Cheap heat: Selected stats about Iowa’s offense

Like almost everyone, I live with self-contradictions.

For instance, I believe with all my heart in eating right. Yet, my ice cream-to-kale intake is roughly 888 million-to-1.

To me, sports writing should primarily be writing, not regurgitating statistics. I'm more interested in the people that play the games and how they and the public react to the games than the games themselves. Numbers, as integral as they are to sports, often suck the spirit out of them. My eyes glass over when I see too many of them in a sports story.

And yet ... I find myself drawn to stats like they're ice cream. Eating kale and doing real writing are harder work.

If I tell Iowa fans the Hawkeyes have just three passing plays of 20-yards plus this season and only Navy, Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Eastern Michigan have fewer out of the 128 FBS teams, I know that will get some cheap heat.

Especially if I note Penn State has 16 such plays, Illinois 15, Nebraska 12.

Overall, Iowa has five plays of 20 yards or more. That's more than only SMU (which has played just two games), Eastern Michigan and Temple.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Last season, the Hawkeyes were 93rd in plays of 10 yards or more. In 2012 they were tied for 118th.

So that's a bunch of numbers. It's not as if you didn't already know Iowa has been pretty messy on offense.

Now please let me tell you what I think about this Adrian Peterson story, about corporate punishment and violence in general, about people who still proudly wore Peterson's Minnesota Vikings jersey in public Sunday, about the millions of people who aren't just NFL fans, but are addicts for it.

Nah. Another time.

Cheap heat. It's nothing to be proud about, folks.