ready for another?”

“Sure.  Are you guys hungry?  We’re a little too lazy to do actual grilling tailgate food, but we do have some cookies and chips.”

“Sinclair, that’s an awful lot of beer to drink that fast, especially for someone your size.”

And I think we all know where that leads.  About 20 minutes later it was almost time to go to the game…

“Here Sinclair, have some water.”

“Thanks, I think I might stay back and take a little nap.  Parker can use my ticket and go to the game with you guys.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“Yeah, though it is a little chilly.  Do you have anything I could borrow to cover up with?  I’m cold blooded and all…”

“Sure, here, hop in the car.  I happen to have an old Iowa Marching Band raincoat that you can cover up with.  It even has the old fuzzy fleece liner in it.  I’ll even tuck you in.”

So, we started walking to the game.

Parker made some friends along the way too.

It took a little while to get in, but we got there just in time.

It was a little quiet for a while after that.

Parker got a little bored during half time…

He takes after the defense.

A little while later, they got ready to kick off the second half, and we’re all lucky Parker was there.

Parker quickly ran down and restrained the unruly fan.  After all, we’d hate to see the Minnesota team catch fire for the first time since Decker got hurt.

The second half was, shall we say, less than photogenic.  But at least one fan in front of us did get pretty excited.

Until we finally arrived at the greatest (if also most blurry) play in football, the victory formation.

A side note, dinosaurs are incredibly slow on steps.  So, it took a little while to get down there and we missed Floyd, but we did get to see…

So, after the meanie security guard, we decided to go meet the band.  They were much nicer, one even let Parker try his horn.

Then we went over to meet the cheer leaders, they were pretty nice too, and seemed to like Parker…

Over all it was a fun game and a great day.

Until next time Mr Kinnick, until next time.

I was thinking of writing a lengthy essay praising ugly college football, but I’ll try to keep it short.

(Side note, “ugly” here being defined as the type of football that results in the “ugly wins” for Iowa this year- defense heavy, forced turnovers, close games (even if they shouldn’t be), 3 yards and a cloud of dust.  Not the “ugly” as in Illinois this year, which just makes you feel bad for them.  I’m referring to the style of play rather than the basic ability level.)

And I don’t just love it because we’ve been winning that way this year (okay, I would probably like it rather than love it if that were not the case).  Even if we had lost against Michigan State, you have to admit, that was a great game. I love ugly football because it puts the focus on the defense.  I love it because it rips apart the hero worship, the quarterback is the only player who matters view that some people have of football, and puts the whole team in the spot light.  It’s a battle of wills, 3 yards and cloud of dust, instead of a two and a half hour game of keep away.  It forces you to remember that it’s a team sport and not just a race for the Heisman.  It forces you to remember those are kids out there and everyone of them is fallible.  That some of them were at their high school proms six months ago. It reminds you that the linemen matter.  A lot.  That a tipped ball can change the game.  That a linebacker getting an extra step is just as important of a part of the game as a receiver running the wrong route (which often turns into “the quarterback making a bad throw”, because he’s the only player on the field, right?).  Because unlike the NFL, where it’s the best of the best of the best, and the play books are interchangeable, in ugly college football, you see the players grow and develop their skills.  You see some of them rise up and some of them falter.  You watch freshmen step up to fill in for an injury. You see a different playbook and strategy every week on both sides of the ball.  Ugly football reminds you of one of the most important aspects of college football, and what makes it a sport worth watching – it’s hugely unpredictable, and every second matters.

And that in many senses, it’s also all so arbitrary.  A couple inches different on any of a huge number of plays, or a penalty called or missed, the ball being a little more slippery from the rain or a running back having a little better grip because he put on different gloves, and Iowa could easily be 4-4 instead of 8-0 so far this season.  Just as many plays the other way, and the 2008 team (9-4) could have had an undefeated season.  And how ridiculous that makes the eternal debate of who’s the best team in college football.  Never mind who’s the best if the championship is played in the rain.  Or in a dome.  Or if they went to play offs and it gave player an extra week to patch up injuries.

It’s ugly, it’s beautiful, it’s a battle of inches and a flip of the coin.  But that’s life.

Go Hawks.

First off, I know I have a hugely juvenile sense of humor, but this is hilarious.

Second, I’ve heard people from several schools claim that The Hawkeye Victory Polka (the official name of The Beer Song according to the university) originated at their school, and they’ve been playing it forever, and that Iowa must have gotten it from them.  The University of Wyoming, Michigan Tech, and even Wisconsin have claimed it as theirs.  It’s not.  Iowa started it.  I’m not saying that Iowa created the song, it’s traditional and has been around forever.  I’m saying, as best I can tell (and I’ve looked a fair amount), Iowa was the first to use it as a tradition at college sporting events.  Don’t believe me?  Watch this, and wait for about 3:10 in.  I would usually say skip ahead, but with this particular instance it’s worth watching.

1985.  If you can provide video evidence of an earlier use of it in college football, I’ll yield (actually, I’ll just dig until I find an older one of Iowa).

