Hlas: In breaking news, Hawkeye tickets are selling

IOWA CITY - About 65,000 tickets were sold for Saturday's Illinois-Iowa football game as of early Tuesday afternoon.

It already is certain to be the largest attendance for any of Iowa's first four games this year at Kinnick Stadium, and dwarfs the crowd count at the North Texas-Iowa game of Sept. 26 by about 9,000. That's with four days left to move more product.

So like the brainiac I am, I went to the Iowa athletics ticket window in Carver-Hawkeye Arena during Tuesday's lunch hour to talk to people snapping up seats for Saturday's game. The thing is, nearly everyone buys tickets by either phone or computer.

However, some good can come from trying to communicate with other humans instead of living inside your own head. So I struck a conversation with an Iowa fan who unsuccessfully tried to use his connection as a Hawkeyes season ticket-holder to buy some tickets for friends to next week's Iowa-Northwestern game in Evanston, Ill. He already had four secured for himself.

Don Ladd is his name, and he is the technical director for the University of Iowa's Division of Performing Arts. He's in charge of the technical aspects of dance, opera, and other music and theater programs at the school. He has had season tickets for Hawkeye football since he was a student in 1985.

He sounded like what I would call a clear-eyed fan. He doesn't believe his team can do no wrong, but he strongly feels those who criticize college athletes for their play are wrongheaded.

That was good to hear after some of the sludge I read from Wisconsin fans in reference to how Badgers quarterback Joel Stave performed against Iowa last Saturday. Similar things have been said over the years by Hawkeye fans about Hawkeye athletes, by Nebraska fans about theirs, by Ohio State fans about theirs, and on and on.

'Once in a while in the stands,” Ladd said, 'some people around me will get to yelling and screaming. Yell at the coaches, not at the kids. They're 19 and 20 years old. I've got them in class. You get a kid on stage in a performance and they'll screw something up, that's just ...

He didn't need to finish the sentence. That's just being young and imperfect.

'People tend to forget it's college sports because there's so much money in it,” Ladd said. 'They're just kids.”

And yet, he added, 'I would say the thing I've noticed is how much more mature the kids are now. They seem to grow up a lot faster. It's funny, because people talk about it the opposite way.

'Now it's 24/7 media. The (football players) can't get away from it. It's just amazing to me the stuff they have to deal with.”

As for Kirk Ferentz's Iowa team and its 5-0 start, Ladd is enthusiastic without being over the moon.

'I think people are still in wait-and-see mode,” he said. 'I've been a longtime fan and was disappointed in the last couple years.

'But I think (this season's results) shows Ferentz's adjustments with his assistant coaches is starting to pay some dividends, especially on the defensive side of the ball. I don't see the same mistakes I've seen in the last couple years, guys out of position, guys missing assignments, things like that.

'Everything's looking up a little bit. There's a big group of us who have had tickets for a long time. People are happier. There seems to be a refocus on football. I think everybody had gotten kind of tired. It got kind of stale.”

About 65,000 people are looking forward to Saturday. Maybe even 66,000 or 67,000. There's nothing stale about being 5-0 with a good shot at 6-0.

Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com