Hlas column: Hawkeyes go from Miami to higher ground

MIAMI - Bright orange will warm a lot of hearts in frigid Iowa today, the rest of this winter, and for a long time after that.

The 2009 Iowa Hawkeyes not only validated everything they did in winning 10 regular-season games and pushing Rose Bowl-champion Ohio State to the limit, but added to it in Land Shark Stadium last night.

Their 24-14 Orange Bowl victory over Georgia Tech made the Hawkeyes college football kings for a night, and royalty for this off-season, if not longer. This was Iowa applying for a seat at the table of college football's upper crust.

The Hawkeyes came to south Florida as underdogs against the champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They left as someone who did the Big Ten, old-time smash-mouth football, and especially themselves, proud.

It couldn't come easily, of course, and it didn't. Oh, it definitely did not.

It couldn't come without a key player (receiver Derrell Johnson-Koulianos) missing much of the game with an injury. It couldn't come without a Ricky Stanzi pass intercepted and returned for a touchdown.

It couldn't come without one of America's most-productive offenses waking up and gouging the Iowa defense on a few second-half drives.

But for the Hawkeyes to have blown out Georgia Tech on the scoreboard would have rewritten a season-long script that really didn't need editing. Letting doubt creep in before bolting the door on victories is what Iowa does.

It just made for better television for Fox.

When pits may have been growing in Hawkeye stomachs, Iowa's defense gathered itself and reigned in the Yellow Jackets.

You pick your play of the game. I'll take the first down for Tech at its 12 with 6:46 left.

Running back Jonathan Dwyer, the 2008 ACC Player of the Year and an all-league performer this

 season, was running like a Yellow Jacket with its head cut off. How he avoided getting tackled for a safety is a credit to him, but he got collared at the Tech 1.

All the momentum the Jackets had wrested was gone. They ended up with what had been a strange, new, first-half habit for them. A 3-and-out.

Iowa regained possession with 4:54 left after a Jackets punt. The offense, led by a fine personal comeback performance by quarterback Ricky Stanzi, put this game in abnormally chilly Miami weather on ice.

When freshman Brandon Wegher darted through a gaping hole for a 32-yard touchdown run with 1:56 left, every voice heard in Land Shark was a Hawkeye's, and they were loud.

The roars went on long after that score, here and in an even-colder place a thousand miles to the northwest.

On the huge stage of the Fox network, consider the goodies the Hawkeyes collected this night:

BCS-Bowl Win No. 1.

A chance at topping Iowa's No. 8 spots in the final Associated Press rankings of 2002, 2003 and 2004.

The second 11-win season in school history.

A liftoff to dreams of what could happen when the 2010 season's bell rings, with so many vital components of this team returning.

The kind of attention and glory Ohio State and Boise State had already earned with their BCS-bowl triumphs.

But that's all factoids, statistics, stuff. This is something bigger.

Iowa, for the first time in a half-century, won a major bowl. It outplayed a BCS conference's champion, enforced its will for much of the game, turned a highly touted offense into a mostly frustrated unit.

Junior Hawkeye defensive end Adrian Clayborn couldn't be blamed for rethinking his NFL draft status. He said he's staying put, and he will. But what a reel of highlight film he assembled for one and all in the pros.

When a Josh Nesbitt pass was just over the reach of Iowa's Pat Angerer midway through the fourth quarter, it nestled behind Angerer in the hands of fellow senior linebacker A.J. Edds. That was the play that got Iowa back on track, a track it stayed on to the game's conclusion.

But without enough offensive flair to go with the great defense, Tech would have won this game. Stanzi, for someone who hadn't played since early November, was terrific. His passes were sharp. His feet were, yes, fleet.

On a 3rd-and-7 early in the final quarter, Stanzi actually outran and eluded the Jackets' wonderful defensive end, Derrick Morgan for eight yards. It extended a drive that eventually led to a punt, but it was a punt that pinned Tech at its 10 and immediately preceded Nesbitt's interception.

After the game, all the Hawkeyes climbed aboard a makeshift stage at midfield and got a big trophy.

They got much more than that. They climbed into the highest place they've occupied in 50 years.

Orange. A real good color in Iowa for a real long time.