On the more serious side of Iowa Football history – this post on BHGP has a good appreciation of Forest Evashevski, former Iowa coach and the only Iowa coach (crosses finger) so far (uncrosses finger) to win a Rose Bowl, who is currently battling liver cancer.  Worth the quick read.  Here’s a bit more about one of his teams:

Further down in the same post is a link to this interesting article about what happens in the locker room during half time, which is basically summed up by Pat Angerer, “If you need a rah-rah speech at halftime, you’re playing the wrong sport.”  He’s quickly becoming my favorite source of Iowa Football quotes.  I also really like this one from ESPN:

“Our job is to put the fire out,” said linebacker Pat Angerer, who led Iowa with nine tackles, a sack and a pass breakup. “It’s as simple as that. We just said, ‘We’re back out here, we might as well stop them.’”

Might as well, didn’t really have any other plans for tonight anyway.  And what effect has this defensive style had on our opponents so far?  Something like this.

And speaking of our defense, let us now here from Norm Parker’s toes (that will make ever slightly more sense if you note that Norm is currently down to 7 remaining toes).  Also, I think there’s a good chance that if I do have kids, “Parker” might have to be in one of their names somewhere.

Over the weekend, the Hawks won (yay!) and are now 3-0 (three more to a bowl game).

USC lost (double yay!) (I really, really hate USC, not because they win a lot, but because they have the absolute worst college football fans that I’ve ever encountered.  And we play OSU almost every year.  USC’s fans are far, far worse.  And good teams can have good fans, in fact, Texas has some of the best fans (outside Iowa) that I’ve ever come across.  Thus, I revel in USC’s misery. And given the number of people I’ve met that share this sentiment, I’m pretty sure you could start a profitable niche business selling vials of the tears of USC fans.  Just saying.)

But what really brought back memories was Michigan State losing to Notre Dame.  Not just losing, but blowing a lead late, and then throwing away (literally, with an interception) the chance to win, or at very least tie, the game.  In short, having the chance to shine, and blowing it.  It reminded me of 2006, and more specifically, of this (specifically the mp3 at the bottom of the post).  As the original post authors so well describe the Michigan State vs Notre Dame game from that year:

And then, there are soul-crushing, ball-busting agonizingly excruciating losses that plunge you through the looking glass into a deep, dark spot in your sportsfan soul that is frightening to even think about. Trust me, I’ve been there before. This week, Sparty was on the receiving end of one of these, and the results… were not so pretty.

You don’t need to remember the game to appreciate it, the audio pretty well describes what happened.  It was far, far worse than this year’s loss. The clip is really funny, and bizarre, and a little painful for loyal sports fans.  It’s also incredibly quotable.

Now, to make clear, I don’t hate Michigan State.  In fact, I don’t even really particularly dislike them.  And I don’t like seeing a Big Ten team lose a non-conference game, nor do I often make the practice of reminding others about when such a thing happens.  After all, when the Big Ten loses, it makes Iowa look bad, and that’s who really matters in the end.  But…. the clip is just so good, and terrible, and great, that it has to be shared.

Oh yeah, probably as NSFW as broadcast radio gets.  Probably best listened to with fellow college football fans, while fairly drunk.

MAKE PLAYS!!!!

Previous post on the topic here.

So, according to Black Heart, Gold Pants (a great blog for Hawkeye football news and entertainment), it cost $370,000 to paint the water tower outside of Kinnick Stadium.

And they only paint it every 10-15 years.

And they did it 3 years ago.

And the UIHC is every bit as much the huge bureaucratic giant three-toed sloth one would expect from an organization that’s state owned, involved with medicine, and associated with a University.

In other words, if you start introducing the idea to paint the water tower with a Hawkeye theme to the various UIHC committee meetings, long term vision proposals, scoping exploratory commissions, etc now, you might have a chance to get it painted black, or gold, but not both, the next time they paint it in 2016-2021.

I don’t see why we couldn’t paint a black Tiger Hawk over the existing white for something more like $30-40k.  It would take relatively little paint (compared to painting the whole thing), none of the intricate detail parts on the uprights, and since I would assume part of the expense is using special paint that will protect the metal underneath, that’s already taken care of by the existing coat, so you could use normal house paint (maybe).  And then you could still do my awesome Hawk Signal idea (see the end of the previous post for the reference).

For those not familiar, there is a huge water tower outside of Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.  It is blindly, glaringly lacking any sort of Tiger Hawk, and for that mater, any black OR gold paint at all.  It’s one of those things that after a morning of tailgating, and seeing roughly 150,000 Tiger Hawk logos around you (I’m not exaggerating, that would be just over 2 per fan, which is actually probably quite low, and that’s just in the stadium), you look up at this enormous looming structure over the stadium and go, “What the hell?”

Let me illustrate with a couple of pictures I found on the web (I’d go take one myself, but that whole 5 hour drive each way thing…):

Now why, you may ask, would you leave something so imposing and prominently visible unadorned?  Well, from what I can find, it’s because the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) owns the water tower and hates Iowa Football.  Iowa in general really.  As well as fun.   They hate fun, Iowa Football, Tiger Hawks, Kinnick Stadium, Iowa fans, school spirit / pride, and the state of Iowa at large.  In short, they hate all things good and holy in this world.

