Friday Reading Room -- Hawkeyes could spend New Year's Eve with Lady Gaga

Her name is Lady Gaga. Well, that's not her real name. That would be Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Which I always thought were the names of the Bangles.

And no, Lady Gaga isn't the wife of Lord Gaga.

Lady Gaga is a singer/performer. She also is a self-described fame monster. At least that's the name of her tour. She was one of Barbara Walters' 10 most fascinating people of 2009.

Here's Baba and Gaga:

Ms. Gaga will be performing (she's a singer) at LIV Nightclub at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach on New Year's Eve. The Iowa football team will be staying in that famed monster of a hotel for over a week. It's the Hawkeyes' Orange Bowl home.

Lady Gaga will be in concert earlier New Year's Eve night at the James L. Knight Center in Miami. Then she'll cross the causeway into Miami Beach and light up the night at the Hawkeyes' hotel.

What I'm wondering is if any Iowa players will gain access to LIV. Surely a college kid isn't going to be able to afford the entrance into the hotel's pool deck that evening.

As this Web site tells us, tickets, tables and cabanas to the poolside event range from $375.00 to $35,000. That's right, 35 grand.

For guests seeking ultra-VIP treatment, the nightclub offers six private skyboxes, each featuring European bottle service, a mini-bar and banquettes with secured purse drawers. A voyeuristic design throughout the nightclub allows people to see the entire venue from almost every point in the room, while edgy performance vignettes heat up the night with the nightclub scene's sexiest dancers.

Just a wild guess here, but I'm figuring Kirk Ferentz, Ken O'Keefe and Norm Parker are among hotel guests who won't be slipping into LIV that night. Or any other.

(By the way, here are two Twitter adds for you to consider: @ladygaga and @hlas.)

For those who will be in south Florida in the days leading up to the Orange Bowl, there is much-squarer musical entertainment available. And it's far more dated.

The Commodores will be at Miami's Magic City Casino on Jan. 2. For a 2 p.m. show. Minus Lionel Richie.

Somehow, I suspect that Magic City scene will be different than the one at LIV with Lady Gaga.

The featured act at the Orange Bowl Fan Fest in Miami on Jan. 4 is Kool and the Gang. Like the Commodores, they had their days in the sun, oh, decades ago.

Kool and the Gang will also be part of what is annually the longest halftime show in all of football, the Orange Bowl's production. Or maybe it just seems that way.

If you can't make it to the Orange Bowl, but are in Cuba from Dec. 19-22, Kool and the Gang will be there then. Plan accordingly. As their calendar tells us, they are also booked in 2010 for shows in Santa Fe, N.M., Singapore and Bangkok.

If you're willing to drive just a little to the north from Fort Lauderdale, Frank Sinatra Jr. will be singing some of his dad's songs on Jan. 2 and 3 in West Palm Beach and on Jan. 4 in Palm Beach Gardens. He'll be at Boca Raton on Jan. 6-8. Details are listed here.

He's taking Jan. 5, the night of the Orange Bowl, off. Which is a thoughtful gesture.

Yes, this is a little sports-light today. Don't expect a constant torrent of news about the Orange Bowl. It's over two weeks until the teams head to Miami, and the game is still 25 days away.

Iowa and Iowa State meet tonight in men's basketball. Never can I remember so little buzz leading up to a Hawkeyes-Cyclones game. In any sport.

Nonetheless, I shall add something about . . . Georgia Tech football.

If you want a good idea of what Iowa's defense will face on Jan. 5, watch the Army-Navy game on Saturday.

This Washington Post story details how Army and Navy both run the triple-option offense.

Whenever he gets the chance, Army Coach Rich Ellerson watches the football teams from Navy and Georgia Tech on television. He does so partly because of his long-standing friendships with those teams' coaches, Ken Niumatalolo and Paul Johnson. But Ellerson is also curious: His team, like Niumatalolo's and Johnson's, employs the triple-option offense.

"We try to see what kind of answers people are coming up with [to defend it] along the way," said Ellerson, who is in his first season as Army's head coach. "We all have a little different spin on it, we all have different assets to play with. There is no doubt that if this is a family tree, the patriarch is Paul Johnson."

Navy led the nation in rushing for the four straight years before this one. Johnson was its coach for the first three of those years. Georgia Tech is second, Navy third, and Army 14th in rushing this season, as

these NCAA statistics detail.