A right to view the Hawkeyes?

As a boy growing up on a Cedar Rapids area farm, a big part of how my young mind grappled with the more abstract notions of citizenship, loyalty, and love of country and state (amor patriae) came by viewing Iowa sports on local affiliates like KCRG-TV9 and KGAN. Watching the Hawks on network television helped, almost as much as farm and family, to cement my cultural identity as an Iowan.

Many moons later and still living on the farm sans cable, I'm as big a fan as ever. Watching the Hawkeyes (win or lose) makes me feel like a kid again, so I'm more frustrated than ever that kids and adults who can't afford, or don't want to buy in, to the cable networks should be denied what is essentially an Iowa folkway and rite of passage. If it's true that our state universities belong to us as taxpayers, why should our rights as citizens not extend to the ability to watch (or stream) free of charge their athletic competitions?

A real die-hard, some might say, would as soon forego food and sustenance as drop his ESPN. But I argue it's possible to be a devoted, lifelong Hawkeye while resisting the urge, on principle, to jump on the cable sports bandwagon. Granted, the UI's selling of its broadcast TV rights helps enrich the university, which, in turn and in theory, enriches all Iowans, but I don't see it as so simple a moral equation. For decades Iowa Public Television has broadcast, free of commercial interruption, such cultural institutions as the Iowa State Fair and the boys and girls state high school sports tourneys. Why should UI (or ISU and UNI sports) be any less widely accessible to Iowans?

This and every fall my options for watching an Iowa football game live on television amount to 1) driving a half dozen miles to loiter at the nearest bar 2) driving twenty miles to Wal-Mart in hopes of catching a glimpse on one of the gee-whiz flat screens or 3) inviting myself over to a friend's house an hour-plus away in Iowa City. And why should a rural Iowan like me face higher hurdles (logistically, financially, or circumstantially) to access Hawkeye sports than his city brethren? Wasn't this leveling of the playing field between rural and urban part of the original impetus for public broadcasting in the first place?

This fall I've found a fourth, no less awkward option for getting my Hawkeye football fix, courtesy of the Robin Hoods on YouTube. You see, I'm more than willing to watch the contest days after it's happened … I'm that big a fan. And I don't think the true fans who post on YouTube should have to risk legal sanction to visually connect Iowa fans with their state university (read: home) team. Maybe we've reached the point that an Iowa Sports Fan's Bill of Rights is needed, one founded on the proposition. 'It is the right of every citizen of Hawkeye Nation to view their team on public or network television.”

' Zachary Michael Jack is a seventh-generation rural Midwesterner. He lives on a farm in Jones County. Comments: loveofiowa@live.com