Iowa fans say Si to SI cover

I used to own EVERY Sports Illustrated from 1970 to 1997. Every pro football and college football preview. Every Summer and Winter Olympics special.  Every End of the Year double issue. And, yes, every Swimsuit issue.

So, when I heard SI put Iowa  on its regional cover this week, I knew the plethora of "SI cover jinx" stories would come. We certainly had our share at The Gazette, Gazette Online and KCRG.

But Hawkeye fans apparently don't care about such things and have been buying up the magazine faster than the farmers are working the corn fields these days. We even received an e-mail down here on Friday stating that they sold 400 copies of Sports Illustrated at the Eastern Iowa Airport gift shop on Thursday and had 200 more available. No doubt those will be history very soon, if not already.

Iowa beat writer Marc Morehouse wrote about the SI jinx, correctly pointing out that the fates were kind to Michael  Jordan, Tiger Woods and others who have been on the magazine's cover through the years. Even Muhammad Ali, who's No. 2 on the cover list between Air Jordan and Tiger, always will be The Greatest in my mind, not only for his boxing skills but for standing up against the draft in 1967.

If Iowa should lose Saturday to Northwestern, Sports Illustrated undoubtedly will get some of the blame. Which probably will be good news to Ricky Stanzi, the running game, the offensive line, the punt-return game and the coaching staff, who likely will be more to blame than the cover of some sports magazine.