On Iowa Daily Briefing 5.11.12 -- Linksville, USA

-- Rookie cornerback Shaun Prater of Iowa signed a four-year contract with the Cincinnati Bengals Thursday.

That doesn't mean he's guaranteed four years, or even one, with Cincinnati, but it's better than trying to be a holdout as the 156th player selected in the NFL draft. Prater will make that team, and he'll be making more money than we will. Well, me for sure.

Prater picked off a pass and returned it 89 yards for a touchdown in Iowa's season-opening 34-7 victory over Tennessee Tech.

"I need 13 (interceptions)," Prater said after the game, though no major-college player has had that many INTs in a season in the last 50 years.

"It's a pretty big goal," he said. "But I just want to focus on setting goals for myself.

"Everything's possible."

That was Prater's only pick of the season.

-- The NCAA has released 2011-2012 men's basketball attendance figures for all of its schools. For the second straight season, Iowa is 31st, but with an increase of 234 fans per game from the season before.

-- Iowa will face Edinboro in a dual wrestling meet at Carver-Hawkeye Arena next Feb. 15. Iowa will repay the visit in one of the two following seasons.

Edinboro's nickname is the Scots. Edinburgh is in Scotland. Edinboro is in Pennsylvania.

-- The Hawkeyes have a huge baseball double-header tonight.

That would be the Hamilton (Mich.) Hawkeyes, who wear Iowa Hawkeyes colors, and have a twin-bill this evening at Holland Christian.

Both teams are 8-1 and tied atop the OK-Green Conference. The Hawkeyes are going for their fourth-straight OK-Green title.

It's great to be a Hamilton Hawkeye!

-- Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany thinks a team that doesn't win its conference division shouldn't be part of the four-team playoff that is on the verge of coming to FBS football in 2014,

That would have kept national-champ Alabama out of last year's playoff, had one been in effect.

Be careful what you want. What if Michigan goes 11-1 some season, but its only loss is to a Big Ten Legends Division team that wins that division?

Ahhh, Delany knows that kind of scenario is far more likely in the SEC than his own league.

I don't get this. Delany is an extremely intelligent person who knows this isn't going to fly. Is he just saying things like this to needle the SEC? That league has six straight BCS titles. Are its supporters supposed to get flustered by someone else's suggestion that won't ever come to fruition?

Or maybe it will get a certain football team from Tuscaloosa fired up when it plays Michigan on Sept. 1. Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News thinks it could.

Well, it makes good copy for a day and keeps the Big Ten in the news. Maybe I just answered my own question.