Bad news, friends. That scene with Jewel Hampton pointing at the inside of his knee to the trainers is exactly what we feared: Hampton has torn his left ACL and he is officially gone for the year:
This is bad news. Bad, bad, bad news. There is no positive to losing Jewel Hampton. With Paki O'Meara concurrently out with a concussion (and did he ever look out of it coming off the field), Iowa must now turn to true freshman Marcus Coker as the #2 tailback. And sure, it's sort of exciting to see what Coker can do, considering his hype coming out of high school, let's keep in mind that he's a true freshman who has barely practiced on account of a shoulder injury. That is not a redshirt you ever want to burn.
I'd talk about Iowa's depth chart at running back now, but it's not really a depth chart. It's a giant white X on the ground, and 15 feet over that X is a grand piano, dangling from a single rope. And the piano is filled with dynamite and AIDS. Why? Because Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God enjoys spectacle, and he is having an absolutely riotous year thus far, and the horrible limb-mangling deathmill that is the Big Ten conference season hasn't even started yet. Kill us.