Hlas column: Will the Northwestern-Iowa football game be a prime-time exorcism?

Had I asked this question to Iowa fans anytime in the previous 100 years, the answer would have been “Are you nuts?”

Especially since neither they nor I were alive for a considerable part of that time frame. But I'll ask it now.

Is there any team on the Hawkeyes' 2011 schedule you want to beat more than Northwestern?

Sure, there's Nebraska. Never will you find a more-heated rivalry between teams that haven't played each other in over a decade, and just twice in the last 28 years. And, losing to Iowa State never sits well in Hawkdom. You always want to beat Michigan, and who among you could abide a second-straight defeat at Minnesota?

But this thing with Northwestern ... could you Hawks stomach yet another loss to the Wildcats? The hand-wringing, head-hanging and expletive-flying after Northwestern's come-from-behind 21-17 win over Iowa in Evanston last year was bad enough.

Losing to Northwestern surely cost the Hawkeyes a better bowl game last year. It cost them a 10-0 record in 2009.

Yes, that private school with the smaller enrollment, no bowl win since 1948, and the rickety stadium Iowa fans love to mock has won three games in a row from Iowa and five of the last six. It isn't like the Wildcats have owned the rest of the Big Ten in that time. They were 23-25 in league play in those six years. Iowa was 26-22.

Not once in those last five times when NU downed the Hawkeyes did the ‘Cats end up with a better overall record than Iowa.

In four of those five years Northwestern beat Iowa, it lost the next week by scores of 48-7, 54-10, 37-20 and 48-27.

The Hawkeyes have had 24 players selected in the NFL draft since 2006, 11 in the first three rounds. Northwestern has had six players drafted since ‘06, none higher than the fourth round.

So this opponent has driven you Hawks mad. It doesn't help that the coach of the Wildcats through most of this period of dominance, Pat Fitzgerald, wasn't old enough to be elected president until 18 months ago.

Why am I torturing you with this history in May? Especially when you had enough to handle this weekend hoping Judgment

Day turned out to merely be the second-coming of Y2K.

It's because the Big Ten Network turned up the juice on this Oct. 15 Northwestern-Iowa deal Thursday when it put this game on its prime-time schedule. It won't be an ordinary atmosphere in Kinnick Stadium that night. There will be a figurative bloodlust in the grandstands.

Things will be raw, folks. Something about night games brings out the - let's be gentle and call it emotion - in fans. The built-up venom of Iowa followers toward their purple tormentors will pound right through televisions across the region.

Many Hawkeye fans feel this run of losing to Northwestern is a demon to be exorcised, and none of the exorcisms I've attended were sedate. Having all those hours on that Saturday to “prepare” themselves for the game should leave some of those fans (particularly those in the student section) really craving a good purification by kickoff.

All of which should confuse viewers from neutral states. Why are those people so worked up, they might ask. It's just Northwestern, not Ohio State or Wisconsin or Michigan or Penn State.

That's what they used to say in Iowa, too.