3 and Out

1. Being Bielema and the troll toll

- By now, you've thoroughly digested the Bret Bielema-Kliff Kingsbury kerfuffle.

After being herded and corralled 49-28 by Arkansas last season, Kingsbury's Texas Tech struck back this season with a 35-24 victory in Fayetteville, Ark. Kingsbury, in a gorgeous suit and gelled-up hair thingie, peacocked like a 15-year-old on a social media outlet.

Kingsbury had this one circled not only because of last season, but because of a statement Bielema made at the Texas high school coaches convention this summer.

'He stood up and said if you don't throw to the fullback, we'll kick your ass,” Kingsbury said, 'and if you throw it 70 times a game, we'll kick your ass. He just got his ass kicked twice in a row and probably next week by (Texas) A&M as well.

Pause for effect.

'That did feel good.”

This is the time of social media, where no thought lies silently in someone's mind (forget age). We should've seen this coming, and surely we will see more of these postgames as coaches get younger and younger.

I'm the UFC ref (his name is Big John McCarthy, by the way) in the middle of the octagon and I say 'Let's get it on.”

We all know Bret Bielema around here. He's a former Iowa D-lineman and former Iowa assistant. Yes, after the 1992 Iowa-Iowa State game, he told then-ISU coach Jim Walden, 'You've been a big prick. I've enjoyed kicking your ass the past five years.”

So no, he wasn't just going to let this slide.

'I'm happy he got to vent and hopefully he feels a lot better,” Bielema said Monday. 'As a coach who has been in it for 10 years, I know better than to worry about somebody that's been around for a couple and they're .500. So, we'll just go forward.”

Kingsbury is 15-13 in his three seasons at Tech.

Points were made by both sides. Kingsbury wanted to get at Bielema, his team won and so the stage was his.

Who's the winner here? You think this is where the old sportswriter is going to get on his high horse and get all judgey judgey.

Nope.

We're all the winners here. This is entertainment. It's also not a huge break in character for two relatively young coaches (Kingsbury is 36 and Bielema is 45 - by the way, Bielema the Iowa linebacker coach faced Kingsbury the Tech QB in the 2001 Alamo Bowl). No animal was harmed in the making of this television program.

Bielema finds himself in a lot of these. And, really, who controls that? Bielema, of course. He wouldn't go after Ohio State scheduling, hang a two-point conversion on Tim Brewster's Minnesota late in what already was a blowout or give a 'Horns Down” hand gesture toward the Texas Longhorns before Arkansas deflated them 31-7 in last season's Texas Bowl.

This is his personality and that's why this is OK. If Bielema wants to fight all of these verbal and social media battles on many, many fronts, sure, do it. Can a guy spin all those plates? Well, that's a legit question if I'm his AD, but nobody puts Bret in a corner.

I'm pro coaches being themselves. I'm pro genuine emotion, wherever that goes.

So, my Iowa hook here is Kirk Ferentz doesn't swim in this mudhole. It's not his personality, neither is Twitter and neither is peacocking. It doesn't set up for our entertainment, and that's fine. It's genuine, it's who he is. Ferentz's steam comes out in other ways, I'm sure.

(Coincidentally, Brian Ferentz, 32, Kirk's son and Iowa's O-line coach, isn't shy on Twitter and did in November 2013 call out Iowa's stadium experience and whomever is in charge of that, saying it was lacking and urging fans to do it on their own. So, there's that.)

This is Bielema and that is Kingsbury. That was fun and I think we'll see a whole lot more of that. If it bothers you, good luck putting the social media genie back in the bottle and stopping time. Good luck banging your head on this wall.

2. That McCarney moment in Kinnick

- You, Hawkeye fan, don't want to remember that game in 1998, when Dan McCarney's Iowa State team snapped a 15-game losing streak with a shocking 27-9 victory at Kinnick Stadium.

In honor of what likely is McCarney's last visit to Kinnick as a head coach (McCarney is an Iowa City native who played and coached for the Hawkeyes), please, indulge this one moment of remembrance from the day that the Cy-Hawk rivalry came back to life.

Here's what I wrote (I covered Iowa State at the time):

Attention please. Whoever is using the traveling Cy-Hawk Trophy as a doorstop at the University of Iowa, please return it to Kinnick Stadium, immediately.

Wipe it off, shine it up and make it snappy. After 15 years, the Cy portion of the trophy is no longer a rumor and wants it, demands it, pronto.

Who even knew there was a Cyclone horde? It took the Cy-Hawk Trophy with Saturday's stunning 27-9 victory over the Hawkeyes, a 28-point favorite coming into the game. If it wasn't for Kinnick Stadium's collapsible goalposts, the red-and-yellow horde would've made off with those, too.

'I didn't forget about the trophy,” Iowa State Coach Dan McCarney said. 'When we built our new Jacobson Building, (Athletics Director) Gene (Smith) built some beautiful new trophy cases, and frankly, other than Troy Davis' trophies, there isn't anything having to do with football.

'Finally, we've got something to take home.”

They touched it, they felt it, they held it high. Yes, Virginia, or Coach Criner or Coach Walden - or whatever forlorn and former Cyclones coach is paying attention - the 15-game losing streak to Iowa is over. The 0-30-1 slump on the road that dated to 1991 is snapped and the Cy-Hawk Trophy is real. And it's heading back to Ames.

'I didn't even know there was one,” said tight end Damian Gibson, a fifth-year senior who's sat through a lot of Hawkeye celebrations. 'What's it look like? You know?”

Well, sitting on the lip of a plastic yellow garbage can amid the celebration, it looked a little worn. A couple of the plates with previous scores were hanging by a single screw and none of the ones on the front listed Iowa State as the victor.

'We'd seen it on a transparency, but that was about it,” said quarterback Todd Bandhauer, who passed for an economical 11 of 16 for 125 yards. 'I kissed an actual trophy today. Not a transparency.”

3. Big Ten nerd game of the week

- This isn't a week the B1G is going to want to brag on. Nebraska is playing Southern Miss on ESPN News (ESPN News??!?!?!?!?!). Rutgers is playing host to Kansas (a bad story vs. a bad program). It's a parade of the horribles this week, except for BYU at Michigan (should be fun) and, maybe, Maryland at West Virginia (should be a comfortable WVU victory, but points for Maryland for going to Couch Burn, WVa.).

Those are nice, but the B1G nerd game clearly is Indiana at Wake Forest (it starts at 11:30 and you're going to have to hunt and peck to find the ACC Network).

There's a fun little movement in Bloomington to try to get ESPN's College GameDay to visit. The Hoosiers are 3-0, and that's great. It's not a great 3-0, with wins over Southern Illinois, Florida International and Western Kentucky. IU needed some miracle juice in its 48-47 victory over FCS Southern Illinois at Memorial Stadium in its season open.

IU coach Kevin Wilson sees the Hoosiers for what they are and knows going to Wake Forest is the task at hand. He gave the fun, little GameDay notion a courteous 'no thanks” on his radio show this week.

'First, you've gotta fill your stadium, which we haven't played well enough to do,” Wilson said. 'We actually blew all that up (the GameDay talk), because it's a wasted conversation for our football team.”

That's exactly what you want your coach to do with that fantastical notion. The car needs to run before you worry about painting it.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com