Hawkeye Goulash

Who cares what's in it if it tastes good?

Everyone who grew up in the Midwest has heard the term Goulash. That’s where the commonalities end…because in your house, the ingredients were probably different than they were in my house, and so on.

Frankly, toss in some meat, pasta, and vegetables, and we are talking Goulash.

It’s been a while since I have written about the Hawkeyes. I’ve been spending most of my Hawkeye time on Twitter for the past year, and I have found that I miss writing. I intend to write at least one item weekly through next March (or April if the Iowa women return to the Final Four). I appreciate your being here to read this and hope you stick around.

The best thing to do is sign up with your email address to receive a notification when I have written something new. I am 50/50 right now as it relates to sticking around Twitter much beyond the upcoming football season, and maybe not even that; we shall see. As such, signing up with your email to receive this newsletter, if my thoughts on Iowa sports are something that interests you, is the way to go. It is free, and it will remain free.

FOOTBALL: I will admit that I am incredibly intrigued by the coming football season. While I am always interested and looking forward to a new season, I cannot ever recall an offseason like the one Iowa had and how the Hawkeyes have overhauled their offense.

It wasn’t wholesale roster changes, but it feels like it might well have been. Iowa added a couple of transfer offensive linemen, an All-Conference linebacker, a former four-star wide receiver and one of the most ‘recruiting decorated’ receivers ever to come to Iowa during the Ferentz era, a potential first-round draft pick at tight end, and a former Big Ten Champion quarterback.

That’s a lot, and it was great to see Iowa embracing the transfer portal. However, for me, the unprecedented points per game clause in Brian Ferentz’s contract is the extra buttered movie theater popcorn I am standing in line for right now.

Outgoing AD Gary Barta is Brian’s direct report (snort), but he won’t be around to mete out the ‘punishment’ should Iowa not average 25 points per game. That will fall to Deputy AD Beth Goetz.

Iowa should have a national title-caliber defense once again, and special teams will be on par with the best in the nation. While I don’t expect we will see wholesale changes as it relates to offensive philosophy, or maybe that’s my subconscious talking and protecting my emotions from previous disappointments in that area, I don’t think Cade McNamarra came to Iowa without some commitment as to change.

When I turn on Iowa’s first game of the year, I fall in low with the contrast of the black and gold uniforms all over again, juxtaposed amidst a backdrop of green. I still will, but we are all very interested in what Kirk and Brian ‘cook up’ for this season.

I’ll have a football predictions newsletter later this summer, but I will add this right now; I believe this will be Kirk Ferentz’s last season, regardless of what happens.

He has a team capable of winning the Big Ten West and returning to Indianapolis. If that happens, that’s a good note to go out on. If it doesn’t happen, and say the offense sputters again, he’s not going to stick around if his son gets the axe, and Iowa will be hiring a new AD in 2024.

I have been wrong about this before…shoot, I have been wrong about a lot of things. I just think this might be it. He is also sitting at a career .5928 winning percentage. He has coached 334 games, with 198 wins, which includes his stop at UCONN.

If Iowa went say 10-2 and say went 1-1 in the postseason (assuming they make it to Indy), Kirk Feretnz would have a career winning percentage of .6005, which would put him above the 60% threshold for consideration to be invited to the College Football Hall of Fame. Here are the criteria from the College Football HOF website:

“A coach becomes eligible three full seasons after retirement or immediately following retirement, provided he is at least 70 years old. Active coaches become eligible at 75 years of age. He must have been a head football coach for a minimum of 10 years and coached at least 100 games with a .600 winning percentage.”

It will take at least 11 wins for Ferentz to get over 60%. 10-3 won’t do it. I hope this Iowa team wins at least 11 games for several reasons, including the Hall of Fame angle.

In my opinion, Ferentz’s resume is absolutely a no-brainer Hall of Fame resume…but that .600 winning percentage may not be arbitrary.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Last year was a dream season for Lisa Bluder’s Hawkeyes. It was one of the most enjoyable Iowa basketball seasons I have ever seen, and Caitlin Clark is the most exciting Iowa basketball player of my lifetime, no caveats needed.

She might be the most box-office athlete in Iowa Hawkeye history, too.

Everywhere she goes, she draws record crowds, and I am not even talking about in basketball arenas.

While the fan in me was disappointed that Iowa didn’t make much noise in the transfer portal (and they didn’t have a lot of room), this team should once again challenge for the Big Ten regular season title this coming year and perhaps another deep NCAA tournament run.

The loss of Monika Czinano is significant…as in really significant. When she got the ball in her hands down low, she seemed even more automatic than Megan Guftsason was. The 67.1% career field goal percentage was insane, and it was better than Megan’s 65.6%.

Simply put, you cannot replace production like that. Iowa has some rising bigs on the roster, but that’s a huge loss, and it will put more pressure on Clark to perhaps be even better next year than she was this past year. I won’t bet against her, but teams had to be aware of Czinano when they double-teamed Clark…this coming year, at least early. Until Iowa shows it has a counter, Clark will face a ridiculous amount of attention and pressure from multiple opposing defenders. She will see a ton of junk defenses, and while the roster is talented, she will be put through a wringer of obstacles each and every game the likes the game has maybe never seen.

Yes, I realize that the last statement is hyperbolic, however, I absolutely stand by it. There has never been a Caitlin Clark in women’s basketball. There have maybe only been a handful of players like her to have ever laced up a pair of sneakers, and those names are basketball royalty; Curry, Jordan, Durant, Westbrook, Oscar Robertson…as I said to start this selection, to me, Clark is the most exciting Iowa basketball player I have ever watched and easily in my personal Top Ten favorite basketball players, college/pro man/woman, ever.

