The State of Hawkeye Nation

Last Saturday night the Iowa Football team had about everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Anytime you spot a team 14 points to start and have your special teams play not so special you shouldn't win. On top of that the Hawks were playing in front of a hostile crowd, and everything I have read and seen thanks to Youtube you would have thought Iowa was playing in the Arizona Prison League. I am pretty sure that I will never attend a game down there, but i'm pretty sure after this past Saturday Iowa will never return there for a non-conference game. Apparently in Arizona sportsmanship doesn't exist. I know not everything is perfect in Iowa City either, but I have never witnessed in my 15 years as a season ticket holder to Iowa the things I saw and heard on Youtube of the treatment Iowa fans received at Arizona. Between there fans constantly using profanity towards Iowa fans and this includes kids and 80 year old Iowa fans as well. There fans were verbally threatening Iowa Fans, and continued after the game when the media was trying to talk to Iowa coaches and players at the endzone. But this is the same school that was throwing objects at Oregon Fans and players just a year ago, knocking an Oregon Cheerleader out with a water bottle that was thrown. So stay classy Arizona, maybe we will get to see you again in Pasadena, thankfully that will be a neutral site game and not inside the prison walls of Arizona Stadium.
But Back to the Hawkeyes. So Iowa has lost a game where everything went wrong that could go wrong. One thing about the Ferentz era is when Iowa loses a game, they improve quite a bit for the next game. This lose to Arizona does nothing to the goal of winning the Big Ten Conference title. In 2002 Iowa lost to Iowa State, and in 2004 Iowa lost to Arizona State which was a brutual beat down of 44-7. So the goal or prize is still obtainable. Iowa does lose Jewell Hampton for the year, but Marcus Coker the freshman from Maryland will get to showcase what he can do as Adam Robinson's backup. We never knew what Shonn Greene was going to be able to do, and we didn't know what Robinson, and Brandon Wegher were going to be able to do last year either, yet Iowa was just fine. Under Ferentz the motto has always been next man in, so that is what they will do, and move on.