If you'd told me these things on Dec. 31, 1999 ...

The only thing worse than a year-in-review is a decade-in-review.

We were all there, with the exception of kids younger than 10. Do we need Top 10 lists or strolls down Memory Lane?

Still, for me it's always fun and useful to be reminded of how little I can foresee the future,  and how the potential to be surprised never goes away.  Here are a handful of things that, had you told me them 10 years ago, I would have suggested to pay a visit to Dr. Frasier Crane or Dr. Jennifer Melfi. They're all pretty obvious choices, so you can add with some more-thoughtful choices in the comments box.

1. Kirk Ferentz would be collecting his third Big Ten Coach of the Year award late in 2009.

At the end of the 1999 season, Ferentz's first as Iowa's head coach, the Hawkeyes were 0-8 in the Big Ten, 1-10 overall. They lost 49-3 at Michigan State, 41-3 at Wisconsin. How do you climb out of such a hole?

Methodically, that's how. Now Iowa is at its second Orange Bowl in seven years, something else that could have been added to this list.

2. Steve Alford would go from Hawkeye hero to "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Iowa fans were thrilled with the hiring of Alford as Iowa men's basketball coach prior to the 1999-2000 season. When he won his first game, against top-ranked Connecticut in Madison Square Garden, there was no doubt in many Hawkeye minds that big days weren't far off. When Iowa won the Big Ten tourney in 2001 to go to the NCAAs and then won a first-round game against Creighton, Alford Love was spread across Hawkdom.

The Hawkeyes never won another NCAA tourney game under Alford and he left for New Mexico in 2007. Rare was the Iowa fan who expressed sorrow over his sudden departure.

3. Iowa is an Olympic hotbed.

Cael Sanderson. Shawn Johnson. Gold.

Although, given the way Sanderson's Iowa State career began in 1998, it wouldn't have been much of a leap to have predicted him as a possible Olympic champion one day.

Still, Olympic wrestling champion is never a given, especially for Americans. And Shawn Johnson? An Iowa girl not only earns gold in Beijing but becomes a media celebrity of sorts after she gets home? Who'd have thunk it?

4. Cedar Rapids to Super Bowl MVP

OK, on New Year's Day 2000 Kurt Warner was three wins from a Super Bowl title with the St. Louis Rams and had already won the NFL's regular-season MVP award.

So let's say, what if you'd told me this 11 years ago.

It's not like Warner went away after the Rams' Super Bowl win at the end of January 2000. He played in two more Super Bowls, won another MVP award, and will quarterback another team in the NFL playoffs next month. Fifty years from now, people here will talk about the same Cedar Rapids high school (Regis) cranking out both a Super Bowl MVP and Masters champion. It will still seem remarkable.

5. Cedar Rapids to a Masters green jacket

Here's what I knew about Zach Johnson 10 years ago:  When he played basketball he liked to zip past guys twice his age.

I knew that because when Johnson was a Regis student, he and friends joined a weekly pickup game I played in with guys close to my own age, including Zach's dad. Zach and his friends showed up once, were greyhounds, and left clods like me gasping.

That was in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Johnson went from the Hooters Tour to the Nationwide Tour to the PGA Tour, winning at every step. In 2007, he did the barely imaginable and won the Masters. Cedar Rapids could claim the winner of a Masters.

It still seems unbelievable, even though Zach has six PGA Tour wins and is now firmly established as one of the world's great players.

OK, you tell me what happened in Iowa-related sports in the 2000s that you wouldn't have dreamed of a decade ago.

Speaking of decades, I remember reading what Casey Stengel said about a player of his named Greg Goossen when Stengel managed the horrible New York Mets in the early 1960s.

"Goossen, he's 20 years old and in 10 years, he's got a chance to be 30."