Hlas: Ball now out of 10-2 Hawkeyes' hands

IOWA CITY - Nobody knows anything.

The longest two weeks of the college football season have just begun for the Iowa Hawkeyes. They're the two weeks in which the jerseys and pads are in storage after Saturday's 12-0 Kinnick Stadium win over Minnesota.

Easing their anxiety, if they have as much as their fans, is the ability to look lovingly at the “10” in their win column.

Are the Hawkeyes going to the Fiesta Bowl as so many have suggested? I don't know, you don't know, and the Fiesta Bowl committee doesn't know.

Sure, Greater Phoenix's big bowl game would cherish Iowa, its thousands of traveling fans, and its thousands of transplanted fans in the Valley of the Sun. But there are no guarantees.

And if the Orange Bowl has a shot at getting the Hawkeyes, wouldn't that game salivate at the opportunity to revisit seven seasons ago. That's when it seemed every other person in Miami/Fort Lauderdale wore black-and-gold summer attire on New Year's Eve?

Well, yes. But variables exist, and games are still to be played. On and off the field.

Will the Fiesta Bowl side with Oklahoma State if the Cowboys beat Oklahoma next week to finish 10-2? The bowl does have a Big 12 tie-in. It isn't mandatory the Fiesta stays loyal to that league, but politics are as much a part of the bowls as overblown, overlong halftime shows.

Penn State drubbed Michigan State Saturday to make its own 10-2 case to the BCS bowls. Would the Orange Bowl rather have Penn State because of all its Eastern Seaboard televisions than Iowa's little number of Nielsen households on the prairie?

“No, no, no, no” Orange Bowl committee member Larry Gautier said here Saturday.

Unless, of course, the answer turns out to be yes, yes, yes, yes.

Nobody knows anything. Well, that's not quite true. Some know when to be grateful for a won-lost record that will stand the test of time as something fairly special.

“I'm happy with where we're at,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “If we don't go (to a BCS game), we don't go. That's how it goes. I'm just happy we've got 10 wins. There are a lot of good bowls out there.”

That so many project an Iowa-Boise State Fiesta Bowl should make superstitious sorts doubt it will come off. But if it did, it would be a lot better for Iowa than a Capital One Bowl against LSU or Ole Miss.

For one thing, oddly enough, Boise State currently carries more street cred with college football fans right now than any SEC team not named Alabama or Florida. For another, two teams get their own night on national television with a Fiesta (or Orange) bowl.

Boise State made its official move into the college football penthouse three years ago when it seized its Fiesta Bowl moment by beating Oklahoma.

So, we'll fill the next two weeks with idle gossip, idle speculation, and idle chit chat. Then, Iowa fans will either yell “We Wuz Robbed!” or many non-Iowa fans will cry “They don't belong!”

The anger and outrage that will be displayed by one side or the other will make for a nice lead-in to the Christmas season.

That aside, one would think Iowa could and would easily surpass its previous BCS performance, the 38-17 shellacking it took from USC.

This year's Hawkeyes aren't in the same offensive gene pool as the '02 team. But they wouldn't be playing the 2002 USC team this time around, and they always stay in games to the very end.

Plus, the offense that was barely functional Saturday against the Gophers would be healthier and better. Running backs Adam Robinson and Brandon Wegher would have fresh legs and ribs. Ricky Stanzi would probably be back at quarterback. Even Dace Richardson might return at guard.

That Orange Bowl blowout gave Ferentz and his staff a great lesson on how to (and not to) get a team ready to play in a bowl, a lesson put to good use ever since.

“If we play in January,” Ferentz said, “I'm pretty confident we'll be better.”

They'll play in January, all right. It's just a question of the size of the stage.

These will be two long weeks. I've got the Hawkeyes going to the Fiesta. Or the Cap One. Yeah, it's one or the other. Or the Orange.