However, the forces of good are gathering.  There is currently a petition to get the water tower painted.  And a Facebook group.  Also, Gary Barta, the Iowa athletics director, is on board.  Let’s get that sucker painted.

To help facilitate this, I’m not only blogging to raise awareness, and promoting the Facebook group and the petition, I’d like to offer some poorly photoshoped design ideas, as what to put on it still seems pretty nebulous.

I’ll present them in order of least offensive to the Fun Haters at the UIHC, to most awesome.

Candiate One:

So, it’s still lame.  It’s still isn’t really football or Hawkeye, but it does at least get UI up there in some form.  It would let the UIHC feel like they have continued to thumb their collective noses at football fans, but it’s something.  And perhaps it will at least remind the opposing team’s players that they may be on the way to the hospital.

Candiate Two:

Incrementally better.  At least now we’re talking about the school.  It’s still white so you can’t really claim any safety concerns for helicopters crashing into it (though really you could paint it any color and put some lights on it and still get over that, there are plenty of other darkly colored structures in Iowa City they’ve managed to avoid so far.).  It’s a middle ground.  We’ve got something that could be associated with the hospital, or the school, or the team.  It shows a little pride and is dignified.  It strikes me as feasible if a little boring.

Candidate Three:

We’ve got some school colors up there.  It’s simple, it’s clean, it sticks to school spirit while still potentially being acceptable to the overlords at the UIHC.  With some decent photoshopping skills, it might not look to bad at all.  But, we all know what really belongs up there…

Candidate Four:

You can’t argue, it’s perfect.  It’s the logo of the school and says nothing of the UIHC, but they can paint the other side with whatever they like (though if it’s a Cyclone just to spite football fans they may be lynched, just saying).  It’s a hawk flying in the sky.  It’s what belongs there.  End of story.  I admit that it may be a little hard to get it to look right with the curve of the water tower and the perspective of the field, but think of all the graduating Art Majors with no jobs – let’s put them to work.

As a bonus, just think of what it would look like if properly illuminated at night (you know, for the helicopter’s safety and all):

You should go sign the petition, and join the Facebook group.

Read the article, scroll down for the first comment.

Iowa Hawkeye Football 2008 – The Year in Photos from HFM Ride on Vimeo.

Via Black Heart, Gold Pants

In other news, it’s a sad, sad day in Iowa football… they’re putting astroturf in Kinnick.  You can’t have 3 yards and a cloud of dust if there is no dust.  Next thing you know, we’ll be running a damn spread offense.

I wonder if they’ll sell the turf like they did the bricks when they redid the South end zone and press box.  How cool would it be to have a little square of Kinnick grass growing in a pot.  That would be the best house plant ever.  I’m serious.  Do you think they’ll sell the turf?

So it’s official.  The Game Which Must Not Be Named* will be played between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals.  I’m quite happy about this.  What’s that you say?

“But Kearn, you don’t care about pro football, only college football.  And aside from Mike Humpal (Steelers) and Kenny Iwebema (Cardinals), there’s not even a strong tie to Iowa football here.”

And that’s where you’re wrong.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Steelers’ uniforms bear a striking resemblance to those worn by Iowa.  Though both teams have always worn black and gold, when Hayden Fry started at Iowa, he had the Iowa uniforms redone to more closely mimic those of the Steelers.  At the time, the Steelers were winning The Game Which Must Not Be Named left and right, and the Hawkeyes were, well, not.  Hayden thought it would help psychologically to look like a great team, and it did.  This is also when the Pink Locker Room came into existence.  Hayden was big on psychology.

Fast forward to the present day, Iowa has been in January bowl games 5 of the last 7 seasons, most recently winning the Outback Bowl (against a red bird themed team no less).  And the Steelers are in The Game Which Must Not Be Named against the Cardinals.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Iowa is just returning the favor to the Steelers after all these years.

Better yet is the opponent, the Cardinals.  Who wear red and white.  And have a cardinal for a mascot.  Can we think of any teams Iowa plays that look like this?  Perhaps an intrastate rival?  Perhaps a team that has a Cardinal for a mascot?

That’s right, it’s Iowa vs Iowa State in The Game Which Must Not Be Named.

What more can a Hawkeye fan ask for?  Except perhaps Iowa beating USC mercilessly in the National Championship game, at the Rose Bowl, ending with all USC fans collectively hanging themselves upon realizing what total assholes they are.  Have I mentioned I don’t much care for USC or their fans?  In case I haven’t, I don’t much care for USC or their fans.

*Because the NFL is super-douchebagy when it comes to references made to the superlative soup container.

A segment from ESPN’s E:60 about the Aplington-Parkersburg’s football team after the tornado there this spring:

I’ll admit I got a little teary eyed watching that.  That doesn’t happen often.

The kinds of people in the video are why I still like to refer to myself as an Iowan, even though I’ve lived in Minnesota for over 3 years now.  I think this is why I still find myself referring to Iowa as “home”.