Hlas: UNI and Iowa have common football ground

Other than the moon and the stars, what more could you want from your college football team than this:

Frequent postseason participation. Performance that usually is noticeably better in November than September. A spot in the preseason national rankings.

Also: A head coach who has been aboard for many years now, whose staff always seems to turn unheralded prep recruits into collegians of note, and who runs the enterprise with a level-headed, low-key approach.

Iowa fans, that team begins its season today in your Kinnick Stadium home. It is, of course, the Northern Iowa Panthers.

Oh yeah, your Hawkeyes fit that same bill, too.

But in the midst of this typically Hawkeye-centric section, let's use a little space to praise what arguably is the state's most-successful Division I football program.

Now, barring something wonderful for UNI and awful for Iowa, the Hawkeyes will prevail today in Kinnick and perhaps by a wide margin. A good FBS (I-A for those of us who cling to that) team will almost always beat a good FCS (I-AA) team.

For every Appalachian State-over-Michigan, there are 50 Wisconsin-over-Woffords.

But so what? Northern Iowa is a kingpin of FCS, period. It hasn't won that elusive national title (yet), but it has been a model of excellence in its classification. That was true long before Mark Farley became head coach before the 2001 season, but he has made the Panthers even more formidable.

Under Farley, UNI has:

A 75-28 record, including 25-4 in November.

Twenty-four wins in the last two years.

Five Top 5 finishes in the national rankings.

Five Gateway/Missouri Valley conference titles or co-titles.

Nine playoff victories, a national title-game appearance, and two seasons that ended in the national semifinals, including 2008.

That resonates with Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz. He played I-AA football at Connecticut and coached it at Maine.

“There are an awful lot of really good football players that don't get offered Division I or BCS level scholarships,” Ferentz said.

“I think you have an opportunity if you have a good eye to maybe find some real good football players, and they've done, I think, a great job historically at Northern Iowa. ... If your structure is right, got the right people working with players ... good things can happen.”

UNI and Iowa aren't so very different. Like Farley and his staff, Ferentz and his coaches have shown a keen eye for talent, and have that same good structure and player-development.

Let's imagine, for a moment, Ferentz is coaching UNI with its 63 scholarships and Farley is running Iowa with its 85. I kind of think the two programs wouldn't look much different than they do today.

That's meant as a compliment to both coaches, by the way.

That all said, now the march begins again. How will the Hawkeyes do this year?

Jim Zabel had comedian/actor/Iowa fan Tom Arnold as a guest during one of his 10,000 Iowa football broadcasts.

“How far will the Hawkeyes go this year?” Zabel asked Arnold.

“All the way to the end,” Arnold replied.

All the way to the end is right. Who, other than gamblers, would really want to know what's in the three months to come, anyhow?