Handshakes that weren’t and flag-plants that were: Our football team is sacred, yours is sewage

Comical things in college football have piled up lately, and we all can use a laugh.

First, let’s discuss the non-handshake.

Nebraska’s captains didn’t shake hands with Iowa’s before their game in Iowa City last Friday. The Hawkeyes’ Jay Higgins, first-team All-Big Ten at linebacker and interview, thoroughly enjoyed telling reporters about that after the game.

Nothing has spun the turnstile at thegazette.com lately like the story about that. The comments from Iowa fans about it were precious. Nebraska’s program and its head coach, Matt Rhule, have no class. The Hawkeyes, as always, are superior in class, grace, sportsmanship, and set nicer-looking tables with seasonal florals.

This is a college football thing. NFL fans, though a demographic of which you are advised to keep away from young children, tend to be as critical of their own teams as much as opposing forces.

If you want to hear Aaron Rodgers get ripped these days — and who doesn’t? — go to New York.

But in college football, the opposing teams and their fans are low-rent scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, while their own tribes are salt-of-the-earth types who never, never, never harass fans wearing the enemy’s colors.

What Nebraska’s captains did in not shaking hands was childish, and kind of weird. It hardly ranked, however, as the most vitriolic behavior seen on a football field. It didn’t exactly rival going hunting for ACLs and MCLs, or even shouting awful and untrue things about an opponent’s pet dog.

Had the Huskers gone on to win that game, would we have heard about the non-handshake? It’s probably something Iowa players wouldn’t have mentioned, how the opponent dissed them before the game and then showed them up during it.

Here’s the thing about disrespect and gamesmanship in college football: It’s disgusting and shameful when it’s done to your team. When your team does it, it can be a delight.

Iowa kicker Keith Duncan blew a kiss and wagged a finger at the Nebraska sideline after making a game-winning field goal in Lincoln with one second left in 2019. He was as beloved in Hawkeyeland for the kiss as much as the kick.

In 2020, with his Gophers trailing Iowa, 35-0, in Minneapolis, P.J. Fleck called a timeout with his team at the Iowa 4-yard line and 19 seconds left. It seemed odd, but coaches regarded getting shut out as something worse than that year’s pandemic.

Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz responded by calling three straight timeouts on a cold night. Bill Murray’s “Caddyshack” character was never as spiteful to a Gopher.

“They called a timeout to look at what we were doing to reconsider,” Ferentz said. “So, we just wanted to make sure we had a good look at what they were doing.

“Figured we’d take Floyd with us and leave the timeouts here.”

That stands as Ferentz’s greatest one-liner as Iowa’s coach. Were the timeouts sporting? Of course not. Was the gamesmanship immensely popular with Hawkeye fans? Of course.

Comical, all of it. The furor all over college football last Saturday about flag-plants and attempted flag-plants at midfield after games at Ohio State, Clemson, North Carolina, Arizona and Florida State was hilarious.

The way Ohio State’s players reacted to Michigan’s guys trying to plant their flag on the Buckeyes’ logo at midfield indicated they may have been a bad mood, as if they had just lost a rivalry game at home to a 20.5-point underdog.

Both schools were fined $100,000 for the scuffle that included punches thrown by both sides. The joke became Ohio State thus spent $20.1 million for a roster that couldn’t beat Michigan.

The pepper spray deployed by law enforcement officers representing Ohio and Michigan was an interesting plot-twist.

At least Michigan and Ohio State fans could still find agreement afterward. Namely, that the other school, its football program and its fans are, in the words of John McEnroe, the absolute pits of the world.

The whole thing could have been worse. One team’s captains could have refused to shake the hands of the other team’s before the game, and Western civilization would have ended on the spot.

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