You know the drill. I write a little column, you adore it and compliment me for my amazing opinions and then you submit your questions in the comment section or on Twitter if you like to kick it old school (@JerryScherwin). I expect things to be very, very tame.
Well, that escalated quickly, huh? Somehow, someway, Iowa football did a reverse Juicy all the while pissing off fans of all shapes in sizes for (insert reason here).
Why isn’t Noah Fant playing? Why isn’t Noah Fant getting the ball? Why is Noah Fant slacking when he’s on the field? Why can’t Iowa run the football? Why can’t Noah Fant run block better? Why is T.J. Hockenson absent in the second half? Why doesn’t Brian run more 12-personnel? Why did Iowa even visit with the Patriots and Georgia? Why doesn’t Brian tell his dad he’s the captain now? Why doesn’t Kirk fire Brian and bring back God Damn Greg Davis? Why is Catnuts back?
Going into Penn State, we were on top of the world with big dreams of the Big Ten Championship and small hopes of the playoff. Three weeks later, the team formerly known as jNW celebrated winning the Big Ten West with two weeks left in the season on the hallowed grounds of Kinnick Stadium; no less for Veterans Day weekend when Nike Kinnick’s Heisman speech resonated throughout the building a little more than usual.
I’ve seen a lot of people ask ““Where does Iowa go from here” on the internet and I’ll tell you where...
Iowa will beat Illinois and Nebraska before going to a meh bowl game where they will probably win that too. Kirk and Brian will probably over play Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson the remainder of the season just to shove it in all of our faces (IF THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT HERE! HAVE THE HEAVIEST DOSE OF IT FANT BROTHERS!). Kirk will collect his eight win bonus and his “Collect $200 for passing Go” bonus in January.
From there, we’ll all get sickened by the Iowa Basketball team from underperforming against the Big Ten (warning: it’s hard to win college basketball games without serviceable and consistent guard play) that we’ll start thinking about how Iowa is returning a lot from a team that was “this close” from winning at least ten games. As the months pass by and we hit summer, we’ll want football so badly, just in time for puff pieces to start hitting about how Nate Stanley is going to have himself an NFL type senior season... Josh Allen style. We’ll start breaking down the schedule optimistically and sell ourselves that an experienced defense, offensive line and QB with some decent weapons can win 10 games (EASY!). That Iowa is the real contender for the Big Ten West.
And just like that, we forget all about the glaring issues that have reared its head season in and season out for the last twenty years. We’ll forget about how Kirk never uses his NFL pipeline to his advantage because he doesn’t like those primodanna’s anyways. How the offense, when in doubt, goes right back to a zone run game that hasn’t worked in a long, long time. That Iowa will bend and bend and bend but won’t break on defense until they ultimately do late because the offense is too conservative and continues to settle for playing the field game as opposed to scoring points with their weapons.
Rinse. Repeat.
And until a change is made above Kirk’s head, their will be no hot seat. Nobody will even hold his feet to the fire.
How does a change happen at the top? We stop showing up.
But we all know that won’t happen. We get too excited for the sweet sweet musings of “Back in Black” the closer we get to August. It’s in our blood.
Just like disappointing 8-win seasons.