For Iowa football in 2021, just being good won’t be good enough

Typically, Hawkeyes football and hype are as compatible as a vegan and a Melrose Avenue vendor’s turkey legs.

The two Big Ten champions and two other most-memorable Kirk Ferentz-coached Iowa teams were those in 2002, 2004, 2009 and 2015. Two were unranked in the preseason, and the others were 19th and 22nd.

The three highest Iowa teams in the AP preseason Top 25 under Ferentz were 2010 (No. 9), 2005 (No. 11) and 2006 (No. 16). They finished 8-5, 7-5 and 6-7, respectively.

So maybe the Hawkeyes are in a safe spot at 18th with Wisconsin the popular West Division pick as Iowa’s 2021 season starts Saturday in Kinnick Stadium against No. 17 Indiana.

But are they getting off cheap, being allowed to start the season with relatively little hype? Yes. Because this is a team with a lot of talent and a schedule that has nothing you could call a probable loss.

Sure, Iowa lost some terrific players to graduation and the NFL siren song. No matter. It returns a lot of quality from a team that would have been 8-2 with an eight-game winning streak had Michigan and Missouri not COVID-ed their way out of the Hawkeyes’ path.

At season’s end, No. 16 Iowa was a top-10 team without a top-10 label.

You can’t be a reasonable person and expect 12-0 this season from the Hawkeyes like their fairy-tale regular season of 2015. Or ever again. Twelve is a lot of games, injuries can happen to key players at rotten moments, and the ball is shaped to take peculiar bounces.

Also — and this is always kind of important — the opponents also have skilled, motivated players and coaches who kind of take this stuff seriously.

That said, this should be a No Excuse Season for Iowa. Right now, there’s no reason this team shouldn’t be a strong contender to win the West and get to the Big Ten title game for the first time in six years.

People and even media around here are more than fair and understanding in not expecting 10-win seasons from Iowa every year. The Hawkeyes had one in their last full season, 2019, so it isn’t as if they’ve been dozing.

But this isn’t the year to be calling yourself Tight End U. or bragging about how you develop mass quantities of NFL players. This is a year to do what Northwestern has done in two of the last three seasons, and win the West.

The statute of limitations has just about expired on bragging up Iowa’s 55-24 Kinnick Stadium win over Ohio State in 2017. Go play them in Indianapolis in December.

It’s easy to list a number of players who enhance Iowa’s prospects this fall. There are top-shelf skill position players, terrific linebackers, a secondary that may become as good a unit as Phil Parker has assembled.

The Dude, though, is Tyler Linderbaum.

He was a second-team AP All-America center last year, and is AP’s preseason first-team All-America center today. Getting any kind of All-American back for another season is a rare treat most places, including Iowa. Desmond King in 2016 was a rare treat.

All positions are important, but center is among the most vital. If you aren’t good there, you aren’t good. The last 10 first-team All-America centers were on teams that went a combined 113-22.

Maybe Iowa would have staved off Michigan State on its game-winning drive in the 2015 Big Ten championship had the Spartans not had first-team All-America center Jack Allen. Iowa’s guy at that position that night, Austin Blythe, was mighty good himself.

Alabama has had one first-team and three second-team All-America centers over the last six years. That’s sort of significant.

Linderbaum is from Solon High School, 15 miles from Kinnick Stadium. Recruiting is hard. Once in a while, though, someone great from just down the street can help take you a long way.

The Iowa team of six years ago was 12-2 and reached a Rose Bowl. The Iowa team of six years before that was 11-2 and won an Orange Bowl.

That six-year cycle has come around, a lot of talent is in place, and the Hawkeyes are “centered.” A No Excuse Season is now.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com