Rick Reilly says Iowa is flat, Joe Paterno is old ... he's half-right

Rick Reilly, who was named America's Sportswriter of the Year 11 times when he was at Sports Illustrated, is now a multimedia man at ESPN. He still finds time to write columns, as is evidenced by today's Big Ten Primer for Big Red.

Reilly offers thumbnails on all of Nebraska's new conference rivals "in order of how you'll grow to hate them." He then lists 10 teams. Iowa, for some reason, is omitted from that list.

But it isn't missing from the column. He tells Nebraska its new rival is Iowa, "like it or not."

As a columnist, I don't fancy the idea of grabbing selected passages of someone else's essay and trying to carve them up. Oh, who am I kidding? I love it as much as any of you, if not more. Reilly wrote:

Iowa's a natural for you. Both your states are so flat you can watch a train pull out for three days.

Tell that to the thousands on RAGBRAI next week as they climb Hill No. 2,222.

Reilly is calling Iowa-Nebraska the Cornfrontation. I have to admit, I like that better than Farmageddon, especially since Farmageddon was already taken for the Iowa State-Kansas State series, and "Farmageddon" is the name of a documentary about the escalating fight for food rights in the U.S. But does everything need a nickname? I like the nickname of the Army-Navy game, which is "Army-Navy."

Reilly calls Nebraska Coach Bo Pelini "Bo Weevil," says Joe Paterno's ears still hurt from the Big Bang (Paterno is old),  and says Purdue throws the football like crazy (14 fewer passes per game than state rival Indiana), and that's enough about this.

Reilly was decent and helpful to me before he taped a "Homecoming with Rick Reilly" episode with Kurt Warner here in Cedar Rapids, so I'd be a lousy ingrate to tear apart a column that is for entertainment purposes only. I support having a sense of humor about this frequently silly stuff called sports. Plus, a guy who has been National Sportswriter of the Year 11 times  is allowed to phone one in every now and then. Hey, this blog post is the definition of "phoning it in."

But Iowa isn't flat. OK, the 100-mile stretch from Cedar Rapids to Ames on Highway 30 is as flat as a joke about Joe Paterno's age. But the RAGBRAI whiners know where the hills are located. If you don't believe me, just ask them. You won't thank me later.