So far, hype not on Iowa's list of opponents

IOWA CITY — It's interesting what hangs or doesn't hang over the head of football teams entering each season.

Four years ago, Iowa wore its No. 9 national preseason ranking like a crown ... of thorns. When the Hawkeyes dropped their final three regular-season games and took a 7-5 record to the Insight Bowl, it marked what remains the most-disappointing Iowa season of the millennium.

No one has stamped 'Super Team' on the 2014 Hawkeyes. They aren't even in the coaches poll's preseason Top 25. (Neither were Auburn, Michigan State or Missouri last year.)

But buzz about Iowa has grown this summer. ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit picks it to win the Big Ten West and he isn't alone. A veteran multimedia Big Ten chronicler in Michigan told me he's predicting an 11-1 mark for the Hawkeyes.

However, Monday's Media Day mood here seemed without an ominous presence of great expectations. No one was talking about Iowa making a run at its first football division title, and I didn't hear any rude media creature even ask about it. It's as if everyone is willing to see how the season plays out rather than make sweeping statements about it in August. What a concept.

There may be several reasons for a somewhat low-key atmosphere hovering over a team that would seem to have at least some reasons to expect big things.

For one thing, Iowa's coming off an 8-5 year, not the 11-2 season and No. 7 final national-ranking the 2010 team enjoyed the season before.

For another, when you're just two summers removed from a 4-8 year, you still walk and talk gingerly.

For another, Iowa's headline player as of now isn't a quarterback or running back or a defensive monster. It's an offensive tackle, Brandon Scherff. You aren't marketing a potential fairy tale year when your feature player is an offensive lineman. You're selling one play at a time, one game at a time.

Which makes me think this could be a big year in Hawkeyeland, because this looks like a Ferentzian vision of how to enter a season. Hype? What hype?

But the team has a now-veteran quarterback-center combination, good offensive and defensive lines, and a meat-and-potatoes approach with senior leaders who haven't spent their free time marketing themselves.

Poor Scherff. All the guy wants to do is power-lift small houses and lay waste to defensive linemen, and they're making him talk about himself in public. His fellow offensive linemen find it amusing.

'We definitely joke with him about it,' said Iowa junior center Austin Blythe, who may get his turn in the preseason spotlight next summer.

'We always say we want to go to the media or go out in public with Scherff just because 'You'll get all the attention, anyway.' We'll just be hanging out, doing whatever, so we don't have to worry about it.'

Four summers ago, my company put out a preseason magazine about the 2010 Hawkeyes called 'If the Stars Align.' You saw it if you patronized a certain supermarket chain. Otherwise, probably not.

Which was fitting given the ill-fated nature of that team. It got promoted into orbit in July, and crashed back to earth in November.

There are no preseason magazines about these Hawkeyes. Which is fine. Because it's always a better story when a team has, you know, done something.

And as for Scherff taking ribbing from his teammates about being the focal point?

'He just kind of chuckles,' Blythe said. 'He shakes his head and goes about his business.'

Maybe this season's Hawkeye stars are already aligned.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@sourcemedia.net