Oklahoma? Insight? What more could Iowa have wanted?

Iowa's football team has fallen up.

The Hawkeyes closed their regular-season slipping into a sewer of their own making in Nebraska, a dismal 20-7 loss that gave them a 4-4 Big Ten record and 7-5 overall mark. Nine days later, they emerged from it wearing shiny gold chains.

Iowa is somehow returning to Greater Phoenix's Insight Bowl, and will face a team of great national renown on Dec. 30 in the Oklahoma Sooners.

Instead of hanging out with the 6-6 Texas A&M Aggies in a dreary Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas matchup, Iowa has been elevated to the Insight. Why? Because the Hawkeyes are so darn captivating? Obviously not. Because they bring fans? The Insight is indeed fond of the traveling Herkys, but that's not the reason, either.

It's because two major entities were dirtied this year. Make that tarred.

One is the Fiesta Bowl, which owns the Insight Bowl. The Fiesta Bowl commissioned an independent investigation that produced a 276-page report detailing how crooked an operation the bowl's organization had become under CEO John Junker. The bowl's improprieties were as widespread in Arizona as cacti and scrub.

The other is Penn State University, from the stench attached to the school and its football program by the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse allegations. As mercenary as bowls are, the Fiesta people couldn't sign off on bringing Penn State to the Insight and inviting all that unpleasant publicity from State College.

In a college football year of "Who'd Have Believed It?" we have another entry. A 9-3 Penn State team was passed up for Big Ten bowls in favor of 7-5 Iowa in the Insight and 6-6 Northwestern in the Meineke. The Lions thus fall to Dallas' TicketCity Bowl, where good seats are available. All of them, probably.

But we got shoved down the bowl ladder last year, Hawkeye fans might moan. Some shove. Your 7-5 team got snubbed by Jacksonville's Gator Bowl for Michigan though you beat the Wolverines in Ann Arbor. So you "fell" to Tempe for the Insight.

The Hawkeyes beat Missouri, while Michigan got plastered by Mississippi State. It all worked out for Iowa after a disappointing 7-5 campaign, and so far it's all working out again.

Most tourists would take Phoenix over Houston every time in winter. You get to prove something against Oklahoma instead of face a Texas A&M team in disarray. But the Aggies would have had far more fans in Reliant Stadium than Iowa. College Station is 95 miles from Houston. Iowa City? Over a thousand.

And, while Oklahoma (9-3) was playing for a BCS bowl berth Saturday at Oklahoma State and is big, bad OU, the Sooners have to be looking at this Insight invite as a Baby Ruth bar in a swimming pool.

First, they were gunning for a national-title. Then, the Big 12 crown and a BCS bowl. Now, they've plummeted past the Cotton and Alamo bowls for Kansas State and (gulp) Baylor?

That's what happens when you lose two of your last three games, and get crushed 44-10 by Oklahoma State for all of America to see. When two-time Biletnikoff Award finalist Ryan Broyles had his season ended by a torn ACL on Nov. 5, the heart of the Sooners was removed. Broyles is the NCAA's all-time FBS leader in catches and is second in receiving yards. He has 45 career TD catches.

Imagine Iowa had it lost Marvin McNutt to injury. Then imagine if McNutt had also averaged 10 yards per punt return.

Oklahoma has a wonderful quarterback in Landry Jones, but he went from throwing for 28 touchdowns in his first nine games to none in the final three. No Broyles.

Broyles' injury came a week after OU's top running back, Dominique Whaley, was KO'd for the rest of the season with a broken ankle. He averaged over 100 yards a game. Imagine if Marcus Coker ... never mind.

The Sooners ran into a chainsaw Saturday night when they faced Oklahoma State. Oklahoma is still a quality team. Iowa's team and its fans should relish this opportunity, whether deserved or not. These are bowl games, and being deserving often has little to do with them.

Iowa State (6-6) goes to the Big 12-affiliated Pinstripe Bowl in New York to face Rutgers, while Missouri is out of the Big 12 mix and goes to Shreveport, La., for the Indepenence Bowl. Mizzou is 7-5 and beat Iowa State. But the Cyclones didn't flee the Big 12.

ISU fans face hotel prices in Manhattan that are what you would call high. Like skyscrapers.

It will surely be cold, the tailgating scene may border on nonexistent, and Rutgers will have a distinct advantage in the number of fans at the game since its football stadium is a mere 46 miles from the south Bronx.

But I think the experience would be a hoot, way more interesting than those at many of the bowls I've covered in warmer regions.

Plus, you know what they say. If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere.