Yes, Hawkeye bandwagon filling up . . .

IOWA CITY - The Iowa players live among you. They live in a world where what they do is a lead story almost every day and night in this area.

They notice stuff. At the end of last season, they noticed that, yeah, there was considerable buzz kill around the program. This season, they noticed that crowd at Kinnick Stadium for North Texas last weekend was 56,041, the smallest since 54,471 showed up for Buffalo in 2003.

Now the Hawkeyes are 4-0 and headed into their Big Ten opener at No. 18 Wisconsin (3-1) and they've noticed you're back.

'I guess some people are giving us a lot of credit now that we're 4-0 like ‘Oh yeah, we're a good team,' whereas two months ago they were saying we weren't going to win many games this season,” quarterback C.J. Beathard said Tuesday. 'So, I think some people are jumping back on the bandwagon, but we just have to continue to focus on us and getting better and in order for us to win we have to play our best football and we can't go in there unfocused and not mentally ready.”

Coaches coach everything, and, so yes, head coach Kirk Ferentz has discussed handling success with his team.

'What we do is public, so you just have to develop a mindset and understand that there's going to be praise with victory, and there's going to be criticism with loss,” Ferentz said. 'Sometimes there's criticism with victory, but it's part of sports.”

Beathard has a unique background. His family has lived a public life. His dad, Casey, is a Nashville songwriter. His grandfather, Bobby, is a former NFL general manager who put seven teams in the Super Bowl, including four champions.

So, C.J. Beathard, who leads the Big Ten in pass efficiency (157.82) and is second in yards per attempt (8.7), understands some of the dynamics of being public.

'I think the music is a little bit different industry,” Beathard said. 'I still think we have some of the greatest fans in the world. There are some out there who were bashing us and who are now pulling for us. That's typical for any team, though.”

Beathard is correct in that last thought. Part of Ferentz's message to his team right now is remember how you made it to 4-0. It didn't happen from listening to which way the wind blows.

'We've just got to be careful and understand we've improved because we've been focused on the right things,” Ferentz said. 'That's what we've got to say. And if the roof should cave in this week, if all hell breaks loose, we're going to line up and play next week, too, so we've just got to get back to it and stay centered on the things that are really important.”

Beathard can draw on one example of how fleeting sports success can be. Bobby Beathard put together a San Diego Chargers team that made it to the Super Bowl in 1994 (it remains the franchise's lone Super Bowl appearance). Then in 1998, he drafted Ryan Leaf No. 2 after the Indianapolis Colts took Peyton Manning No. 1.

You know what happened thereafter. Leaf was a monumental bust. The Chargers went through some tough times. And Bobby Beathard, who was director of player personnel for the great Miami championship teams of 1971-72 and was GM when Washington won three Super Bowls with three different QBs, still is waiting for his place in the NFL Hall of Fame.

'Ryan Leaf was the second best quarterback in the draft,” C.J. Beathard said. 'Peyton Manning was gone and the Chargers picked Ryan Leaf, as anyone would've done in that situation. At the time, people thought great draft pick. Then, after seeing how bad he did, people said, ‘Terrible pick, what are you doing?' Nobody knew he was going to go like that. That's just how it is sometimes.”

So far, through five games as Iowa's starting QB, Beathard has proved to be unshakable. He performed in the clutch to lift Iowa at Iowa State in the final two minutes. After getting smacked around by Pitt, Beathard conducted a drive to set up Marshall Koehn's game-winning 57-yard field goal. Beathard gained 8 yards on a scramble before Koehn's kick. The whole time he kept one eye on the stadium game clock and one on the Pitt defender bearing down.

The notion of 'bandwagon” fans seemed to have his attention Tuesday, but Beathard is no stranger to an audience and everything that comes with it.

'Nothing prepares you for being out there and getting smashed and having fans yelling and just all the crowd noise and all that stuff totally, but I do think if you've been around the game, there's some advantages to that that can help,” Ferentz said. 'If you look historically, I think there's some real pluses, it's not 100 percent, but he seems to just have a knack for it.

'We'd love to take credit for that, too, but we can't. It's something he does well. It's a credit to him.”

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