The writers at the Cedar Rapids Gazette have been cranking out quality Hawkeye content lately. This time around, Marc Morehouse does a reader’s suggestion justice by taking an in-depth look at Iowa’s conditional response plan should the unpredictable happen at any position this season.
Mitigating the damage of potential problems is rarely fun to think about, but Morehouse does a good job of analyzing the possibilities available should any Hawkeye player suffer an injury before or during the season. Below are the options as he sees them, with links to his overall analysis at each position.
Losing is never easy for Iowa Hawkeye fans. Losing badly is even worse, and can be enough to send fans into a downward spiral of depression and gloom. We take our college football seriously in the Midwest.
Despite the obvious pain and torment involved, Mike Hlas of the Cedar Rapids Gazette recently set out to determine what the worst losses of the Kirk Ferentz era were. Although reading some of the game descriptions was like pouring salt on a gaping wound, the mini-series on the Hlog Blog was a reminder for Hawk fans not to let their expectations for the 2010 season get the better of them.
As Hlas explains, "what would good games be if they didn’t have bad games to help them stand out? And what would a picture of how far the Iowa program has come under Ferentz be without knowing that it was a process with bumps? Incomplete, that’s what."
In the series, Hlas lists the Iowa losses in chronological order and manages to list almost every painful memory a Hawkeye fan has had over the last ten years. In Ferentz's first year as head coach, Iowa went 1-11 and suffered a few brutal losses. Hlas has three of those games on his list.
While talking a break from doing client work, I noticed a conversation taking place on Twitter between two former Hawkeyes.
Bryan Bulaga (@BBulaga), who now plays for the Green Bay Packers, and Brandon Myers (@bmyers83), who now plays for the Oakland Raiders, were able to use social media as a watch to catch-up and make future plans.
Since I'm a self-admitted nerd, I thought I would capture the tweets into an image and share it.
The Des Moines Register's Andrew Logue recently wrote a series on his blog titled Ten Iowa Hawkeye Storylines for 2010. As part of that series, he tried to determine ten possible topics that could dominate the headlines for the Hawks this fall.
From the kicking game, to adding Nebraska into the conference mix, to power-ranking Stanzi among the all-time quarterbacks in Iowa's history, Louge's analysis stretches the whole spectrum of Iowa football. He does a great job of giving fans a preview of what they can expect to read about once the season gets underway.
Not long ago, the writers at the Cedar Rapids Gazette set out on a task to determine the top games of Iowa during Kirk Ferentz tenure.
Marc Morehouse led the charge, and compiled not only his own list of games but a list of games as contributed by his readers. Fellow writers Mike Hlas and Scott Docterman also took part. Hawkeye Nation's Jon Miller followed, as did a handful of other aspiring bloggers.
The selections varied greatly. Morehouse, Hlas, Dochterman and Miller have all been covering Hawkeye sports for what combines to be well over 50 years, and all have different reasons for why some games are better than others.
In Morehouse's selections, it's clear he favors the close games. His No. 1 pick is the 6-4 win over Penn State in 2004, a classic Big Ten barn-burner. Most casual Hawk fans won't pick a defensive battle like this to be top of the list, but true fans understand the importance of this game.
Hlas favors the last second kick against Penn State in 2008. Dochterman favors the 2010 Orange Bowl championship. For most Hawkeye fans, the 2005 Capital One Bowl featuring Drew Tate's 60 yard, game-winning touchdown pass to Warren Holloway as time expired is the greatest game in the Ferentz era.
Phil Steele has a habit of being right about college football coaches on the hot seat.
Steele is a sportswriter and football analyst that produces a widely-respected annual preseason magazine Phil Steele's College Football Preview . His magazine, full of statistics and information has been the most accurate preseason magazine for the last 11 years.
Along with his magazine, he publishes daily blog posts covering the entire spectrum of the gridiron.
In 2008, he started an annual Coaches on the Hot Seat list as part of his blog. Seven out of the 12 coaches on Steele's first Hot Seat lost their jobs.
Three of the remaining five names were on the hot seat again in 2009. All three were fired during or after the 2009 season, as were several others.
Being on Steele's hot seat list is not where a head coach wants to be.
Thirteen coaches made 2010's Hot Seat. Of those 13, four are coaches from the Big Ten Conference.
Michigan's Rich Rodriguez (No. 1), Illinois' Ron Zook (No. 2), Minnesota's Tim Brewster (No. 5) and Indiana's Bill Lynch (No. 8) all make an appearance on the list.
When Senator Chuck Grassley isn't writing letters to Big Ten officials, he actually puts himself to good use.
Each year, thousands of local Iowa organizations, colleges and universities, individuals and state agencies apply for competitive grants from the federal government. The funding is then awarded based on each local organization or individual’s ability to meet criteria set by the federal entity.
Since Senator Grassley is one of the most senior members of COngress and serves as the Committee on Finance's Ranking Member. As such, he is able to help a lot of the state institutions allocation money. Grassley might not be good for college football, but he is very good for the University of Iowa and the state as a whole.
Grassley recently announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded competitive grants totaling close to a million dollars to the University of Iowa.
Another Hawkeye is about to join the long list of Iowa football players and coaches to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Former linebacker Larry Station will be inducted into the hall during the National Football Foundation’s annual Enshrinement Festival in South Bend, Indiana on July 16-17, 2010. The original announcement came in 2009, but the official ceremony kicks off in a few short days.
Station is the fourteenth Hawkeye player or coach in the history of the school to earn the honor, and the first since legendary head coach Hayden Fry was inducted in 2003. He will be enshrined along with 23 other players and coaches including fellow Big Ten players Chris Spielman (Ohio State) and Curt Warner (Penn State).
The Nebraska native is the only player in Iowa's history to lead the team in tackles for four-consecutive seasons, recording a career total of 492 tackles (301 solo). Twenty-three times in his long career, Station recorded ten or more tackles in a game.
PGA Tour star Zach Johnson, a Cedar Rapids native who won the Masters in 2007 and attended Drake University, reminded the Gazette's Mike Hlas about his love for the Iowa Hawkeyes.
