Hawkeyes, Gophers have much more on the line this week than a fabulous pig

The subject here is the Iowa football team, and this week in Hawk Talk is almost too much to wrap one’s mind around.

It’s hard enough to put the Hawkeyes beating Wisconsin 24-10 Saturday with just 146 yards of offense into any kind of perspective, because it’s simply not done. Yet, it was.

But Saturday turned into Sunday, and now we’re faced the very real possibility that the team with the nation’s No. 130 offense is two wins from a second-straight Big Ten West title. That is just the kind of thing that gets election-deniers all lathered up.

The math and the league’s tiebreakers spell it out pretty clearly, though. Win at Minnesota Saturday, beat Nebraska at Kinnick Stadium the following Friday, and Iowa returns to Indianapolis on the first Saturday of December to play a 12-0 Michigan or Ohio State.

There remains the little matter of getting it done at Minnesota’s campus stadium. Saturday’s high there is projected to be 20 degrees, obviously dipping as daylight gives way to darkness in the 3 p.m. clash.

The game will be on Fox, and it should come with parental warnings. This will be cave man stuff, bearing little resemblance to the game that has evolved over the decades in which the football is thrown and caught and moves forward with frequency.

On the visitors’ sideline will be the Hawkeyes of Iowa, who have passed for just five touchdowns in 10 games and threw for a mere 94 yards against Wisconsin, but didn’t sabotage themselves with a costly interception returned for a touchdown like the Badgers did.

On the home sideline will be the Gophers of Minnesota, who have passed for just eight touchdowns in 10 games and threw for a mere 64 yards Saturday in their 31-3 home win over Northwestern.

The Gophers played freshman quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis because vet Tanner Morgan was out with an upper-body injury. The rookie completed seven passes for a total of 64 yards, and didn’t sabotage his team with an interception.

Minnesota ran the ball 56 times, with senior Mohamed Ibrahim recording his 18th-straight 100-yard game.

There’s the difference between the Gophers and the Hawkeyes. Minnesota does move the ball.

However, the Gophers totaled just 180 yards and lost 26-14 when they met Illinois, which has one of the nation’s few defenses that can rival Iowa’s.

The Hawkeyes will face a defense Saturday is pretty uncompromising itself. Minnesota is fourth in the nation in scoring defense, Iowa fifth. The Hawkeyes are third in total defense, the Gophers eighth.

There it is. Two elite defenses against two one-dimensional offenses. If you hear actual identifiable words spoken by players, it’s strictly by accident. Communication will be done by hand-motions and grunts. Cave man stuff, you know.

And it will be deeply meaningful to both teams. Iowa wants to continue its resilience, going from being a subject of ridicule last month to a “Can you believe this?” late-season story.

To win the West, Minnesota needs to sweep Iowa and Wisconsin, then have Purdue gets upset at Indiana on the season’s final Saturday, because Northwestern sure won’t bop the Boilermakers Saturday. Oh, Illinois also would have to lose at Michigan Saturday, which seems like a 99.4 percent likelihood.

Just tying for first-place would mark the first time a Gophers football team had done so since 1967, its last championship season. To take a big step toward that by beating Iowa for the first time in the P.J. Fleck era? Oh, how that would play well in the Land of 11,842 Lakes.

Now, let’s get something straight for this week and be done with it. Iowa does not control its destiny in the West no matter how many times you’re told otherwise this week by local television creatures or anyone else.

Destiny, as the word suggests, is something to which a person or thing is destined. It’s predetermined. In other words, it doesn’t exist.

If destiny were a thing, you couldn’t control it any more than traffic, natural disasters, or the unholy number of commercials Fox jams into its college football telecasts.

Oh, I almost forgot the obligatory mention: Floyd of Rosedale. What a pig!

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