The Optimist’s Guide to the 2020 Football Season

Listen up, farm-animal-fornicators. I got something to say and I want you to be sitting down—preferably fetal—when you hear it.

Iowa is gonna go 14-0, 10-0, 11-0 on the year. Mark it down, chickenf*ckers. While the Big Ten was back, then not, then back again, Iowa’s players and coaches were busy conducting CrossFit classes over Zoom.

Many have lamented the Big Ten’s construction of its own prison. To rehash quick: In July, the conference progressively released an abbreviated 10-game schedule that reeked of incest. Less than two weeks later, the B1G c4nc3ll3d the season outright.

Under the false pretenses that other conferences also preferred the smell of their own farts over the smell of your money, Big Ten officials watched Iowa State get sh*tstomped at home by Louisiana, and decided they couldn’t miss out on that kind of action.

And here we are, an entire daggum progrum not too far removed from its own reckoning on race, culture, and DJK vindication.

So with like a month of not-secret practice at their disposal, these Hawkeyes are going to steamroll through Purdue, Northwestern, Michigan State, Minnesota, Penn State, Nebraska, Illinois, and Wisconsin, in that exact order.

While future victims Rondale Moore and Rashod Bateman had their eyes on depressingly useless stacks of metaphorical cash, our boys Spencer Petras, Tyler Goodson, and literally everyone else of consequence on this roster were in and around the greater Iowa City area, getting better, and paying A/V students at Iowa City West to document that fact.

Petras, who I hear throws a fade route like Willie Nelson hits a bong, hails from California’s Bay Area, one of the hardest-hit regions in the county. Both his parents being doctors, he stuck around the 319 all summer learn to keep his lungs clean, and learn all he can from Ken O’Keefe, who as far as I can tell, left the Miami Dolphins only after being told Joe Philbin was next in line for the Iowa job.

And those are just the facts! Kindling to my speculations as to why Iowa is going to hamblast everyone and everything in their path this season include but is not limited to:

• Ihmir Smith-Marsette is as good as any skill player in the conference.
• Coy Cronk has a name too good to not be first team all-B1G.
• Tyler Goodson. See first bullet.
• Fuck Chris Doyle with a tire iron.
• Brian Ferentz’ mask cut off the oxygen to the part of his brain where he stores outside zone.
• Shhhhh linebackers are overrated.
• There’s only two coaches on that schedule Kirk Ferentz has never beat, and we’re calling 2020 the Etch a Sketch year because half a century from now we’re going to learn the French were behind it all along.*
• We don’t play Ohio State.
• Iowa and the Big Ten are actually playing 4-D chess, contracting COVID while the other conferences prematurely play, only to derail the entire SEC season after Jeremy Pruitt’s charity turtle race is ultimately deemed a super spreader event.

And as if that diatribe wasn’t convincing enough for ya, try this one on:

In the year of Al Gore’s Internet in 2020, this will be Kirk’s last as the head coach in Iowa City. For the past 12,453 fortnights, he’s been hibernating, waiting for his time to strike, and now it’s here.

Can you say President Kirk Ferentz**???

And in order to allow for a clean transition between he and his Large Adult Failson, Kirk needs to conjure a clean campaign of cleat-stomping all competition between now and what will surely be a rigged playoff. Fortunately for Iowa, our Large Adult Failathleticdirector is in charge of that whole charade, tipping the scales in Iowa’s favor for literally the only time ever.

You heard it here first, Iowa’s packing the courts and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So when you pull up your betting slip for the season, remember this: while Nebraska was busy suing the sky for being blue, and PJ Fleck was starring in commercials for what is EASILY the seventh-best pizza place in the Twin Cities, Daviyon Nixon was dancing, Logan Klemp became a meme, and Boilerhawk had a baby.

I’m smellin’ roses.***

*This is in reference to me learning a Frenchman invented the Etch a Sketch 50 years after the fact.

**President of the University of Iowa.

***I’ve been told this is NOT a symptom.