Hlas: “Empowered” athletes, Hawkeye “haters,” NFL Rudock

I have no earthly idea if J. Bruce Harreld will be a good president at the University of Iowa, but I do know this:

On the morning after he was named Iowa's prez and the day before the 2015 season began, he met with the Hawkeyes' football team.

Interesting, I thought at the time. Is it because Bruce Rastetter, the president of the state of Iowa's Board of Regents, is a big Hawkeye football guy? Who knows?

But it may have been a fortuitous move, no matter the motive. Because some Missouri football players hastened Monday's resignation of school president Tim Wolfe when they announced Saturday they would basically go on strike until Wolfe resigned or was fired.

Before Harreld got to know the rest of Iowa's student body, he went to the football team. He told them to take a leadership role in encouraging safety on campus for females, so at least it was a better message than 'Beat Illinois State and make us proud!'

It's interesting to me that lots of pundits are now looking at the Missouri situation and saying college athletes have more power than they realize. It took a former Illinois football player, Simon Cvijanovic, to go public and say then-Illini head football coach Tim Beckman, forced his players to play when they were injured, and threatened to take players' scholarships away.

The school then decided to investigate, and voila! Beckman was fired the week of this season's first game. Monday, athletic director Mike Thomas was fired.

Had former player Cvijanovic not gone to Twitter with his charges, Beckman and Thomas would still have jobs and there would be no investigation. It's harder for athletes to right what they see as wrong is when they're in school and forces can come down hard against them. Missouri's football players, whether you think they were right or wrong, did just that. It's very rare, and maybe it will give other athletes around the country something to think about.

Bruce Feldman of FoxSports.com, by the way, has Iowa ranked fourth this week, ahead of Ohio State.

The narrative some Hawkeye fans like to spin about the so-called hate from the national media is selective. For every Colin Cowherd pushing their buttons, there are writers around the country saying good things about Iowa.

Like this on ESPN.com.

Some people always need villains. When their team is going badly, it's the coach and athletic director. When things are going well, there's always someone on another team or in the media who aren't giving their team enough credit.

I think a big part of pro wrestling's enduring popularity is the villain is always provided, and is clearly defined.

Monday, a reporter who was at Michigan's weekly football press conference

tweeted that Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh said this of Jake Rudock: 'That's an NFL quarterback.'

I retweeted it, knowing it would be of interest to plenty of Iowa fans. Shortly after, three different people I don't know fired back with these responses:

@Brad Baker789: not a chance.

@imahawki: LOL, no.

@Patrickw6: Jim is wrong

So there you have it. Harbaugh has started 140 games in the NFL at quarterback, coached Stanford to an Orange Bowl win, and coached a San Francisco 49ers team to the Super Bowl. What does he know about quarterbacks and the NFL?

Here's what Harbaugh said Monday:

'I really felt like, watching this game, Jake played his best game. He looked like an NFL-type quarterback, somebody that had a future playing in the league. The way he's now playing and operating, I see that jump that he's made.'

Harbaugh also said this, which I won't try to translate:

'I would compare it to a bird-watcher —- can tell what kind of bird, the species, etc., the way it moves. They call it the gist of the bird. With my own eye, the gist of an NFL quarterback, after this game, seeing Jake that way ... I saw it this week. I see it now, with the way he played in this game, the things he does.'

In the fun-and-games department,

the bowl-projectionists at CBSsports.com, ESPN.com and FoxSports.com all have Iowa headed for the Rose Bowl.

That tells me the Hawkeyes will almost surely end up somewhere other than Pasadena.

Jerry Palm of CBSsports.com and Stewart Mandel of FoxSports.com have Iowa playing Utah. An Iowa-Utah Rose Bowl wouldn't exactly make America tingly, would it?

Well, keep in mind last week Palm had Iowa in the Peach Bowl against Houston, and four weeks ago had the Hawkeyes in the Holiday Bowl. These things are kind of fluid.