11 months of Iowa Hawkeyes rage: The unfairest “fair catch” in world history?

It wasn’t a fair catch.

It was, however, an invalid fair catch signal.

It inflamed Iowans, yet Minnesotans seemed fully able to shrug it off with a giggle. If there is injustice anywhere, shouldn’t everyone be upset?

On the other hand, if an official appointed to decide such cases reviews the evidence and then makes a ruling, shouldn’t everyone accept it instead of calling the result invalid and the system rigged? Yeah, right.

A man wearing a Hawkeyes T-shirt in Phoenix held up a makeshift sign behind home plate at last year’s Game 3 of the World Series between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks that said “It Wasn’t a Fair Catch.” The sign was seen by millions.

Which leads to another question: Texas and Arizona were in the World Series last year? Who knew?

Time flies. It’s been 11 months of screeching and hang-wringing over Cooper DeJean’s 54-yard return of a punt for a touchdown that wasn’t a touchdown following his invalid fair catch signal that wasn’t intended to be a fair catch signal. Already, we have arrived at another Iowa-Minnesota game.

The two teams play each other every year, in fact. That leads one to wonder how any of their meetings could be especially meaningful. They’re just going to play again next year.

The reaction to the play getting called dead because DeJean was pointing with his right arm while waving his left arm (below his waist, to instruct teammates to stay away from the bouncing punt) was instructional in another way. Namely, how people respond when something doesn’t go their way when they don’t understand the reason and may not be interested in learning it.

“Once any waving happens, the ball is going to be dead,” Bill Carollo, the Big Ten’s coordinator of football officials, said this summer.

“You can point, but you can’t point one arm and then wave the other way to get away.”

DeJean picked up the bouncing ball and proceeded to make one of the most remarkable plays a Hawkeye has ever made. How he spun out of an attempted tackle, eluded a horde of charging Gophers, and then tight-roped the sideline before sprinting free was amazing.

At first, the review of the play seemed a formality to make sure DeJean hadn’t gone out of bounds, not that anyone thought he had. The longer the review, the weirder things felt in Kinnick Stadium. Then came the ruling, and minutes of rapture yielded to months of rage.

Minnesota led 12-10 with 1:32 left, and Iowa had the ball at its 46-yard line after DeJean’s return had been negated and the play had been ruled dead. So, it wasn’t as if the Hawkeyes couldn’t win. They needed to go just 20 yards or so to give Drew Stevens a decent shot at a field goal.

Instead, they went backward 7 yards in two plays, and were intercepted on the third. The Hawkeyes lost. The replay official got credit for it in Iowa minds, not the Gophers.

Never mind Iowa couldn’t go those 20 yards. Never mind it had a puny 127 yards in the game. It was that one call. It wasn’t a fair catch!

No, it wasn’t. It was an invalid fair catch signal.

“What was controversial about that game?” Gophers Coach P.J. Fleck said at the Big Ten football media days in July. “It was an illegal fair-catch signal.”

“We got screwed, OK? I’m just gonna tell you we got screwed on that one by the replay system,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said last November, following his team’s 13-10 win at Nebraska. It was a month after the Minnesota game.

“That’s still the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen the last, what, quarter-century?”

Ferentz must have been blissfully unaware of people giving psychic readings on TikTok, or Kid Rock shooting cans of Bud Light with an assault-style rifle.

“It Wasn’t a Fair Catch” T-shirts flew off the shelves in Iowa. The Dinkytown Athletes NIL collective in Minnesota sold shirts, too. Theirs had Floyd of Rosedale on the front and the NCAA rule about invalid signals on the back.

A prediction for Saturday night’s game: If a questionable officiating decision affects the result, one fan base will be furious while the other will sing “Qué será, será. Whatever will be, will be.”

The pig will remain indifferent.

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