It seems all of the experts have our teams coming down to the Insight Bowl to get our rivalry kicked off a year early. If this proves accurate, screw calling it the Insight Bowl.

Nebraska and Iowa, welcome to the What If Bowl!!!

No, seriously, our teams took shockingly similar paths this year.  High expectations, derailed by 8 combined losses by a combined 31 points.  That would be by a whopping 3.9 points per game.  The most lopsided losses were a 7 pointer by Nebraska to Texas and a 7 pointer to Arizona by Iowa.  How close were these teams to breaking through? I'd say change the outcome of about 5 plays for each team and they're both in BCS bowls.  In these two teams combined 17 wins, exactly TWO of those wins were by less than double digits.  I think its fair to say that both of these teams are better (in Iowa's case MUCH better) than their final records.

Since both of our teams are anchored by strong defenses, it seems pretty likely that our bowl game will be a low scoring nailbiter ending once again in heartbreak for one of our teams.  Oh well.  At least this game will mean something in a bowl game that is otherwise irrelevant.

Anyway, I thought I'd kick off some Husker-Hawkeye discussion before we're all consumed by hatred for each other.  And of course, all of this is contingent on the experts actually being RIGHT about Nebraska and Iowa's bowl destination.

UPDATE: Looks like the Insight took Mizzou over NU.  Kick their asses please, and we'll see ya next year.