Hlas: They’re Ohio State and you’re not

College football games aren't rigged, but many of its fields are tilted.

Sure, there are occasional big upsets. They're the spice of life in the regular-season. Hey, sometimes people beat the balloon dart throw or the ring toss and win stuffed animals, too. But the carnivals win a lot more than they lose.

Against some Big Ten football opponents, the field tilts slightly in Iowa's favor. It was 20th nationally last academic year in athletic department revenue, 24th in football attendance, and has enjoyed more good football than not over the last four decades.

Kinnick Stadium is a renowned venue. Iowa's football complex is among the best in the nation. The school has certainly been competitive when it comes to paying coaching salaries.

So many athletic departments would trade football situations with Iowa's in an instant. But then there's Ohio State, which lives in college football's poshest neighborhood.

The Buckeyes are favored by 17 or 18 points in their game at Iowa Saturday, and why wouldn't they be? They are the Big Ten's most-dominant football program of the last half-century. This will be Ohio State's seventh-straight season of 10 or more wins, and 13th in the last 14.

Iowa has won four of its last 39 games against OSU, and just one in this millennium. But things could be worse.

For instance, Indiana has dropped its last 22 games against the Buckeyes, and that's not its longest losing streak in the series. Since Rutgers joined the Big Ten, it has played Ohio State four times. The cumulative score: Buckeyes 219, Scarlet Knights 24.

Ohio State is good at football, largely because it maintains a fortress as tough to penetrate as the college game has ever seen.

It's the only Power Five conference program in a state with the seventh-largest population (11.6 million). Iowa has 3.1 million people and two Power Five teams.

Ohio State has the second-largest enrollment of all Power Five schools, behind only Texas A&M. It has the third-largest stadium, and when your capacity is 104,944 there's no difference between Ohio Stadium and the coliseums at Michigan and Penn State.

Ohio's high school football heritage is surpassed, perhaps, by only Texas. But that state has five Power Five programs and the nearby University of Oklahoma.

The other 13 Big Ten schools have a combined 111 Ohioans. Michigan State has 26, Northwestern 22. Iowa has had a lot of good ones over the years, like current NFL interceptions leader/AFC Defensive Player of the Month Micah Hyde. James Daniels and Sean Welsh of Ohio start on the current Hawkeyes' offensive line.

Ohio State has 54 players from Ohio. If you're among the very best Ohio preps, Urban Meyer wants you and will probably get you. But he has a bigger picture, one of the biggest pictures. Only seven of the 21 scholarships he doled out to his 2017 class were to in-state guys.

Of those signees, all but two were four-star or five-star guys. Meanwhile, only two of Iowa's 22 recruits in 2017 were consensus four-star or five-stars.

None of this is to call for a pity party for the Hawkeyes or anyone else. This is college sports, and everyone with eyesight can see this is how it is, has always been, and will always be. Besides, some of us think fighting the power is more fun than being the power.

There are different standards at different places. If Iowa finds a way to somehow defeat Ohio State Saturday, the joy here would be as great to the locals as the feeling OSU people experienced three seasons ago when the Buckeyes won the national-title.

But, it's more likely today will be a day to remember this great sportswriting line from long ago:

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the best way to bet.

Well, there's one guaranteed happy ending to this for the Hawkeyes. They don't play Ohio State in 2018 or 2019. Poor Indiana and Rutgers face the Buckeyes every year.