To no real surprise, Hawkeyes lay an offensive goose egg in biggest game

INDIANAPOLIS — If the Iowa football team played not to get embarrassed Saturday night, we’ll need opening arguments, witnesses’ testimony, and a jury of the Hawkeyes’ peers to determine if they succeeded.

The guess here is there would be no conviction. The players gave all they had. The defense had much to give, the offense quite little.

Besides, how embarrassed can you really get when nothing was expected, and nothing is exactly what the Hawkeyes scored. A zip is a zilch is a zero. Michigan won the Big Ten championship game, 26-0, in a game even less remarkable than most expected it to be.

This contest ended not long before midnight here, and will fade from most memory banks by Sunday brunch.

Iowa didn’t get flattened by the No. 2 Wolverines like it did here two years ago, but still did nothing of consequence.

This was every bit the Iowa offense that embarrassed its university enough to embarrass its coordinator with a midseason dismissal effective after the bowl game.

Brian Ferentz got penalized six yards (half the distance to the goal line) for unsportsmanlike conduct on the sideline, over twice what his offense averaged per play.

Neither firefighters, lifeguards, or Indiana Exorcists Union Local 666 could save Iowa from a second touchdown-less appearance here in the last three seasons.

The game requires no postgame scrutiny, unless it’s the kind of analysis that involves a trained counselor and a patient that’s open to making real change.

This night’s story was the story of this season, a 10-victory, division-championship season that wasn’t quite as much a fairy tale the only two times Iowa faced dynamos. The combined score was Penn State and Michigan 57, Hawkeyes 0.

Those games sandwiched seven gritty and a little gross wins against eight of the Big Ten’s other low-rent offenses.

It’s been asked a thousand times if once, but what would a team with Iowa’s defense look like with a competent offense as its partner? It wouldn’t have had to be the offense of Washington or Texas or Alabama, just a middle-of-the-pack attack.

Gadzooks, the Hawkeye defense was terrific here Saturday and lost by 26 points. If you hold J.J. McCarthy and Blake Corum and company to 213 yards, sack McCarthy four times and outplay Michigan’s offensive line, you should be in the game to the final play at the least.

Michigan had just two touchdown drives. Of five and six yards! The second was gift-wrapped by the Big Ten’s replay review cabal. Now that George Santos is unemployed, the conference should hire him to run that operation. It wouldn’t be a downgrade.

Iowa didn’t lose because of the Deacon Hill incomplete pass that was switched to a lost fumble, it just lost faster. When you score zero, the bell will toll for thee no matter your beefs with The Man.

All season long and for the last three seasons, no Hawkeye defenders will play the “What if?” card. Sebastian Castro, the senior safety who had yet another wonderful game Saturday, rued his unit not forcing a turnover while Michigan got three.

“Hey, I’m proud of our guys on the defensive side,” Castro said. “We played a hell of a game. Yes, we got put in bad situations. Just as a team, we have to do better. We can’t win like that as a team.

“Yeah, we’ve just got to do better.”

It truly is good to win well more than you lose, grab division titles here and there, finish seasons in the national rankings, and not be treading water most of the time like many Big Ten teams. It is. It’s really good.

But while Phil Parker and his defensive assistants have been models of excellence, Iowa fans waiting for quarterbacks and wide receivers to be developed into playmakers the last few years has been like waiting in Iowa City for high-speed passenger rail service.

Going against a defense like Michigan’s, Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said afterward, is “not our strength right now. We didn't match up well.

“That's the way it goes. We'll go back to the drawing board.”

Other than the major bowls, the games that mean the most are conference-title clashes. They’re only fun if you’re competitive.

No one knows, but a chance like Saturday’s may not come Iowa’s way again for a long time. Until then, this one will remembered for, well, zero.

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