Hlas: This spring, everything was sunny in Kinnick

IOWA CITY — During the Iowa football team's spring game Saturday in Kinnick Stadium, I noticed something under my seat in the east grandstand.

A pair of empty miniature plastic bottles of Admiral Nelson's Spiced Rum were near my feet, uncollected debris from the Hawkeyes' final home game of 2015.

That was coincidental, since Iowa will probably count on promising young defensive ends Matt Nelson and Anthony Nelson this fall.

But an omen? Nah. Not in a spring game. If ever a spring game was the face of fearful apprehension, it was last year's. Yet, last season was the stuff of coffee table books.

Last year, the spring event was played before almost no one. It had rained that morning and the night before. The game-time weather was windy and raw. It was less than four months after the Hawkeyes' dreary 7-6 season. The team had less buzz than a bee with a torn ACL.

Was all that one big, bad omen? Hardly.

A year later, the conditions were sunny and comfy. Saturday's wind was a welcomed breeze, not an icy tormentor.

The buzz? The crowd of 18,460 clearly thought the Hawkeyes were the bees' knees after their 12-0 regular-season of 2015, with linchpins C.J. Beathard and Desmond King back for encore senior years.

In his post-spring game press conference last year, Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said 'The fans at Iowa want to support the football team. Our job is to give them a reason to support it.'

Twelve months later, UI student newspaper The Daily Iowan was hawking copies of its book, 'Season of Surprise' to fans approaching Kinnick.

Fans wore a lot of the usual garb, like shirts that said 'THE SWARM,' 'BACK IN BLACK,' and 'STRAIGHT OUTTA KINNICK.' But several also had newer attire that pronounced '12-0 HISTORY MAKING' and 'PASADENA SWARMING.'

Winning heals all wounds. The off-season between the 2015 and 2016 seasons was an 8-month-long open wound in Hawkeyeland. The run of 12 wins, not the 45-16 Rose Bowl pounding Iowa endured from Stanford, sits atop the memory banks here.

However, teams must put great years aside just as quickly as they try to shove away the bad ones. Motivation can be harder to find for those who have already climbed the mountain, or at least the regular-season version.

This year after the spring game, Ferentz wasn't weighed down by questions about what it would take to restore the customers' love. So he talked about what his players must do and have done to push forward instead of getting knocked back.

He cited numbers from the weight room. 'Some really good things there.'

He mentioned off-field things he's seeing, 'just what they are doing in the classroom, what they are doing citizenship-wise. Those are to me indicators that guys are thinking right and doing right, and it all adds up.'

And, he talked about eating.

'I can remember a story, one of our really good players playing in the NFL right now,' Ferentz said. 'His idea at a bowl game, I just happened to be walking behind him ... he walked in, grabbed a banana and walked right into the punt (team) meeting.

'If anybody has high school kids at home, you understand. They don't eat breakfast. Little simple things like that, that's part of our educational process, trying to make them understand that you do have to eat breakfast and you have to eat a good breakfast.'

King, the returning first-team All-America cornerback and Jim Thorpe Award winner, is eating.

'I'm gaining weight,' he said. 'I'm at 202 (pounds). I was 198, I believe 197 last year. It's a good 4-pound gain.

'I'm learning how to defend bigger guys like tight ends, taking on linemen and things like that. It's helping me a lot.

Junior-to-be running back Akrum Wadley is eating, too.

'I was 184, 185 last year,' Wadley said. 'I'm 190 now. When I first got here I was 167. I want to be 195 going into the season. I've just got to keep eating.'

Yes, conditioning, weight-training and skills-development are vital. But if a college football team is truly hungry to keep succeeding, it must force itself to keep eating.

What a problem to have, right?

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com