With a miracle vs. Michigan, Hawkeyes can become college football immortals

Here it is, the greatest opportunity of the 21st century for the University of Iowa’s football program.

You may have thought that was in 2015 when an Iowa win over Michigan State in the Big Ten championship game would have propelled the Hawkeyes into the national playoffs. Beating Michigan Saturday evening won’t do that.

No matter. An Iowa win would go directly into college football lore, the biggest upset on a big stage in the sport’s history.

There have been famous winners who were larger underdogs than the 22--point spread of this game. Jim Harbaugh’s 2007 Stanford team went to USC as a 41-point dog and shocked the Trojans, 24-23.

A month earlier, Michigan was on the wrong end of what still is widely considered the college game’s all-time stunner, its 34-32 home loss to Appalachian State.

Those games blew minds. If Iowa figures out a way to grind its way to victory in Indianapolis the same way it has done in Madison, Chicago, Lincoln and Iowa City, it will shatter every belief people have about football, and perhaps life itself.

It would mean you can beat a juggernaut without moving the ball. You can win the championship of one of America’s two mightiest conferences and be last in the nation in total offense at the same time.

It would mean you can overcome an unbeaten, two-time defending Big Ten champ that has scored more points and allowed fewer than any other Big Ten club this year with one hand tied behind your back.

No one within an area code of sanity is saying the Hawkeyes will win this game. Its woeful offense against Michigan’s superb defense seems to create a matchup similar to Chuck “The Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner vs. Muhammad Ali.

No one who isn’t standing on a street corner shouting “The end is near!” into a bullhorn feels Iowa can hold the Wolverines to the 10 points the Hawkeyes’ last eight opponents averaged.

No one who has seen these two teams play doubts NFL first-rounder-to-be J.J. McCarthy of Michigan will be the most-effective quarterback in this game.

An Iowa win would crush everything in football that seemingly made sense before the game began. On Monday morning when people across the nation should be getting ready for work, they would still be wandering aimlessly in their neighborhoods, dazed and confused.

After the East had gone 9-0 against the West in Big Ten title games with few actual contests in that mix, an Iowa win would close the conference’s era of divisional play with an explosion that would rival the Big Bang.

A popular sitcom called “The Iowa Football Theory” would air 500 million years from now.

None other than Hawkeyes Coach Kirk Ferentz has the fullest grasp of the situation.

“You’re going to be playing somebody who, if they’re victorious, that’s (the College Football Playoff) where they’re going,” Ferentz said this week. “If we win, that would really screw things up, I’m guessing. Might be kind of funny, actually.”

There’s no “might” about it. It would be the most-hilarious thing in human history other than putting sunglasses on a dog.

Sure, what’s much more likely to happen is the Hawkeyes rarely if ever advancing the football beyond the 50-yard line. So what? Leave the easy predictions to the hot-gas merchants, and my goodness, there are a lot of them around. Or so this pot is saying to all those kettles.

Had there been a million sports talk shows or podcasts in 1980, the consensus pregame proclamation would have been USSR Olympic hockey team 9, USA 0.

Do you believe in miracles, the media mopes would have asked each other on the day before the game. “Are you nuts?” would have been the response, and they would have sold that to the public as wisdom.

But I digress, and now I’ll say it again. This is Iowa’s greatest football opportunity of the century.

A Hawkeyes victory would flip Michigan coach Harbaugh on his ear. It would flip the Big Ten and college football on their heads. It might even bring climate change to a screeching halt.

Ahhh, Michigan will win. Ecclesiastes 9:11 tells us the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. The great Damon Runyon wisely added “But that’s the way to bet.”

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