Hlas: Hawkeyes’ season will be interesting, for sure

While the Big Ten returned to the national college football spotlight with gusto in 2015, Iowa's program stalled.

The way last season ended combined with Ferentz's record of the last five years (19-21 in the Big Ten, 5-12 in trophy games, two defeats to Mid-American Conference clubs) are a left-right combination that have tagged the Hawkeyes hard.

The Big Ten did the formerly unthinkable and supplanted the SEC as the most-publicized football conference over the last eight months. Ohio State's unexpected national-championship and Michigan's hiring of fireball Jim Harbaugh as coach returned the league to prominence.

But the biggest 2015 story about the Hawkeyes, more than steering starting quarterback Jake Rudock to collegiate free agency and replacing him with C.J. Beathard, is this: Season ticket sales are down 16 percent from a year ago.

So if you're attending the Illinois State-Iowa game Saturday, you may have more elbow room in Kinnick Stadium than usual. Whether someone's knees are still pressed into your back is another matter.

The question of Iowa's off-season hasn't been if it can snap back from a 7-6 year in which more was expected, but if the Kirk Ferentz regime is on the road to the glue factory.

The 51-14 thrashing Iowa took at Minnesota, the Black Friday home game the Hawkeyes gave away against Nebraska, the dismal showing against Tennessee in their bowl — that's what sent a lot of ticket renewal forms to the recycling bin.

The one thing sure to turn talk into action in athletic departments is when you take away some of their money. Their promotions and promises are nice and all, but there's only one way they can plug this kind of leak. That's to have a successful, entertaining team.

Which, despite the lack of a stampede to the ticket window, makes the upcoming season as interesting entering the season as any I can remember around here.

This season will either be a renaissance or more of the same for the Hawkeyes. No matter which is the case, the reactions around here will be anything but apathetic.

Look at Iowa's schedule and find a game it can't win. If Nevada oddsmakers put numbers on all 12 of those contests today, the Hawkeyes would be underdogs only at Wisconsin, Nebraska, and probably Northwestern, and none of those three are Ohio State.

That said, there are eight or nine games the Hawkeyes can certainly lose, and you can include Illinois State among them.

If four or five of those eight or nine don't go Iowa's way, you won't have anybody's knee pressed against your back in Kinnick at the Nov. 21 home finale against Purdue.

But after the off-season of absorbing verbal and written lashes, Ferentz and his assistants project confidence, not desperation. They're recruiting with a vigor, with 23 commitments for the 2016 class. The latest, Omaha tight end Noah Fant, was a Nebraska target.

'Iowa was out of this world in recruiting me,' Fant said.

That's not how nervous coaches perform. Recruits may be young, but they can smell the stench of panic.

As for Iowa's current team, who's to say it won't be pretty good? The biggest question is if its inexperienced offensive tackles will be up to the task, but how often do healthy Iowa O-lines stagger through a season? The trick, as it is so often, is to get through the nonconference schedule without the learning curve biting them.

The Hawkeyes' defense should be sturdy, a renewed emphasis on special teams sure can't hurt, and the new quarterback may just turn out to be the best in the West.

But that's all so easy to say before the calendar flips into September. Every season features a different team, different situations, different bounces. All the Hawkeyes need worry about now is outscoring Illinois State.

In Iowa's previous football building, a sign featured this Ronald Reagan quotation: 'If not us, who? If not now, when?'

It has to be you, 2015 Hawkeyes. Now.

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com