Wednesday afternoon news flashes and reactions: Prime-time Hawkeyes, Nickelback-loving Tiger, Roethlisberger, volcano

1. The Penn State-Iowa football game this Oct. 2 will be played at night.

In equally surprising news, the Super Bowl will be held on Super Bowl Sunday.

Of course this is a prime-time game again. Brent Musburger insisted.

The stars of the last two Iowa-Penn State games, Ricky Stanzi, Daniel Murray and Adrian Clayborn, will all be back for an encore performance.  Penn State quarterback Darryl Clark, who seemed like a good guy and an otherwise-fine quarterback, will not. He got fairly flummoxed in the last two Iowa-PSU meetings.

2. Tiger Woods committed today to play in The Players Championship, held the week after next week's Quail Hollow Championship, also featuring Woods.

Apparently, Woods has those family issues of his (that he talked about, folks) squared away. Monday night, he attended a Nickelback concert in Orlando. 

Tiger likes Nickelback. Man, this guy's tastes really are all over the board.

3. Ben Roethlisberger got suspended for six games by the NFL for violating the league's conduct policy.

Six years ago this week, I was in New York for the NFL draft to cover the Robert Gallery story. Other top collegians who were present there included Roethlisberger. Iowa was the only team to beat Roethlisberger's Miami, Ohio club in 2003.

Roethlisberger praised the Hawkeyes to the hilt when I asked him a few questions the day before the draft. He said he wished he could take offensive lineman Gallery with him to whatever NFL city he landed.

Even though Roethlisberger has been on two Super Bowl winners in Pittsburgh and Gallery has been on a perennial loser in Oakland, it may have been best for big Robert that he was three time zones from Roethlisberger. Not that Gallery would have hung out in the same circles as Roethlisberger, anyway.

4. All the northern European airports have reopened.

This might be the summer to go overseas, with a lot of fraidy-cat tourists backing off this year after a little volcano had a fit. Who's with me? Let's go!