Purdue vs. Iowa Fun Facts: Jim Gaffigan edition

I saw an Iowa football fan having a Boilermaker last Saturday afternoon near Kinnick Stadium.

It wasn’t the Purdue variety. That’s a Fun Fact, and so are these:

1. Jeff Brohm is 3-1 against Iowa in his Purdue career as head coach, 12-19 against the rest of the Big Ten.

2. Iowa has 12 straight victories. It hasn’t won 13 in a row since winning 20 straight between 1920 and 1923. It is going for its 10th-straight Big Ten win to tie a program record, set in 2001-02.

3. Purdue has lost its last 27 road games against top-10 teams. Its last such win was 31-20 at Notre Dame in 1974.

4. Iowa leads the nation with 20 takeaways. Purdue is last/130th, with two.

5. The Hawkeyes are tied for fourth in the country in punts, with 40. The five other teams with 40 or more — New Mexico State (43), New Mexico (41), Vanderbilt (41), Connecticut (40) and Southern Mississippi (40) — have a combined record of 6-26.

6. Purdue wide receiver David Bell has 26 catches for 318 yards and four touchdowns in two games against the Hawkeyes. He leads the Big Ten in receiving yards per game with 109.8.

7. Dave Pasch will do the play-by-play for ABC’s telecast of the game. Pasch also does NBA and college basketball play-by-play for ESPN, and is Bill Walton’s perpetual foil.

8. Iowa’s Riley Moss shares the national lead in interceptions at four with Verone McKinley III of Oregon, Jermaine Waller of Virginia Tech, Jaylan Foster of South Carolina and Ja’Quan McMillian of East Carolina.

9. Purdue has scored exactly 13 points in each of its last three games.

10. Iowa is in a 10-way tie for best record in the nation against the spread at 5-1. It didn’t cover against Colorado State. The Hawkeyes failed to cover in each of their last four meetings with the Boilermakers.

11. Opponents have fumbled seven times against Purdue, but recovered each one.

12. Nine different Hawkeyes have interceptions.

13. Iowa freshman wide receiver Keagan Johnson is averaging 34.3 yards per catch. He has four receptions.

14. Iowa has allowed just one score over the last eight fourth quarters it has played.

15. The Boilermakers haven’t been better than 6-6 in the regular season since 2007. That was the last year they have been in the AP Top 25, and they haven’t been in the final AP poll of a season since 2003.

16. Iowa is the only Big Ten West team with a winning record in league play.

17. Like Iowa’s Tory Taylor, Purdue punter Jack Ansell is from Australia. Cricket was once his main sport.

18. Quinn Early is Iowa’s Homecoming marshal this weekend. He holds Iowa’s record for most receiving yards in a game with 256 against Northwestern in 1987, and shares the team record for most touchdown catches in a game (4) with Ed Hinkel.

19. Comedian Jim Gaffigan attended Purdue for a year and was a walk-on football player there. Then he transferred to Georgetown University and played football there. Gaffigan will perform in Des Moines on Nov. 7.

20. For the first time since 1979, the Boilermakers’ 100-year-old World’s Largest Drum missed a halftime performance. It wasn’t allowed to play at the Sept. 18 Purdue-Notre Dame game in South Bend because it was too tall to fit through the visiting team tunnel. Purdue brought the drum, anyway, and had it outside the stadium.