Hawkeye Confidential: Iowa's last unbeaten football team

The last time Iowa's football team went through a regular-season without a loss was 1922. My math says that was a long time ago.

Even with the resources at our fingertips now like Google, The Weather Channel, and Paul Finebaum, it's still difficult to get comprehensive information about the 1922 Hawkeyes. Did they not have a system for archiving Web pages back then?

So I've tried to piece together the story of that '22 team that went 7-0. Be warned that one or two of these details may not be precise. Here goes:

The 1921 Hawkeyes also went 7-0. They were invited to the Rose Bowl to play the University of California, but declined the invitation because the television network carrying the game aired beer commercials, and universities were finicky about things like that back then.

Why the beer commercials were airing in the first place seemed odd, since Prohibition was made law a year earlier.

The Hawkeyes maintained momentum at the start of the 1922 season, crushing Knox College in the opener, 61-0. That brought more criticism than praise. National radio commentator Edward R. Cowherd insisted the Hawkeyes should have picked up the phone and called Princeton or Vanderbilt for a game instead of giving little Knox some hard knocks.

But the competition picked up in Week 2 after the Hawkeyes boarded a train for Connecticut to play traditionally powerful Yale.

The game would have been in prime-time, but the Yale Bowl had no lights. In fact, its home game against Harvard just last Saturday was its first ever played under lights at the 101-year-old stadium. Temporary lights, though. Let's not rush into change, Yalies.

Iowa won, 6-0. The Hawkeyes played just 12 men in the game. Players played every play, offense and defense. Iowa Coach Howard Jones said he didn't believe in pitch-counts, which confused everyone since the sport was football.

Yale, by the way, lost to Harvard last Saturday, 38-19, and has dropped its last nine games to its historic rival. Its loss to Iowa in 1922 clearly took the starch out of the program. Well, as much as you can take starch out of Ivy Leaguers.

Anyway, Iowa's next game in that '22 season was back in Iowa City, where the Hawkeyes faced Illinois. Illini Coach Bob Zuppke, who won four national-titles at the school, skipped his team's own game against Butler in order to scout Iowa in Connecticut. Butler proceeded to stun Illinois, 10-7.

'Nothing will ever top this in school history,' Butler President Opal Fleener said at the time. 'Unless we go to back-to-back national-championship games in basketball, that is. We're really not that into football.'

Anyway, Iowa beat Illinois in a bruiser of a game, 8-7. Then it clubbed Purdue, 56-0. Then it downed Minnesota, 28-14.

After that game, the College Football Playoff That Didn't Exist selection committee voted Iowa fifth in its first set of rankings. Jones told his players to stay humble and hungry, and just focus on the next game, at Columbus against Ohio State.

The Hawkeyes came from behind for a 12-9 win and a 6-0 record, and returned home to face Northwestern in a pressure-packed season-finale. But the Hawkeyes treated the Wildcats the same way the 2015 Hawkeyes treated the Wildcats. A 37-3 shellacking capped a perfect season and Big Ten title.

There were no more games left to play. In some minds, Iowa had the best team in the nation. But the National Championship Foundation said California was No. 1. And the College Football Researchers' Association said the national championship should be shared between unbeatens Princeton and ... Drake!

Drake's team, in fact, was invited to the White House to be honored for its achievement. President Warren G. Harding admitted surprise when a football team showed up, thinking his guest would be Drake, a popular rapper of that era.

Drake had been scheduled to play Iowa in the season-opener for both, but the game was canceled. The reasons are hard to pin down. There may have been a flu epidemic. Or tornadoes. Or, both teams boycotted the game because they hated its traveling trophy, featuring a farm family that had nothing to do with the rivalry.

At any rate, 1922 was quite a year for Hawkeyes football. Now the 2015 Iowa team is a win Friday from a 12-0 regular-season. If it happens, oh, the stories people will tell about the Hawkeyes in 2108.