Sunday Hawkeyes Reading Room - Big Ten officials at Indiana-Iowa game get gang-tackled

Some people think the Big Ten officiating crew at Saturday's Indiana-Iowa game, well, cut the Hawkeyes a break.

For instance, Bill Ludwig of Cincinnati.com wrote this here:

Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz should grab a microphone and announce to the crowd at Kinnick Stadium: “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

The Big Ten referees absolutely stole the game from the Hoosiers.

You had to see it to believe it.

From Bill Kline of the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call's Web site:

Probably the worst overturned call I have ever seen occurred in the third quarter when the replay fool, er, ref overturned a would-be Indiana TD reception.

There is no way in hell that the evidence was conclusive enough to overturn the call on the field. It was clear to TV viewers that the receiver dragged his foot in the end zone and had the football secured for a TD.

For Kline's entire take, click here.

Gregg Doyel of CBSsports.com is equally blunt here. He wrote:

I'm saying it: I firmly believe those Big Ten referees, whether on their own or at the behest of the league, did what they had to do to keep the Big Ten's only BCS title candidate undefeated. And given how bad Iowa was for 3 1/2 quarters, they had to do a lot.

ESPN.com's Ivan Maisel says Iowa doesn't have chemistry. It has something better, alchemy.

What coaches and players refer to as chemistry is really not chemistry at all. Chemistry is a science subject to irrefutable law. It is what it is.

That's not football. What coaches and players refer to as chemistry is really alchemy. Alchemy isn't subject to the laws of science. Alchemy takes a substance of lesser value and transforms it into something greater.

That pretty much describes what is going on at Iowa and at Oregon these days.

Maisel is good. For his thoughts from Oregon's win at USC Saturday night, click here.

At Hawkeyenation.com, Jon Miller gives his best and worst of the week in the Big Ten. Miller writes:

This team isn't pretty to the outside world and they probably aren't one of the five best teams in all of college football.  That being said, their road resume is among the best in the country and they just keep finding different ways to win despite the adversity of injury that has hammered this team.  The national writers and pundits don't necessarily take that into account because they cannot possibly know all of the nuances involving every team.  Slowly and surely, the doubters are just going to have to come to grips and accept that this is a pretty special team in its own right.

But Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times, thinks Oregon is the team that's special.

Iowa. Give me a break like the several Iowa got Saturday from the officials against Indiana. The Hawkeyes, lovable as they are, have smoke-and-mirrored their way to 9-0 and would not want any part of Oregon in a now very possible Rose Bowl matchup.

Hard to argue with that, though the Hawkeyes would take that Rose Bowl berth in a Los Angeles minute right now. For Dufresne's Sunday review of the Ducks filling the bill, click here.