This next year will be so, so important for the future of the Iowa women’s basketball program. Iowa needs to have a monster recruiting year, and the program never had more visibility than it did last two months ago. Iowa is among the most supportive fanbase for women’s basketball in the country…the iron is white hot, and Bluder & Co must strike.

MEN’S BASKETBALL: This coming season should be…interesting. Iowa is still trying to bring in more talent via the transfer portal, but by and large, the roster is what it is, as of now, most likely. And while Fran’s style of play allows his teams to win 20 or more games consistently during the regular season, his rosters have been lacking that March Difference.

That difference is guards that can get to the rim when they want and create their own shots when they want, and the Hawkeyes, per usual, are in short supply of such players. Barring a transfer between now and August, that will again be their Achilles heel or glass ceiling.

That’s not to say I won’t watch or be entertained, but it’s like watching a movie you already know the ending to. Still, the college basketball season is so much about the journey. That’s the portion of the season that offers the most entertainment. The world remembers the NCAA Tournament, but when you are a fan of a specific team, you’ll remember the journey.

I find it to be analogous to life. I am not sitting around, counting down the days until I am in my 70s or 80s, where I can see the end of the road wherever I look, aka The Final Destination. I am enjoying the day, the journey, with its ups and downs, and making these memories for myself and my family.

To quote the great John Lennon, life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. If we sit around and fret about winning two games in March to advance to the second weekend, we will miss the other 30 to 32 games…or we won’t enjoy them as much.

Look, I hate it when sports writers fire up a column and tell fans how they should feel. There happens to be a person on the Iowa beat that does that a lot, to great personal annoyance. So, you do you. As for me, I expect this team to beat some teams they shouldn’t lose to some teams they shouldn’t, play a fast-paced brand of basketball that I find very entertaining, and if I let them disappoint me in March…I think I will choose not to let them disappoint me, and this acceptance, nine months in advance, is more about self-preservation than anything else.

WRESTLING: I love Ferarri’s. I loved the Ferrari on Maimi Vice back in the day. I love a red Testerosa. The Iowa wrestling program appears to be loading their garage with Ferrari’s, as Angelo Ferrari committed to the Hawkeyes last week.

Flo Wrestling ranks him as the #1 prospect in the Class of 2024, and he chose Iowa over Penn State and some others, but Penn State is all you need to know.

Every article I read about this commitment threw out a number of caveats and talked about the controversy within the family. The link above will shed some light on the backstory for the uninformed.

I saw a few folks saying that Tom Brands must really be desperate to beat Penn State and that he is taking on Ferarri baggage…to which my first thought was he chose Iowa OVER Penn State…the Nittany Lions wanted him, too.

It was great to see Iowa land a highly-coveted upper weight, as they have typically been more successful with recruiting the lower weights, Cale Sanderson has dominated the upper weights (and has done just fine at the lower weights, too). Perhaps that has a lot to do with the weight classes the coaches participated in, and the Brands Brothers were highly decorated amateur wrestlers, and Sanderson might be the GOAT.

Still, according to the linked item, Angelo’s brothers AJ and Anthony may be joining the Iowa program, too…and AJ and Anthony certainly bring some baggage with them, to put it mildly.

Was this a package deal to land the best wrestler in the nation? Maybe. Is the entire Ferrari package a bit of desperation? I am not informed enough to say yes or no.

The Hawkeyes are certainly making some moves, the new wrestling training facility continues to progress, and the Hawkeyes look to get back atop the national perch they occupied for so long, but Penn State has taken from them and taken to heights just as impressive as Dan Gable’s run at Iowa from the mid to late 1970s until the mid-1980s. Here is to second chances not biting Iowa in the singlet.

BASEBALL: It was a record-tying season for Rick Heller’s Hawkeyes this year, as Iowa tied the school record for most wins in a season. They made it back to the NCAA tournament for the first time in six years and they were a couple of innings away from putting themselves in the driver’s seat of the Terre Haute regional…but the bullpen couldn’t hold on Saturday and Indiana State came back, sending Iowa down the hard, long, dirt road of NCAA Baseball Regional reality.

I think the TV announcers said on Saturday that the teams who win their first two games go on to win the regional four out of five times…it’s obvious as to why that is; pitching depth.

Most teams don’t have four quality starters. Many don’t have three. Iowa does, and they nearly put themselves into a Monday, winner-take-all scenario, but they ran out of gas.

Brody Brecht, who has smartly put football in his rearview mirror, was nails on Saturday. He wasn’t at his best, but he was in the area code. It will be fun to watch him and Marcus Morgan pitch again next season, as Morgan became the more stable starter as the year went on. Brecht’s ‘stuff’ is electric, with some analysts saying it’s the best, or at worst among the best, in the college game. If he can harness solid control of his curveball this next year, you are looking at a Top Ten pick.

Iowa fought valiantly down the stretch following the loss of some players, including All-American Keaton Anthony, due to an investigation by the Iowa Gaming Commission related to improper gambling.

I realize this irritated a lot of people, and while none of us is in possession of all the facts (unless you are a family member, a coach, or a friend of one of those groups who can get someone to talk), if there is one subject that college athletes are acutely aware of, it’s that gambling on sports while you are a college athlete is a no-no.

I don’t know how ‘innocuous’ the violation was/is. Maybe it was just wagering on one game that has nothing to do with baseball. I don’t know. But if the players wagered on sports, and all indications point to that being the case, they broke the rules, and it would be impossible to say that they did not know they were breaking the rules.

I also recognize there could be a great deal of nuance involved. I feel bad for the kids who have been held out of the rest of the baseball season and potentially other student-athletes from other sports (including football) who could see their eligibility jeopardized. That said, each of us has rules we must abide by in society, in life, at our places of work, etc. The risk of getting down on a game on a betting app is not worth throwing away your college eligibility.