Solving the World's [Football] Problems

Iowa City, Ia. -- While I was solving the world's problems with friends such as Mike Hlas, George Wine, Steve Roe, Bob Brown, John Bohnenkamp and plenty of others yesterday in the Kinnick Stadium press box [pictured above], another guy I know was viewing the Iowa-Florida International football game on TV in Oregon.

"Hey, Ron, I'm watching the game right now in Bend," Jeff wrote in an e-mail I read when I got back home. "I like Stanzi's touch and composure. Jake still looks too jerky and doesn't have very catchable balls when a bit of touch is needed.

"But the Hawkeyes are looking like they can be decent. Let's see next Saturday
against the Cyclones. It's actually looking like a good year to play Michigan and Ohio State."

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The Stanzi and Jake referred to by Jeff were, of course, Iowa quarterbacks Ricky Stanzi and Jake Christensen.

Stanzi, who is looking more and more like he's the best quarterback on Kirk Ferentz's roster, caused a stir among everyone in the press box and the stadium seats by starting the game.

The buzz in the press box was evident when word began circulating that Stanzi would be starting.

"I hear Christensen will be transferring to Eastern Illinois," a guy said to me while I was drinking my first cup of coffee.

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We'll see about that.

Right now, I see no reason why Ferentz would change anything for Saturday's game against Iowa State.

I figure Stanzi, who completed eight of 10 passes for 162 yards and three touchdowns in Iowa's 42-0 cruise yesterday, will be the starter again Saturday when Iowa tees it up against a Cyclone team that sailed past Kent State, 48-28, last night and will be hard for Iowa to beat.

For some reason, Iowa State is usually more prepared for the Big Game than is Iowa.

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Incidentally, Christensen was booed by some of Iowa's fans yesterday.

Being a quarterback in Iowa City is sometimes not easy.

He's not the first quarterback to be booed here, and he won't be the last.

There have always been lots of football experts in Kinnick Stadium.

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Iowa State has its own indecision at quarterback, of course, and I'll leave figuring out the Cyclones' and Hawkeyes' depth charts to others -- the folks being paid to determine what it is that newspaper readers want these days.

Something called "liveblogging" is the newest idea racing through the business, and it was taking place in a big way yesterday at Kinnick.

Three writers covering the game for the Gazette -- which puts out papers in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City -- were liveblogging in a manner that no one has ever seen.

I mean, on this crisp autumn morning and pleasant autumn afternoon in Iowa City, Grantland Rice and Bert McGrane would have thrown up their hands and shouted, "Put us on the police beat!" if they'd been asked to respond to readers' comments on a computer during the game.

Rice, who wrote for a number of newspapers a long time ago, including the New York Herald Tribune, authored sports stories that sang. McGrane tried to do the same thing for the Des Moines Register.

In 1924, Rice wrote the famous "Four Horsemen" lead in describing a Notre Dame-Army game.

It began, "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below..."

In those days, the score of the game might not have appeared until the ninth or 10th paragraph. Nobody cared. Rice didn't care, neither did his editors or his readers.

Actually, I sometimes miss that kind of writing. But evidently today's newspaper readers and editors don't.

They want liveblogging.

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When the Gazette started its liveblogging in the Iowa-Maine season opener, it evidently caused a mini-controversy with the NCAA -- which evidently doesn't have enough to do these days.

The NCAA wanted to limit how many liveblogs the Gazette and other papers could send during a Hawkeye game.

Why there should be any limit is something I don't know and don't care to know.

The NCAA should be trying to find out how Southern California's football and basketball players keep getting paid millions of dollars every year when all they're supposed to be getting is board, books, tuition and the game plan.

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I guess the situation has been solved now.

The Gazette guys could liveblog all they wanted to yesterday during a game that was a real yawner.

I had to go outdoors at halftime to make sure I didn't fall asleep. When I went out there, three guys were lying on the ground near the stadium.

My guess is they'd had too much Bud Light.

If it wasn't that, it was too much Florida International.

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I talked to Hlas, the Gazette sports columnist, for a long time before the game about liveblogging.

So, when I got home, I read what he wrote in his liveblog.

I quickly determined that Mike attracts a group of very intelligent, very clever and very witty liveblogging participants.

Guys who know football as well as the news business provided him with some outstanding comments.

Just to keep things lively, one guy even told Hlas that he was starting a campaign to get Jim Ecker involved in liveblogging during a game.

Ecker was, and still is, an outstanding sports reporter at the Gazette.

When he was covering Iowa, he treated it like the police beat. Something he wrote one time caused former Iowa coach Hayden Fry to devote an entire press conference to criticism of Ecker.

That took some doing.

All I know is, I'll be looking for some liveblogs from Ecker any day now.

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All but one of the Wall of Famers whose plaques are displayed in Kinnick Stadium would think liveblogging is a foreign language. I think I'm the only Wall of Famer who has an idea about what it is.

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As enjoyable as the game and the entire press box scenario was, the highlight of the day was the pregame tailgating I did with my son, daughter-in-law and two of my granddaughters [pictured at the left].

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By the way, Hlas tells me just half of his worktime these days is spent writing sports columns.

He's also writing a book on the horrible flooding that took place in Cedar Rapids this summer.

"Steve Buttry, our new editor, asked me if I'd write the book," Hlas said. "When the boss asks, you do it."

Knowing how well Mike writes, the book will be a good one and I'll be anxious to read it.

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As for the comment made by my friend Jeff that that it's too bad Iowa isn't playing Ohio State and Michigan this season, I agree with him.

Neither team is a world-beater. Ohio State had to score 14 last-quarter points to beat Frank Solich's Ohio University team, 26-14, and Michigan struggled to beat Miami of Ohio, 16-6, in a game that likely caused Bo Schembechler to roll over a couple of times in his grave.

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It was good to see Forest Evashevski's photo on the cover of yesterday's game program.

Evy's 1958 team was the best Iowa has ever had.

That team was honored on the weekend of the season opener against Maine, but Evashevski couldn't attend because of health problems.

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Final thought: I'm wondering what Maury White would say about all this liveblogging crap.

I know one thing. His comments wouldn't be suitable for a newspaper. The only thing they'd work in would be a blog or on Twitter.

That's how much the writing business is changing.

I'll see you at this week's Big Game.