The Omegas and the Jugdishes

The line in the sand for the Iowa-Minnesota football rivalry was drawn in 1982.

Maybe it was the jumbo linemen era or maybe Hayden Fry circled the game on the calendar, but since that season the Hawkeyes are 20-8 against their border rivals from the north.

Saturday, No. 24 Iowa (7-4, 4-3 Big Ten) will try to make it No. 21 against a Golden Gophers (2-9, 1-6) team that is in the midst of its third coaching change since 2006, when Glen Mason led UM to its last victory over Iowa, 34-24, at the Metrodome.

Gopher football, which owns six national championships, has had some issues.

Since Fry was hired to revive the UI in 1979, it's been Fry and Kirk Ferentz. In that time, Minnesota has had seven head coaches -- Joe Salem, Lou Holtz, John Gutekunst, Jim Wacker, Glen Mason, Tim Brewster and now the interim Jeff Horton.

Since 1979, Minnesota has had more stadiums -- Memorial Stadium, the Metrodome and now TCF Bank Stadium -- than Iowa has had head coaches.

The Gophers' last Big Ten title was 1967, 43 years ago. Its last bowl that wasn't at one time named after computer software or cologne was the 1962 Rose Bowl.

And so, UM athletics director Joel Maturi embarks to find the man who'll guide the Gophers into their next-next-next era of glory.

"You're not following Vince Lombardi here," Maturi said when he announced Brewster's firing Oct. 17. "This is a situation where, somebody can come in and win some games and people are going to feel good about him and they win a few more games and they're going to feel really good about him.

"And if we go to the Rose Bowl, we might even put a statue of them outside of TCF Bank Stadium."

When you're 20-8 against a rival, it's not really a rivarly, much less a way to end the season, not in the new Big 10, anyway.

The Big Ten is into the Big Finale now. Commissioner Jim Delany and the conference got into that business when it welcomed Nebraska into the fold in June.

Remember that scene in "Animal House" when Pinto and Flounder try to rush the Omegas? They're sent directly to the nerd table with Mohammed, Jugdish, Sidney and Clayton.

When the Cornhuskers joined the Big Ten, the season finales were divided into the Omegas and the Jugdishes, in sweeping generalities of course. Delany's idea was to make best use of the marquee schools (Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Nebraska) and spread the inventory to the challengers (Iowa and Wisconsin) and thus create more centerpiece season finales.

Ohio State-Michigan stayed together, of course. Wisconsin and Penn State became a season-ender, despite UW coach Bret Bielema openly campaiging for a UW-Nebraska finale.

All it took was Big Ten expansion to finally bring together Iowa and Nebraska, a border rivalry that never really started, with the last game between the two schools taking place in 2000 (a 42-13 Huskers' victory).

The take on the left side of the Missouri River has been wholeheartedly positive.

From Omaha World-Herald sports columnist Tom Shatel:

"You heard it here last: Huskers and Hawks will be a better rivalry than Nebraska vs. Oklahoma.

Yes, I said it. For one thing, it will be a true rivalry. Iowa-Nebraska will never have the national implications that OU-NU did or be the must-see national TV game every year. Huskers and Hawks isn't likely to ever be a history book in the library of football classics. And we'll see how many times Kirk Ferentz gets invited to speak in Kearney or Omaha after he's retired, like Barry Switzer still does.

But NU-Iowa will have what the old red rivalry never did: true emotion. Did I mention hate? Nebraskans and Iowans never knew how much they disliked each other because they never had reason to pay attention to one another. The Big Ten gave them that reason last night. Now, they'll not only play, they'll play for the right to win a division - one that looks imminently doable with Michigan in Rich Rodriguez mode."

No one sees a 20-8 run in this series either way. So, now Iowa ends with a rivalry and not a celebration and a 98.3-pound bronze pig.

"It [Iowa-Minnesota] made sense, but, again, with the expansion a lot of things have made sense aren't necessarily connecting anymore," Ferentz said. "So, it's just part of the deal."

Iowa and Minnesota still will meet every season. The schools are in the same yet-to-be-named Big Ten division with Nebraska, Michigan, Michigan State and Northwestern. Floyd of Rosedale will be on the table on Oct. 29 in 2011 and Sept. 29 in 2012.

"Minnesota is a good program and they're going to get better," said junior Iowa defensive end Broderick Binns, a St. Paul, Minn., native. "Because Nebraska isn't in our conference yet, I haven't seen too much of them. I don't know how they're going to do against Big Ten opponents. We'll see next year."

Nebraska also benefits here with a season finale that will energize a fan base. The Huskers will shed border semi-rival Colorado, which is moving to the Pac-10 in 2011. Nebraska is 48-18-2 all time against Colorado, including a 14-4 run since 1992.

Iowa and Nebraska have met just six times since 1946 and just twice since 1982. That's about to change.

"I think as time goes forward and because of proximity, because they're a very fine program, I would imagine it could grow into a rivalry of some kind," Nebraska athletics director Tom Osborne said. "There may not be quite the history, but we're looking forward to playing them and I think there will be a lot of interest in those games."

If the Hawkeyes and Huskers met this weekend in Lincoln, Saturday would be No. 24 Iowa and No. 16 Nebraska with head coach Bo Pelini coming off a national meltdown that drew rebuke from UNL chancellor Harvey Perlman.

There's already a nickname (Farmageddon), a T-shirt and a Facebook group. The game won't be played for another 367 days.

This is how you want to end it.

bigtensked

KCRG senior photographer Matt Nelson recently went to Lincoln, Neb., for couple of stories on Nebraska joining the Big Ten.

– The gameday experience at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln.

– What Huskers fans think of the Big Ten and the upcoming rivalry with the Hawkeyes.