On Iowa Daily Briefing 6.25.12

Iowa junior guard Devyn Marble and former Hawkeye center Jarryd Cole each scored 34 points in their Prime Time League games on Sunday afternoon.

Both were impressive in different ways. Marble has emphasized his perimeter game so he's putting up what he considers poor shots to work on his form. He hit four 3-pointers and sank 12-of-18 shots overall. Marble split his time between the point and off-guard roles last season but now exclusively will work at off-guard.

Cole played professionally in Iceland last year and will play in France next year. He suffered multiple knee injuries at Iowa, including a torn ACL his freshman season, but he shows no ill effects from those injuries. He was 13-of-18 from the field, hit all eight free-throw attempts and grabbed 11 rebounds.

Here's a video featuring different highlights from Sunday's PTL action. It lasts about nine minutes.

HLINKS

It's exactly six months until Christmas. And six months and one day until the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.

-- Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman had an interview with former Texas/current Iowa offensive coordinator Greg Davis. An excerpt:

Don't expect the Hawkeyes to stay in a five-wide lineup very often - in fact, speed at wide receiver might be their one glaring weakness - but they will operate out of the shotgun some and employ elements of the same no-huddle, up-tempo, two-minute offense that was wildly effective at Texas until it wasn't.

-- Tom Dienhart of the Big Ten Network's web site recently finished assembling the last of his Big Ten football position rankings.

Here is how Dienhart ranks Iowa's various units in the conference:

Wide receivers, 3rd-best. Offensive line and defensive backs, 6th. Quarterbacks and linebackers, 8th. Defensive line and special teams, 9th. Running backs, 10th.

-- Little has ever brought as much attention to college football or college sports, period, as the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State saga. So here are three pieces of copy worth reading on the subject.

1. Dick Weiss of the New York Daily News looks at Joe Paterno's legacy at Penn State, and as you can imagine, it isn't a warm and fuzzy essay. Weiss writes:

We wonder what he would have done if it were one of his own grandchildren who had been abused instead of a faceless, fatherless child living with his mother in public housing.

Some time after the 1998 season, Paterno, who was so admired for winning with true student-athletes and running a model program, lost his moral compass, preferring to reside at Olympian heights while the real world came crashing down around him.

2. David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune says the imprisonment of Sandusky didn't answer a lot of important questions about what has gone on at Penn State over the last several years. Haugh writes:

Consider testimony during the trial from "Victim 4,'' who recalled showering in the Penn State football facility with Sandusky behind a curtain separating them from former assistant coach Tom Bradley. According to Victim 4, Bradley stayed in the shower, "until everything was done.''

Why did so many men at Penn State accept seeing boys in the shower?

I wonder how many other silent witnesses to Sandusky's inappropriate behavior have grappled with regrets recently.

3. Glamour magazine -- we travel the globe for these links -- has a feature on the young woman who determinedly wrote story after story on Sandusky before most of the rest of the Pennsylvania and American media paid it attention. That is Sara Ganim of the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

"It felt like we were living in the Twilight Zone," says The Patriot-News' editor, David Newhouse. Adds Ganim, "Particularly with the local papers, I thought [that] was pretty irresponsible." It took a full seven months-after Sandusky was arrested and publicly charged with the sexual abuse of eight boys he met through his charity, The Second Mile-for national news media to pounce.

It's easy to point fingers at news organizations four states away. You readers should hope your own local media responds like the Patriot-News did should a serious scandal involve your city, state, or state university.

-- Something far, far less serious comes our way from Steve Irvine of the Birmingham News, who suggests the Big Ten should host college football's national-championship game. Says Irvine:

Given the Big Ten's recent postseason problems in premier bowl games, there's a good chance no team from that conference will find a way into the title game if they have to beat a team from another confer­ence to qualify. So that might be a good way to solve the quest for a neutral site.

-- Now for something completely different, something excellent.

D Magazine is a monthly publication covering the Dallas area. Michael J. Mooney wrote this story about a 48-year-old man named Bill Fong who bowls in Plano, Texas. It's headlined "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever."

It just might be. I urge you to take several minutes when you have time and give this story a read.

-- Compiled by Mike Hlas