Hlas: Hawkeyes trade big picture for tunnel vision

IOWA CITY — I'd say count me among those guilty of looking ahead when it comes to 7-0 Iowa's remaining football schedule, but 'guilty' carries such a negative connotation.

Since Iowa beat Northwestern on Oct. 17, I've written the Hawkeyes should be 11-0 when they travel to Nebraska in late November, and that I think they have the fourth-best chance of all 12 FBS unbeatens when it comes to running the table in the regular-season.

But idle hands are the devil's workshop, and Iowa's idle week on the schedule gave us time to imagine great possibilities rather than dwelling on the next contest. Now that the grind has resumed, let's return to the reality that a 12-game schedule is full of peril.

After the Hawkeyes' 40-10 rout of Northwestern on Oct. 17, Hawkeyes Coach Kirk Ferentz gave his players 72 hours to think big picture.

'I've encouraged them to dream and think big,' he said. 'That's how things happen.'

Well, partly. Once the team resumed practice last week, the message returned to normal.

'You can sit around and think about things and dream about them for so long,' Ferentz said Tuesday, 'but at some point you have to get to work, and that's really where the rubber hits the road. Party's over, let's go. Back to work.'

Next up is Maryland, a 2-5 team with a leaky defense and an interim head coach. Iowa is a 17-point favorite. Piece of crab cake, right?

Well, let's go back five years, to when Iowa was enjoying the first and only (so far) 9-0 start to a season in school history. The Hawkeyes were 16-point picks over Northwestern at Kinnick Stadium. Quarterback Ricky Stanzi got sacked in the end zone in the second quarter, fumbled the ball away for a Wildcat second-quarter touchdown, and suffered a high ankle sprain in the bargain.

Iowa, which had been perched in the Top Ten just as it is in one major poll today, fell 17-10. Something similarly horrific couldn't happen Saturday, could it? Oh, ye of too much faith.

'The Big Ten is very, very competitive every week,' said Iowa defensive end Parker Hesse. 'You can see the last couple weeks, anybody can beat anybody and anybody can lose to anybody.

'When you get those big point-spreads, it's not really indicative of what can really happen. Especially against a team like Maryland. They're really dangerous offensively and on special teams. We're going to have to prepare just like for any other game.'

So Iowa's players have received their coach's message. But Ferentz was delivering it to a larger audience Tuesday, noting in his weekly press conference that 'We've got 62.5, to be exact, percent of our Big Ten schedule to play yet.'

That's five out of eight games. Which makes Saturday's game a conference midterm.

While Carl Computer and Patricia Pundit can check off beating Maryland as a done deal, 60 minutes of proof have yet to be furnished. Ferentz recently supplied his players with a sheet of paper listing underdogs who had toppled favorites.

'Every weekend there's examples of how wrong the experts can be,' Ferentz said. 'But experts don't have to play games.

'I'm not criticizing it or making fun of it, but for the guys that have to go out and compete, it's a whole different deal.'

Expect similar comments next week when Iowa is 8-0. Err, if

Iowa is 8-0.

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