On Iowa Daily Briefing 5.1.12 -- Four months till kickoff

Since Iowa begins its 2012 football season four months from today, let's talk football preseason rankings. And basketball preseason rankings.

Things are cyclical in both sports. Sure, the SEC has won six straight BCS championships. That isn't cyclic, that's dynastic. But this is On Iowa Daily Briefing, not On Arkansas Daily Briefing. We're focused on the Big Ten here.

(If it were On Arkansas Daily Briefing, we wouldn't be obsessed with much else but Bobby Petrino, the man, the myth, the motorcycle.)

The point is, ESPN has preseason Top 25s for football (College Football Live) in 2012 and men's basketball (Andy Katz) in 2012-13. And while things don't look quite as promising in football for the conference as it has in some years, it looks really good in men's basketball. And hey, what's the SEC done lately in men's basketball? Oh, yeah. Kentucky. Never mind.

College Football Live has five Big Ten teams ranked in its 2012 preseason rankings, and five is a lot. However, the SEC has five teams among the top nine. The Big Ten's highest team is No. 10 Michigan. Then come No. 12 Michigan State, No. 16 Wisconsin, No. 17 Nebraska and No. 20 Ohio State.

Wisconsin was the highest-ranked Big Ten team in the final Associated Press poll for the 2011 season, at No. 10. Michigan State was 11th, Michigan 12th, and Nebraska 24th.

It had been 10 years since the last time no Big Ten was ranked higher than 10th in the AP postseason rankings.

Going from a postseason with no team ranked above 10th to a preseason with no team ranked above 10th ... that's not glorious for the Big Ten.

Men's basketball, however, is a different story.

Katz's most-recent preseason Top 25 paints the Big Ten as a league that will be killer in the winter ahead, and the nation will agree if it doesn't already. At No. 1, Katz has Indiana. At No. 5, Michigan. At No. 8, Ohio State. And at No. 9, Michigan State. Throw in No. 22 Wisconsin and No. 25 Minnesota, and you have quite the hoops haven.

Any league with Cody Zeller and Trey Burke and Deshaun Thomas and Christian Watford and Aaron Craft and Tim Hardaway Jr. and Adreian Payne, to name but a few, has players.

Compare that to AP's preseason Top 25 last October, when the Big Ten had just three teams ranked, and only one (No. 3 Ohio State) among the top 14.

So what about Iowa? Well, teams that go 7-6 and 18-17 generally don't get a lot of national bounce for the upcoming season. But that's why they play the games, eh?

If it's any consolation to you Hawkeyes in the audience, seven teams that finished last season in the football Top 25 didn't start there, including Michigan, which went 11-2.

As Mark Twain, Jane Austen and Plato all said, that's why they play the games.

-- Mike Hlas

LOOK AT HIM NOW

-- An astute poster on HawkeyeReport.com picked up on a quick moment in a segment on the Green Bay Packers during the draft last weekend.

The name Richey Williams was heard. He's now Richmond Williams, but he was the Richey Williams who lettered for the Hawkeyes in 2005, a defensive back recruit from South Carolina.

He got his first taste of behind the scenes with the Hawkeyes as a volunteer assistant with Iowa in 2007. He's also former Iowa DT Colin Cole's brother-in-law and is the director of football ops for the Cole Group, an organization formed by Colin and his wife, Kay, that provides consultation services to high school student-athletes.

Williams is based in Dallas and has been with the Packers for four seasons. Good pick up!

-- Marc Morehouse

LINKIN'

-- I don't know if our friends at the Detroit Free Press paid attention to Riley Reiff when he was an Iowa offensive tackle, but now that Reiff is the Detroit Lions' first-round draftee, the Freep has zeroed in on the life and times of young Riley.

Actually, Dave Birkett of the Freep put together a good feature on Reiff and his roots in a short period of time.

-- Most college football coaches have to go on tub-thumping caravans in late spring. You give your stump speech at a dozen or two stops, and shake some hands and money trees. Iowa has its I-Club circuit for that purpose.

It's great to be here, the coaches and athletic department people say a thousand times and a thousand more times after that. Great to be here.

Penn State hasn't done much of that lately. Hasn't had to. It was a program that pretty much sold itself, with Joe Paterno.

But with a need to restore its image and get Nittany Lion fans excited about new head coach Bill O'Brien, it's caravan time. And what a caravan O'Brien began Monday in Philadelphia. Nine days on the road, and 18 stops that include events in Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.

"Joe was a living legend, and the head football coach for nearly 50 years. I'm not sure how many caravans he had to do," O'Brien said recently. "I think I have to reach out to make sure people get to know me."

-- Should college football be banned?

Slate.com is hosting a forum on May 8 to debate that question. "Friday Night Lights" author and Twitter legend Buzz Bissinger will be on the side arguing for college football's demise.

Will college football be banned?

Uh, no.

Compiled by Mike Hlas