Prime time times two: Hawkeyes and Cyclones have hot fun ahead at home this week

Bundle up, everybody. Things are about to get cold this weekend.

Weather Channel says Friday’s low temperature in Iowa City will be 16 degrees and Saturday’s low in Ames will be 9.

Just how many people will really care about that Friday night in Kinnick Stadium and Saturday night in Jack Trice Stadium is unclear. The football games there have plenty of juice.

The Nebraska-Iowa Black Friday series came with great expectations when it began in 2011. They have never materialized, primarily seldom has there been a lot at stake for both teams. That’s almost entirely been Nebraska’s fault.

The Huskers slid from that went either 9-4 or 10-4 from all but one season between 2008 and 2016 to an outfit that somehow managed not to be bowl-eligible once from 2017 through 2023.

That sad state of affairs was accentuated Saturday when Nebraska fans stormed the Memorial Stadium field after their team beat Wisconsin 44-25 to get to 6-5 and become bowl-eligible for the first time since 2016. It also ended the Huskers’ 10-game losing streak to the Badgers.

So Nebraska comes to Iowa Friday feeling good. The Hawkeyes feel good themselves after dominating Maryland 29-13 on the road. Bad things didn’t snowball from their UCLA loss in their previous game, and 7-4 Iowa can go out in style if it sends Nebraska to a bowl with a 6-6 record.

This may be a game to decide who represents the Big Ten in the Dec. 31 Tampa bowl, now called the Reliaquest. It had representatives in Lincoln Saturday. It has always liked Iowa, as six previous invitations indicate, and Husker fans will flock there if invited.

So, Nebraska-Iowa has two teams with their heads above water. That isn’t exactly a typical Alabama-Georgia or Ohio State-Michigan scenario, but it could be worse. Like the last eight years.

Playing the game in prime time for the first time can only make it more of a spectacle.

It’s probably the last time fans will get to see Kaleb Johnson run with the football in Kinnick. Much has been said about him, but that’s because it should have been. After two years of dreadful offense, Iowa got a palate-cleanser in Johnson and the blocking he’s gotten.

Johnson’s 1,492 rushing yards and 6.7 yards per carry are whopping numbers, ranking second and third in the nation, respectively. Since the Big Ten started honoring a Running Back of the Year in 2011, no Hawkeye has won it. Johnson changes that next week.

On to Saturday night in Ames, where a night of 15-degree weather won’t chill a crowd wanting to see Iowa State clinch a share of the Big 12’s regular-season title and almost surely advance to the league title-game.

It is possible the Cyclones wouldn’t go to Arlington even if they win Saturday, but the odds are very, very much against it.

The trouble for Iowa State is that its Saturday opponent is 8-3 Kansas State. You’d rather have Oklahoma State, Houston or Arizona, the final-week foes of the other first-place teams, Colorado, BYU and Arizona State.

Nonetheless, it will be Nov. 30 and the Cyclones will be playing for first-place and a program-record 10th win. They did almost everything they could to self-destruct at Utah Saturday, but put together a game-winning 75-yard drive when it was required.

“I had no doubt we’d go down there and score,” ISU quarterback Rocco Becht said in a postgame interview on the Cyclone Radio Network.

The thing is, he meant it.

The Cyclones are 2-point favorites this week. The oddsmakers know 8-3 K-State is legit. If you’re going to play for something big, you might as well do it against a quality opponent and enter the Big 12 title game through the front door.

The nervous energy and excitement that courses through the parking lots at Trice in the hours before the game and in the stadium during it will be something else.

A league-title game? A win in that to reach the College Football Playoff?

No one who has watched a moment of Big 12 football this season looks that far ahead or takes anything for granted. Saturday against Kansas State is the season. Just like Iowa’s game with Nebraska the night before means more than anything the Hawkeyes will face a month later in a bowl.

Bundle up, everybody. Things are about to get red-hot this week.

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