Kirk Ferentz and Iowa do this from time to time.
The smarter people on our staff seem to have seen this ahead of time.
Iowa is just sort of “there” every college football season. Here and there, when he loses just enough, people start complaining about Ferentz’s salary of $4 million, one of the top 15 in the nation.
Iowa has been smart, though, rather than jumping at the masses who expect more from Ferentz, knowing all along it’s not overly easy to get high school kids to go to Iowa. Hell, in state it isn’t even easy, with another FBS program and an elite FCS program that can sell playing time and chances at titles to in-state recruits.
Now, Ferentz and company have the Hawkeyes in rarefied air not seen since 2009.
The Hawks are like that dude in your golf men’s club that you can basically count on for an uninspiring 85 to 95 score, but every now and then for seemingly no reason, he yanks a 72 out of the bag.
Since Ferentz was hired in 1999, Iowa has tied for the Big Ten title twice, last in 2004. This might be his best shot at doing something simultaneously transcendent, unexpected and unimagined.
Iowa utterly destroyed Northwestern in the second half last weekend, a game that was the almost the default Big Ten West title game the way this season has shaped up on that side of the yard.
The Hawkeyes missed Ohio State, Michigan State, and even Michigan on the right side of the Big Ten, only making lotto tickets more likely to come up yellow and black. In their stead, they got Maryland (turmoil), Indiana (probably soon to be turmoil) and Purdue (who even knows).
A lot of people will say Iowa was in the back of the class with a Gatorade bottle half-full of Cool Blue, half-full of Everclear, skating by to a degree just making sure to do the bare minimum.
That’s an unfair assessment, because you can’t really control who you play so long as you go about trying, which Pittsburgh and Iowa State constitute. The Hawks have allowed only two opponents to score over 20, and none to eclipse 25.
Thus is the redeeming quality about these Hawkeyes, that they don’t do anything which makes you spill your beer, but do everything as well as you can expect. They show up for work on time, bring their tools, don’t take long lunch breaks, and punch out when it’s time to go.
Iowa could reasonably go unbeaten. The Hawkeyes close with home games against Maryland, Minnesota, and Purdue — they figure to be heavily favored in all of them. They go to Indiana and still-finding-itself Nebraska, where they figure to be favored, if not heavily.
From that point, shockingly, and whether you like it or not, that would put Iowa in a one-game playoff against a Big Ten East heavyweight (likely the winner of Ohio State – Michigan State). In college football, one day you’re in, and one day, you’re out. Just keep passing by one day at a time, and eventually, people have to take notice.
It’s like the Seinfeld episode where Kramer takes a real job even though he never got hired. He keeps showing up, and eventually, someone figures out he doesn’t work there and has to fire him.
We might not even know a lot about the Hawks until that game. Certainly, over the next five games, all we will learn is how they deal with pressure. Eventually, even the national media will put their greasy mitts on flight tickets to somewhere close enough to Iowa to drive there and do a story.
This is truly one of the more remarkable scenes in college football, 2015.
Patience has been a virtue for the Hawkeyes. The prize for this virtue could be the biggest one college football has to offer. Not bad for $4 million.
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