Hawkeyes refuse to awaken from crazy-dream season

EAST LANSING, Mich. - This was Chuck Long with the naked bootleg and Rob Houghtlin with the field goal in 1985.

This was Marv Cook with “The Catch” at Ohio State in 1987, Tate-to-Holloway in Orlando on New Year's Day 2005, Daniel Murray with the field goal against Penn State in Iowa City last November.

This, folks, was something else.

It was Iowa's No. 1 quarterback passing to its former No. 3 quarterback for seven yards, six points, and a flabbergasting finish to a 15-13 victory over Michigan State in Spartan Stadium.

Ricky Stanzi's slant to Marvin McNutt immediately gets its own wing in the Hawkeye Athletics Hall of Fame. It gets replayed over and over and over and over in Iowa this week, the rest of this year, maybe the rest of this half-century.

Here's how a big a play it was: It made you briefly forget its big-picture significance, which was to keep a perfect season perfect and take Iowa to 8-0 for the first time since football was invented.

For the moments when Hawkeyes ran and jumped like schoolkids, ignoring the physical cruelty they and the Spartans had inflicted on each other for four quarters. this wasn't about rankings and ramifications.

Nay, this was about the very basic characteristics that make sports admirable. This was astounding poise in a helter-skelter moment. This was standing up taller as the moments got bigger and the weight got heavier. This was denying defeat, yet again, though this time it felt inevitable in the last three minutes.

Write the book, film the documentary, pen the screenplay. Get everything in the vault before someone in the Big Ten, NCAA or federal government takes this away from Iowa's football team.

This crazy dream of a continuing unbeaten season just gets nuttier for the Hawkeyes. They didn't lead Saturday until 2:56 remained in the game? No biggie. They didn't score a touchdown until the very final second? Hey, that's why you play to the very final second.

Wicked, demoralizing injuries to team linchpins Dace Richardson and Brett Greenwood couldn't wipe out the Hawkeyes in this cruelly physical contest.

First-and-goals that only produced line drive Murray field goals on successive fourth-quarter drives? Hey, those were good field goals, great points.

A Spartan kickoff return that gave MSU the ball at the Iowa 40 with 2:50 left, a hook-and-ladder that gave the Spartans 38 yards on a third-and-18, a 30-yard touchdown pass thrown by sophomore quarterback Kirk Cousins to Blair White just before Cousins got planted yet again by the Hawkeye defensive line?

That all combined to cause only a body blow, not a kill shot.

Shoot, all Iowa needed was 1:29, one timeout, and 70 yards to travel. The Hawkeyes somehow were able to get off four plays in the final 15 seconds, which mystified the understandably rattled Spartans Coach Mark Dantonio in his postgame press conference.

Incomplete, incomplete, incomplete.

Complete.

Seven yards, Stanzi to McNutt. Seven yards that probably caused Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and communities all over Iowa to experience some sort of seismic shift.

“It was basically a one-on-one route to Marvin, and he did a good job of breaking it off and getting inside,” Stanzi said. The Spartan cornerback didn't expect a slant and McNutt got underneath him. A converted quarterback used a big-time receiving move to, oh, keep his team unbeaten and in the hunt for some crazy things.

Let America spend another week wrinkling its collective nose at Iowa's credentials to be high in the BCS rankings. Then let it ask around, see how many teams in the nation are coming into three places like Penn State, Wisconsin and Michigan State and leaving a bit bloodied but not the least bit bowed.

“We give the fans their money's worth,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said afterward.

But how do you put a price on this?