Fun Facts about Northwestern vs. Iowa: Hawkeyes are exclusive club, Wildcats aren’t

Are they Fun Facts because you’re told that? You wouldn’t think so. Yet, here I am telling you the following are Fun Facts about Saturday’s Northwestern-Iowa football game though some aren’t particularly fun. What gives? Anyhoo ...

1. The 468 yards Iowa allowed at Michigan State last week were the most a Hawkeyes team has surrendered since Wisconsin had 473 in 2019.

2. After not allowing 400 yards for 32 straight games, Iowa has done so in the two of its last three contests.

3. Northwestern is 18th in the Big Ten in total offense, and 129th in the nation.

4. This will be Northwestern’s second game this season before a crowd of over 40,000.

5. Current Iowa No. 2 quarterback Brendan Sullivan was Northwestern’s quarterback last year in the Hawkeyes’ 10-7 win at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Sullivan completed 12 of 19 passes with one interception for 81 yards and a touchdown, and rushed 16 times for a total of 24 yards. He was sacked five times.

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6. Sullivan was the leading passer in that game. Iowa had 65 passing yards.

7. Michigan State didn’t punt against Iowa last week, the 23rd time that has ever happened in a Big Ten conference game.

8. Iowa is 43rd nationally in total defense. It hasn’t finished a season that far down those rankings since 2014, and was in the top 20 in each of the last six years.

9. The Hawkeyes’ 32-20 loss to Michigan State was the first time in Iowa’s 1,315-game football history in which that was the final score.

10. Before USC joined the Big Ten last year, Northwestern had been the conference’s only private university since 1946.

11. Iowa and Miami (Ohio) are the only teams in the nation without a fourth-down conversion.

12. Iowa hasn’t had a player pass for 300 yards in its last 59 games (Hat tip to @PV_GIA). Former Hawkeye quarterback Spencer Petras has thrown for at least 360 yards in each of his last three games at Utah State.

13. Last season, David Braun became the first Northwestern football coach in 120 years to win five games in his first season.

14. Braun is 39, but is only the fourth-youngest Big Ten head coach. He’s older than Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Michigan’s Sherrone Moore and Purdue’s Ryan Walters, all 38. Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is 70, older than every other FBS head coach other than North Carolina’s Mack Brown, 73.

15. Iowa leads the nation in fewest penalties per game with 2.7. Iowa State is second. Nebraska is tied for 109th.

16. Northwestern is one of 42 U.S. colleges and universities with the team nickname “Wildcats.” Iowa is the only college team called “Hawkeyes.”

17. Northwestern merged with the Evanston College for Ladies in 1873.

18. “Wildcats” is a 1986 comedy film starring Goldie Hawn as the head coach of a high school football team in Chicago. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the movie 1.5 stars out of a possible 4, which was a half-star more than Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave it.

19. It’s Iowa’s Homecoming. “Homecoming” is a 2009 film directed by Morgan Freeman about a jilted ex-girlfriend who plots revenge after her former boyfriend returns to their hometown with a new lover. It, too, fared poorly with the critics.

20. Saturday is the start of rooster pheasant and bobwhite quail hunting season in Iowa. Opossum hunting season is another week away.

Comments: mike.hlas@thegazette.com