Is Northwestern game a must-win for Hawkeyes? You better believe it.

The mass of men — and Mr. Thoreau shouldn’t have excluded women — live lives of quiet desperation.

Unless you live your life in public. Then things can get mighty loud.

For the loser now will be later to win, wrote Mr. Dylan. He neglected to mention the opposite also is true.

The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s rump every day, said Mr. Fry. Now that is universal truth.

Enough procrastinating. This is written for our GameDay newspaper section, and there’s a game Saturday in Iowa City. Northwestern will play Iowa in football. There, I said it.

Things will happen. Based on this season’s seven previous games from both teams, those things will be weird.

It’s weird Northwestern’s only win this season was in Ireland. It’s weird that a major-college football team playing in an era of the forward pass scored just seven points in each of two consecutive losses this month, but the Wildcats did.

It’s weird that finishing a game at 1:30 a.m., which Iowa did against Nevada in September, isn’t automatically the strangest thing involving the Hawkeyes this season.

For the first time since 1978, Iowa hasn’t tallied an offensive touchdown in two straight games. Weird, huh?

It’s weird the Wildcats are 5-16 since they showed up in Indianapolis for the 2020 Big Ten championship game and the Hawkeyes are 3-6 since they arrived in Indy for last year’s title tilt.

Since when is winning the Big Ten West the equivalent of being born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eyes?

The following may or may not have been weird, but it certainly was different. Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz responded to a specific questioner at Ohio State with unflattering comments three days later, took some heat for it, and issued an email apology the next night.

The apology was to the Iowa media, which didn’t want or need one, not the specific questioner from Ohio. Whose “tone,” as Ferentz said Wednesday night on his weekly radio call-in show, he didn’t appreciate.

He wouldn’t have liked the tone of a lot of people in a lot of different places this week.

“It is my favorite part of the weekend to watch Iowa,” Dan Le Batard said Wednesday on his Apple TV+ show/podcast.

“Imagine my delight during this (Ohio State) game when I’m tuning in specifically just to see Iowa be bad at offense and on the first play the quarterback drops back confidently and throws it right to the linebacker.

“And then when they bench him the next quarterback that comes in immediately fumbles the first snap.

“Brian Ferentz has been his offensive coordinator for six years. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen, their offense in college sports, and I watched a decade of Kansas football.”

Chris Wittyngham, one of Le Batard’s on-air people, said “Iowa’s defense is amazing.” But that was the only positive comment about the team in nine minutes of discussion.

“You work ostensibly in entertainment and provide the opposite of it,” said another of Le Batard’s panelists.

“The ways that Kirk Ferentz is going to protect his son,” Le Batard said, “by creating great defense, by playing a style of play that tries to hide what has been a resume that would get a lot of people fired.”

That was just one show of many. When you’re on network television as Iowa was in its 54-10 loss at Ohio State and do what the Hawkeyes did on offense, you’ll receive a lot of bad tone.

Hey, maybe the darkest hour really is just before the dawn. The Hawkeyes’ remaining five opponents are garden snakes more than king cobras, and Iowa can still win its way to something like the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

Whether getting from 3-4 to college football’s salute to mayonnaise would change the narrative isn’t the point. It’s trying to shake off the horror show people saw on Fox last Saturday in Columbus, and sending national people off to the next curious thing.

Saturday is as golden an opportunity as the Hawkeyes can get to muffle the derisive drumbeat. The Wildcats have led lives of quiet desperation compared to Iowa, but are one of the worst teams in all the Power Five conferences.

Iowa is a double-digit favorite for reasons. Oh, how it needs to prove the oddsmakers correct.

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