Much hullabaloo has been made about the 15 players who have left the team since the start of 2007, but when we looked at the list, there were a few names that made us say, "uh... what?" Let's look at that list and discuss what it actually means for the football team. We'll use the BIGDEALOMETER (tm) to measure how much you should care about each departure. The BIGDEALOMETER (tm) measures the impact of events on a revolutionary 0-10 scale, where 0 represents complete insignificance and 10 is the world exploding. Shall we? Yes, we shall.

• Richie Amendola, jr., OL, Corallville - unknown: Who? Was he even on scholarship? 0/10
• Nyere Aumaitre, sr., OL, Camden, N.J. - unknown: To be perfectly honest, I thought he'd left the program in 2005. 0/10
• Anthony Bowman, so., WR, Detroit - transfer: CBI, bitch. Never on the 2-deeps. 2/10
• Nick Brayton, so., DL, Iowa City - unknown: Another walkon. 0/10
• Dana Brown, jr., RB, Clairton, Pa. - dismissed: Spent most of his time in Iowa City in trouble, and that's before he beat his girlfriend. Nonetheless, Iowa could use some tailbacks. 4/10
• James Cleveland, so., WR, Baytown, Texas - dismissed: CBI, bitch. Always sad to see a dealer go. 6/10
• Dominique Douglas, so., WR, Detroit - transfer: CBI, bitch. Started as a freshman, then embarked on a quest to break every single law ever. Will probably go down as the most prolific sower of discord for Hawkeye athletics since Hunter Rawlings.7/10
• Rashad Dunn, sr., DL, Evans, Ga. - unknown: Who? What? 0/10
• Cedric Everson, so., DB, Detroit - transfer: Amari Spievey's return softens the blow of losing Everson and Satterfield, who quite improbably weren't known members of CBI. Still, losing young corners sucks hard. 6/10
• Adam Farnsworth, sr., QB, North Ogden, Utah - transfer: We're nearly certain the Pr0fess0r wasn't even on scholarship. 0/10
• Alex Kanellis, sr., OL, Iowa City - injury: Make no mistake, losing him and Bruggeman before the season hurt. The two couldn't have possibly been worse than Meade and Vandervelde. 6/10
• Grant McCracken, sr., DE, Ankeny - unknown: Pretty sure he wasn't even on the 2-deeps. Like, ever. 0/10
• Devan Moylan, sr., DB, Panora, Iowa - injury: Okay, he was on the team for five years and took up a scholarship for one of them. It's a bit disingenuous to say he's leaving the program "early." 2/10
• Arvell Nelson, so., QB, Cleveland, Ohio - dismissed: CBI, bitch. Wouldn't have been in the running to contribute at QB anyway. 2/10
• Jevon Pugh, fr., RB, Winterhaven, Fla. - unknown: What was it, Jevon? Was it the cruelly unrelenting winter? The lack of public support from the coach? The love letters I left outside your dorm room The lack of a practice facility? Either way, you were probably starting at an above-average, run-first BCS team. Now you're back home. I don't know what else to say. 8/10
• Abe Satterfield, fr., DB, Erie, Pa. - transfer: Don't let the 2-star rating fool you--he was one of Iowa's first offers and commits of his class, and he would have been pushing for a starting spot already. This is the wrong program to be mixed up in bad company, though. Question the high BIGDEALOMETER (tm) rating now, but think of it when Bradley Fletcher gets torched for a long TD like 19 times. 6/10
• Derrick Smith, fr., DB, Cleveland - unknown: I got nothing. 1/10
• Eddie Williams, sr., FB, Rock Island, Ill. - unknown: Iowa will probably survive the loss of a 3rd string, walk-on fullback. 0/10

So there's about five or six guys you should be worried about leaving the team. Of them, two didn't play a down in 2007, three made it halfway through the season before being axed, and only two (Pugh, Cleveland) played the entire season. Pugh was the only one with a glimmer of hope of starting in 2008. In other words, don't expect a backslide because of any of these departures. Plus your wallets are probably safer now.