Hlas: How Hawkeyes beat Michigan: Imitate Harbaugh

I'm not here to tell you how Iowa upsets Michigan Saturday night in football.

For one thing, why ruin the surprise? For another, I'm not particularly convinced it can happen. In fact, after an entire week of processing the data, analyzing tendencies and poring over game films, I've determined the winner will almost surely be ... the Wolverines.

However, as in life itself, shocks do happen in college football. There have been many beauties over the sport's history.

Two of the biggest upsets ever — and the two biggest upsets of this millennium — involved Michigan in one and current Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh in the other. They occurred within 35 days of each other in 2007.

The first was Appalachian State's 34-32 victory over Michigan in Ann Arbor. It almost justified FBS teams scheduling FCS teams because as we continue to hear to this day, Appalachian State beat Michigan.

Michigan was ranked No. 5 in the preseason that year, but went on to lose four times that season. That was the end of Lloyd Carr's coaching tenure, which included a national championship.

Though they did go 11-2 under Brady Hoke in 2011, they never again were the Michigan of yore until now, as they bring their 9-0 record into Kinnick Stadium Saturday evening.

Were Harbaugh coaching Iowa Saturday, he could tell his guys their challenge is nothing compared to what his Stanford team did in Los Angeles in October 2007.

Stanford was 1-11 in 2006. Needing a spark, athletic director Bob Bowlsby hired Harbaugh away from the University of San Diego to coach his Cardinal. A few months after Harbaugh got the job, he said publicly that Pete Carroll would probably leave USC for the NFL after the '07 season.

Carroll didn't warm to that, since it wasn't especially helpful for his recruiting. As it turned out, he didn't depart for the Seattle Seahwaks until after the 2009 season.

Anyway, Stanford was a 41-point underdog when it brought its 1-3 team to the Los Angeles Coliseum to play Carroll's Trojans, who had won 35 straight games in that stadium and owned a 24-game winning streak in the Pac-12 Conference.

'We bow to no man,' Harbaugh had said about Carroll in the spring of 2007. 'We bow to no program at Stanford University.'

His Cardinal beat USC 31-30, to become the biggest point-spread underdog to win a college football game.

Those 41 points are almost twice what Harbaugh's Wolverines are favored by against Iowa, so the Hawkeyes' task is about half of what Stanford's was that night in 2007. Right?

If I'm Kirk Ferentz, I abandon my even-keel, let's-keep-it-professional routine for one pregame speech and I shout this to my team: 'We bow to no man! We bow to no program at the University of Iowa!'

Hey, what harm could it do?

Instead of having his players lock hands in the slow trot of the Swarm for the 1,000th-straight Hawkeyes game or so, maybe he could allow his guys to tear through the tunnel and zoom onto the field as AC/DC blares on the p.a. Let them show some Harbaugh-type attitude that would electrify the Kinnick crowd and freak out the Wolverines.

Then, of course, you still have to play the game.

I don't know how the Hawkeyes would find a path to victory once those pregame histrionics are done, but if I did I certainly wouldn't tell you. Again, why ruin the surprise?