Let 2024 Hawkeye football prattle/babble/blather begin in earnest right now

Preseason prattle for Iowa’s 2024 college football season began in January. It builds to full-blown babble and blabber now that we’re in August.

In a few weeks, actual games will be played and actual stories will emerge. In the meantime, we have numbers and factoids to pull from the cosmos. Such as:

Iowa won 10 games last season though it outscored its opponents by just nine points over the season and was outgained by an average of 48 yards per game. The crazy thing is, instead of feeling fortunate to get those 10 wins, it will always say it should have had 11, pointing to the loss to Minnesota and an invalid fair-catch call.

While losing to P.J. Fleck may remain inconceivable around here, it’s kind of overlooked that Iowa had the ball at its 46-yard line with 1:32 left and failed to move the ball 22 yards to give Drew Stevens a shot at his fifth career field goal of 50-plus yards.

Stevens, a junior, needs two more 50-yarders to tie Brion Hurley’s 28-year-old Iowa record of six from that distance.

Ah yes, numbers. Have some more.

Iowa has an all-time home winning percentage of .650 (430-228-16), while its winning percentage away from home is .435 (264-347-23).

The Hawkeyes didn’t score in either of their last two games away from Kinnick Stadium. They haven’t been shut out at Kinnick, however, since 1998. That covers 167 home games.

The University of Iowa’s enrollment, according to Iowa’s 2024 football media guide, is 31,452. In poker, that’s what is called a wheel, an Ace-2-3-4-5 straight.

Were it not for the aforementioned media guide, I wouldn’t have believed Tory Taylor doesn’t have any of Iowa’s 14 longest all-time punts. Ryan Donahue had five longer than Taylor’s career-best 70-yarder.

Taylor’s fellow Australian, Rhys Dakin, will likely be Iowa’s starting punter this season. It’s quite possible he will be the third of 100 straight Aussies who hold that job.

Iowa linebacker Jay Higgins led the nation in tackles last season with 171. Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell led the nation in tackles in 2021, and led the Big Ten in 2022.

It’s Hawkeye linebacker Nick Jackson, however, who has a shot at becoming the all-time leading tackler in FBS. He has 464. The record is 577. Jackson had 110 last season in his first year at Iowa.

Jackson has 47 career starts. I haven’t been able to find the FBS record for all players, but Bo Nix holds the record for quarterbacks with 61 starts. Jackson can get to 61 if the Hawkeyes reach the Big Ten championship game or win a first-round national playoff game.

When Troy plays at Iowa on Sept. 14, it will be the first time the Hawkeyes have played a team from Alabama. Iowa played its first game in 1889. Alabama and Auburn started football in 1892.

These players are on Iowa’s roster: Reece Vander Zee, Landyn Van Kekerix, Devan Van Ness, Kyson Van Vugt and Rusty VanWetzinga IV. Rusty’s brother, Joey VanWetzinga, is a 2025 commit to the Hawkeyes.

The Central College Dutch of Pella have no Vans of any kind on their 2024 football roster.

The longest reception by a Hawkeye last season was Zach Ortwerth’s 54-yarder against Rutgers. It was his only catch of the season.

Ortwerth was one of six Iowa tight ends who had receptions last year.

The Hawkeyes held Michigan to 213 yards in last year’s Big Ten championship game. The Wolverines gained 443 in their national-title win over Washington.

The only two Hawkeyes with 100-yard kickoff returns in the last 60 years are C.J. Jones and Charlie Jones. This year’s team has Leighton Jones and Logan Jones, but don’t expect the same feat from either. They’re offensive linemen.

No Iowa linebacker has ever had more interceptions in a season than new Hawkeyes radio commentator Pat Angerer, who had five in 2008.

Quarterback Cade McNamara is Iowa’s oldest player, born on May 28, 2000. Which means no Hawkeye player was alive during Kirk Ferentz’s first season as Iowa’s coach.

This season starts before this month is over. Bob Dylan sang this in his masterpiece of an album, “Blood on the Tracks”: Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast.

Dylan wrote that 26 years before any current Iowa football player was born.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com