Top Ten Reasons Why James Vandenberg Is Not A Good Fisherman

10. He throws back the large fishes and keeps the smaller fishes, which is just backwards.

9. Someone told him they were going noodling, so he showed up with literal noodles for bait. They weren't even cooked.

8. He tries throwing a football at the fish, and while he once nailed a northern pike on a beauty of a fade route, someone has to go get the ball every time, because the fish can't throw it back.

7. Screaming at the fish just makes them not want to be around anybody.

6. Tried casting his reel, but accidentally caught Ben Stiller in the cheek when he did the backswing, and then Ben Stiller could not talk to Cameron Diaz anymore.

5. Wait, that doesn't sound right. Hang on.

4. (We are informed that #6 did not happen to Vandenberg, and instead was a scene from popular comedy movie "There's Something About Mary." Please excuse the error.)

3. These Keokuk boys can't do anything right who here's with me! Other towns in southeast Iowa for life! 

2. He eats the bait.

1. Fishing is boring anyway.

Okay, some context after the jump, because you're probably wanting some right about now.

The Iowa Hawkeye football season is almost upon us, friends! The season opener is but five days away, this Saturday at against Tennessee Tech. I know we all know that, I just really wanted to see that in print and for it to be true. Ahhhhh....

But in some respects, the season's already underway. There's practices and depth charts and scrimmages and A.J. Derby position change rumors, just like any day during the regular season. But for my money, we know the season's underway because the season's first edition of the Coach Ferentz Show has aired.

To those poor souls who have never lived in the state of Iowa or otherwise ever found themselves perusing local channels at 11 pm on a Sunday night, the Kirk Ferentz Show is a half hour show with Gary Dolphin interviewing Kirk Ferentz about the previous week's game, the two talking over a highlight reel from the previous day*, and then talking about the next week's opponent, who Ferentz is just sure will give Iowa hell every week.

...and all that takes about, oh, 15 minutes. But remember, it's a half-hour show. So the last part of the program is dedicated to little features that involve the University of Iowa, but may or may not have anything to do with the football program itself. And remember, that's even with a highlight tape to talk about first.

So tonight, there was a show, and since there wasn't any recapping to do, they threw in a ton of player interviews, and that's always an exercise in why are we doing this. College students aren't usually captivating speakers to begin with, and when they're all coached in media relations by a coaching staff and athletic department with a shall-we-say dim view of the press, there isn't a whole lot of workable material that'll ever come out of the interviews.

So then you have what we have here, which is Riley Reiff's otherwise uneventful interview on the show Sunday, when he mentions James Vandenberg. Reiff said something to the effect of "James is a good quarterback, a good leader. Not a very good fisherman." Which, okay? But it's also not the first time Vandenberg's fishing acumen has been derided by his teammates. Last year, Ricky Stanzi said this about Vandenberg:

Vandenberg is a particularly avid outdoorsman. After seeing his first time in a real game last season, a loss to Northwestern, he unwound with a trip to the Bass Pro Shop in Altoona.

"All he does is hunt and fish and he thinks he's so good at it," Stanzi said. "We'll always give him crap about that. I've never gone hunting or fishing, so it's hilarious when they sit there and talk about it.

"I'll pretend I know what they're talking about just to try to get a rise out of them. It's just funny."

So, yeah. There's your context. Enjoy your Monday. Tennessee Tech week!

*although the thing is, Dolphin's radio calls are narrating the highlights while he's talking to Ferentz about those highlights. I wonder if the first time Dolphin did the show, he would pay more attention to his calls and ask Ferentz about those instead. Like, "So Kirk--shh, listen to this--'Fred Russell, bustin' loose! 12-yard gain to the 45, and that's an Iowa first down!'--you think the kids like that slang talk? It's not too urban, is it?" I suppose that's a dumb thing to wonder.**

**It'd probably be even dumber to wonder whether Ferentz would then be really enthusiastic to discuss Dolphin's calls, and they just stop paying attention to the football aspect entirely.