It's Possible for Iowa To Run the Table

Iowa City, Ia. -- I keep changing my mind about Iowa's football team.

After predicting before the season began that the Hawkeyes would to 8-4 and play in a bowl game, I later wondered if they'd finish under .500.

My pessimism followed the consecutive early-season losses to Pittsburgh, Northwestern and Michigan State -- certainly not a who's who of collegiate football power.

Now, however, I'm thinking Iowa can win the rest of its regular-season games.

That's right, I've observed so much improvement in this team that I can see it winning at Illinois and Minnesota and beating Penn State and Purdue in Iowa City.

That would put Kirk Ferentz and his players at 9-3 heading into what would be a very attractive bowl game.

Of the four remaining games, the toughest could be the Nov. 22 finale at Minnesota.

It will be the last collegiate game in the Metrodome in Minneapolis [Minnesota is building a new on-campus stadium in which the Gophers will play outdoors instead of indoors at the Metrodome], and Iowa-Minnesota games are always emotional anyway.

I certainly can see Iowa winning at Illinois, which will always be beatable as long as Ron Zook is the coach, and against Penn State, where Joe Paterno usually screws up a couple of games or more each season -- whether he's coaching from the press box or on the field.

Purdue is terrible, so that'll be no problem.

I'm not saying a 4-0 finish is a given, but it's possible.

It's up to the players and coaches to make sure it happens.

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Speaking of the Big Ten, I can't believe how bad Wisconsin has gotten this season. The Badgers were very ordinary in Saturday's 38-16 loss to Iowa, and I don't see things getting much better very soon in Bret Bielema's [pictured at the left] program.

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These are also tough days at Iowa State. It makes me wonder -- again -- why Dan McCarney [pictured at the right] was fired as the Cyclones' coach. If there's been some improvement in the Cyclones' program since, I wish somebody would point it out to me.

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The best little baseball story in America has suddenly gone sour. Tampa Bay is doing everything possible to ruin a scenario that I thought could result in the Rays seizing the World Series.

If the Red Sox win tonight's American League playoff game, Tampa Bay won't even be in the World Series.

What a shame.

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A guy told me he saw Marc Hansen wandering through the Kinnick Stadium press box yesterday.

I wondered if he was going to be on the field after the game to see if Bret Bielema was again going to call an opposing coach a "big prick."

That's what Bielema, then an Iowa linebacker, called Iowa State's Jim Walden after his final game against the Cyclones in 1992.

Hansen somehow talked his editors into letting him use the term "big prick" in his newspaper column the day after the game.

Bielema later was ordered to apologize to Walden, but I actually didn't see anything wrong with what he called a guy who often talked a big game but was never able to beat Iowa.

I didn't get around to seeing Hansen in the press box yesterday, probably because I spent so much time visiting with Derek and Rhonda Hill in their luxury box elsewhere in the press box.

Maybe next time.

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While in Iowa City, I talked to a guy who attended the Register's 20-Year Club get-together a week ago.

I skipped it because I had more important things to do. I think my grandchildren had a soccer game or something that afternoon.

Anyway, I asked about the program at the retirees' lunch.

"Good food," I was told.

Nothing was said, though, about the speaker.

Rumor [unconfirmed, of course] has it there was an empty speakers' platform and Carol Hunter, editor of the paper's editorial pages, was behind the microphone.