Fourth-quarter wave at Kinnick was one Hawkeyes will never embrace, accept

IOWA CITY — Smoke from cheap cigars poured from the Minnesota football team’s locker room at the same time smoke billowed from the ears of Iowa coaches, players and fans.

The winners puffed, the losers huffed, and the Hawkeyes’ 12-10 loss to Minnesota Saturday in Kinnick Stadium will always be recalled here with the stench of cheap cigars and resentment toward the Big Ten.

You can deserve to win and lose the same game, and Iowa did. But the way you most don’t want to lose is via a ruling from a conference replay official 668 miles away in Pittsburgh. Especially when it was a call that wasn’t even the one being reviewed in the first place, one that so many will always see as so wrong.

OK, so was the replay official in error? Did Iowa’s Cooper DeJean really give what was called an invalid fair catch signal by waving his left arm before he picked a punted football off the ground near the Minnesota sideline and made a 56-yard touchdown happen with sheer incredible brilliance?

Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz says no, and virtually began his postgame press conference saying he was ready to be fined by the conference and hoped they’d forward his money to the UI’s children’s hospital, or any other.

DeJean, who waved his left arm but not above his head, says he most certainly did not signal for a fair catch and was flapping his left arm for balance. Quite a bit of the population of Football Saturday in America that saw the replay says no, and thinks Iowa should have been ahead 16-12 with 1:21 left to play.

The person or people who matter said yes. To condense the postgame remarks of head official Tim O’Dey:

“An invalid signal is any waving motion by a receiving team member that happens throughout the kickdown. … any catch or recovery of a kick after an invalid signal is given causes the ball to become dead upon recovery or catch.

“The receiver makes a pointing gesture with his right hand and he makes multiple waving gestures with his left hand. If you look at the video you’ll see that. That waving motion of the left hand constitutes an invalid fair catch signal. So when the receiving team recovers the ball, by rule it becomes dead. So that is a reviewable element of the game.”

It’s Rule 2, Section 8, Article 3 in the 2023 NCAA rules book. You read it and tell me if you can figure out if DeJean was guilty, because I can’t.

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Is this something that gets routinely called? OMG. LOL. Ambiguity and inconsistency, thy names are interpreting football rules and officiating with common sense.

“Most people when they run, their arms do wave,” Ferentz said.

It’s not even what the review official or officials were looking at originally, which is where much of the steam from Ferentz’s ears was caused. The review was to see if DeJean stayed in bounds, which he did.

The validity of the call will forever be questioned, assuming anyone on either side thinks there is a question.

Will the touchdown take-away eventually cost the Hawkeyes a Big Ten West title and an appearance in the league-championship game? Not if they win their next four games. Which is indeed a tall order.

Don’t brush off what Iowa itself did to itself in this game to see Floyd of Rosedale move to Minneapolis for the first time since 2014 and fly there from Iowa for the first time since 1999.

The Hawkeyes still had 1:33 left and about 35 yards to get in reasonable field goal position when DeJean’s touchdown was negated. A sack, an incompletion and a Deacon Hill interception, and Iowa was three plays-and-done.

That capped another feeble offensive show, this Iowa’s feeblest of the year. When does a major-college football team total just 127 yards in a home game? When does a football team at any level gain just 12 yards in an entire second half?

The Hawkeyes have been playing with fire yet again this season, relying on defense and special teams for bailouts of the worst offense in college football. That’s not opinion, by the way. It’s a statistic.

Amazingly, Iowa had built a 6-1 record despite being outgained in six of its seven games. But you had to know a day would come when turnovers, or one big offensive play from the opposition, or a bleed-out from too many paper cuts would get the Hawkeyes beaten by one of the Big Ten’s multiple mediocrities.

The Gophers, who lost 52-10 to Michigan in their previous game, held Iowa to 0.4 yards per rush. I kid you not.

Iowa is down to 19.5 points per game, 14.2 in league play. Despite that, it should have improved to 4-1 in the Big Ten Saturday.

“If we hadn’t turned it over today,” Ferentz said, “I don’t think we lose, quite frankly. But we did.

“If we had protected the ball today, which is the first step in winning, playing winning football, we would have been victorious. If the call had gone a little differently, we would have been victorious. That’s a starting point.

“But clearly we want more points and more yards. … We can do better. We have to do better.”

On that review, there is no argument.

Comments: mike.hlas@thegazette.com