Another Year, Another Eight Wins for Iowa: On Being Consistently Pretty Good, Never Great, But Better Than Most

This is a guest post by our esteemed dean of the Iowa contingent, Mr. Grizz. Thanks, Grizz!

PREFACE/DISCLAIMER:  The opinions and characterizations below are strictly my own, though they are based on 46 years of being an Iowa fan, including commiserating/rejoycing/being crabby with multitudes of other fans over the years.  If someone considers the observations inaccurate, perhaps you need another drink, like I'm having.  I don't pretend that a few other schools don't share this sort of dilemma, though for Iowa the underlying circumstances are a little unique.  And yup, the range of all our respective fans can run from wine sippers to undergrads hammering bad vodka and flipping double-birds on social media, to some fellow compelled to tattoo the team name on his sizeable stomach.  However, no fanbase is immune from such behavior, including you, NERN fans; there's nothing more dignified in receiving a Federal indictment for insider trading or racketeering, so everybody off their high horse. Anyway, onward.

Over the last 10 years (6-2 in the shortened 2020 season) Iowa has won at least 8 games each year; a year or two a bowl game took it to 8 wins, a couple of years 9 or 10 wins.  Over the last 24 years, there have been a couple of down years but taking out that short season, the win average is 8.565. Including the short season doesn't  change the number appreciably.

For all of those years, Iowa was in a position to seriously challenge for the B1G title a total of three times.  We shared a title in 2002, shared again in 2004, and lost in the final minutes of the title game in 2015.  ( Not that it matters, I still contend that match-up wise, MSU would have fared better than Iowa against Stanford in the Rose Bowl against Christian McCaffrey and Co., and Iowa would have fared better than MSU against Alabama in the Cotton Bowl though still both would have lost)  Obviously there were other conference title games but in those Iowa was never really in contention.  Iowa was in the national title picture only once, 2002, and even then was just outside, watching an Ohio State team it didn't play in conference defeat Miami to take the title.

Iowa has demonstrated a higher floor than most teams, but also a ceiling which usually keeps it in the second-tier bowls, occasionally a little higher or a little lower.  Iowa had a run of wins but now loses more often than not to Michigan, hardly ever beats Ohio State, has a little more success against Penn State, and only recently has re-gained the upper hand over the transitioning Wisconsin program.  Michigan State is a less frequent opponent though Iowa has won more in the wake of Dantonio's departure. The addition of the former Pac-12 teams creates new challenges--Oregon is definitely higher up the proverbial ladder, and USC presumably will be assuming it gets its act together.  Everybody's been waiting for Nebraska to step up, and still waiting.

If there is one universal truth about college football fans, it is that we are never satisfied for long, if at all.  Depending upon the success of your program, how that manifests itself varies.  Indiana and Ohio State fans are still probably feeling pretty good, Illinois probably pretty okay, Wisconsin fans not so much, Minnesota and a bunch of others meh, and at this point who knows what Purdue and NERN fans feel, or should feel.

Which brings me to the odd place where Iowa sits. Most teams can be classified as haves and have-nots.  Iowa is in a sort of vague upper middle. The have-nots are understandably unhappy, often wondering how or if they can ever do much better and if so, how much really?  Some days, I suspect they ask "Why bother?" The haves consider success or failure in extremes, did we win a championship (conference or natty) or not, or a high-level bowl win or loss? They have fewer excuses and often shorter tempers if God forbid, they lose two games each year.   Iowa sits in the place where some claim outsized optimism and convince themselves every new year is/will be/can be the real breakthrough year with a legitimate shot at national title contention.  We're this close. Others claim the ceiling is firm, the resources are finite, and the current pattern of 8.565 win consistency is really the best we can expect, so enjoy the place we have which the true have-nots would die to inhabit.  Go to an okay bowl  away from crappy Winter weather, party and hopefully win to cap off the holiday.  Still others are convinced that the slope is slippery, the downslide is inevitable and finally here, just as they predicted last year and the year before.  These factions do occasionally clash, and it is of no relief that the path taken to 8.565 has been one of traditionally strong defenses and traditionally struggling offenses.   It feeds the frustrations suffered by all three factions.

It also creates a sort of theoretical dilemma among some fans:  Tired of being pretty good, sometimes close to greatness but eluding our grasp, would we give up the consistency, and a few, maybe more, objectively bad years for a true run at a national title?  

There is a split on this, but I believe the majority of Iowa fans would still say no, particularly older fans.  Their numbers are dwindling with age, but still out there are those who are truly haunted by 20 years of losing seasons (one breakeven) before Hayden Fry arrived forty-seven years ago this December.  Such is the depth of the trauma. They see the struggles of other programs in similarly less populated states which also have to go outside the borders for talent to fill out the team and think, but for the grace of Fry and Ferentz go we.  But there are those who look at a perennial top-10 defense and bottom- 1-50 offense who would take the bargain and give, say half a decade or so of dumpster ball for one year with a conference championship and more than a puncher's chance of winning the National Championship.  In a strange (and very midwestern) way, I see fellow Iowa fans struggle between appreciation, frustration, and feeling as though they are spoiled.  This has and will likely continue to result fans blurting outsized expressions of accomplishment and despair in the electronic wilderness where everybody types and clicks first, and thinks later.

NIL poses a new variable.  One one hand, Iowa has some moneyed donors, but will not be able to keep up with several other schools, including some (up to now) have-nots.  At first blush, a championship can now legally be bought.  But, with a recent example, other schools with at least some money can pull away some of the depth, and overall strength, of the more moneyed powers, such as Texas Tech just did pulling in a 5 star player.  Also, money doesn't fix everything, ask those two other Texas schools from the SEC.  Smart shopping may make a difference.  How much, is too early to tell.

But for now, as every year, the lure of the drug 8.565 will fill Kinnick this year, next, and quite possibly for many years to come.  Extroverted fans will again make fools of themselves and wonder why everybody hates them.  And Iowa will get from 7 to 9, most likely 8 wins.  And fans will continue to have angst about it.