This year, the hype setting for Cyclones-Hawkeyes is on low

After one week, college football national statistics are little more than oddities.

How can you compare, say, Minnesota with Purdue, when the Gophers played lowly New Mexico State while the Boilermakers battled Penn State?

So let’s just call the following Fun With Numbers. Or, Torture With Numbers, depending on your point of view.

Of the 128 FBS teams that had a played a game through Saturday, Iowa ranked first in safeties, tied for second in fewest first downs allowed, tied for seventh in total defense, ninth in rushing defense, tied for 10th in scoring defense, and 11th in passing efficiency defense.

Hey, that’s pretty darn good considering the Hawkeyes played South Dakota State, a program that has been to the FCS national-title game and semifinals in its last two seasons.

But in the words of the late, great Harry Chapin, as the summer follows spring so does the winter follow fall.

The Hawkeyes are 120th in rushing offense, tied for 121st in scoring offense, tied for 124th in passing offense, tied for 124th in plays of 10 yards or more, 125th in passing efficiency, and 126th in total offense.

And regarding South Dakota State again, it had 63 scholarship players to Iowa’s 85. That sort of negates using injuries to a No. 1 running back and No. 1 receiver as excuses for Iowa.

Had the Hawkeyes not finished last season 121st in total offense with perhaps the best center in program history in Tyler Linderbaum, we could more easily accept Saturday’s effort as opening-day bumps against a quality opponent. But we’ve seen this movie before.

Another movie we’ve seen repeatedly the last six times they’ve met is Iowa defeating Iowa State. The Hawkeyes won 27-17 in Ames last year despite gaining the paltry sum of 173 yards to the Cyclones’ 339.

That was when Iowa State had Brock Purdy at quarterback and Breece Hall at running back. Both are now drawing NFL salaries.

While Hunter Dekkers made his first college start Saturday when the Cyclones cruised past Southeast Missouri State, 42-10, he did throw 16 passes in last year’s Iowa-ISU game.

Dekkers is from Hawarden, in Iowa’s northwest corner. He has four touchdown passes this season, four times as many as the Hawkeyes have over their last five games.

Iowa’s defense in Kinnick is a completely different animal than Southeast Missouri State’s. Saturday’s Cyclones-Hawkeyes game has the potential to be 3-3 late in the third quarter. Who will get the first safety to obtain a 5-3 victory?

The hype for last year’s meeting between the two was its loudest in decades. Iowa State came in ranked ninth, Iowa 10th. ESPN’s College GameDay was at Ames. The game fell way short of the hoopla, though the Hawkeyes certainly enjoyed their 27-17 triumph.

This year’s won’t have so much rattle this week. Neither team is ranked. The game is on BTN. College GameDay is in Austin for Alabama-Texas. Ashton Kutcher will be preoccupied with some other shiny object. ISU-Iowa is our little provincial affair again.

Good. This isn’t a big-stage game. It’s at its best — which hasn’t been often — when no one beyond our borders paid attention.

National writers and broadcasters parachuted in last year to do pregame features on the rise of Matt Campbell’s Iowa State program, and they didn’t ignore the Hawkeyes, either. Iowa finished the season ranked 23rd and Iowa State was unranked.

Hawkeye people have questions about if their offense will ever see the red zone again, and maybe some Cyclone folks wonder if they’ll ever see another win over Iowa.

Again, good. Revel in your doubts and insecurities, fans of both teams. Go to sleep every night this week expecting a calamity Saturday that will get you mocked by your friends on the other side.

Then, and only then, will we able to have a showstopper of a game Saturday that no one could have seen coming, a Cy-Hawk contest for the ages.

Maybe one of the offenses will even score a touchdown.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com