 Mike HlasHi, I'm Gazette/TheGazette.com sports columnist Mike Hlas. This is the Hlog. We will meet here, discuss things, and then go [...] |
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Hlas column: Nonconference games like Central Michigan used to be out of Iowa’s league
Hawkeyes played the USCs, not the CMUs
There was a time when games against the likes of Central Michigan were unheard of in Iowa football.
In 1979, Hayden Fry’s first season as Iowa’s coach, the Hawkeyes’ nonconference foes were Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa State of the Big Eight.
This year, it’s Northern Illinois, Iowa State, Northern Iowa and Central Michigan. Two Mid-American Conference teams. One FCS squad. One schedule that’s typical in Big Ten football.
Seven bucks
We’ve come to accept games like Saturday’s with Central Michigan (3-9 in 2010 and 2011, a 41-7 loser to Michigan State two weeks ago) as the norm. The Big Ten has 12 games against MAC teams this season, and eight games against FCS clubs.
Eleven other games are against teams that either aren’t from BCS conferences, or aren’t named Boise State or Notre Dame.
Mike Lopos played defensive tackle for the 1974 Hawkeyes. Here’s the nonconference schedule his team faced: UCLA and Penn State at home, USC in Los Angeles.
Iowa beat UCLA, 21-10. The Bruins went on to go 6-3-2. The Hawkeyes lost 27-0 to Penn State (10-2) and 41-3 at USC (10-1-1).
“It was incredible,” said Lopos, who has moved back to Iowa City from Connecticut to get his graduate certificate in multicultural education.
“As a young man, you never realized what you were doing. But as you get older, you realize you played against coaches like John McKay, Woody Hayes, Dick Vermeil, Bo Schembechler. You played against Archie Griffin, Ricky Bell. I played against Marvin Powell at USC.”
Powell was an offensive tackle who is in the College Football Hall of Fame and had a long NFL career.
“Every week you were going against an All-American at offensive tackle or tight end,” Lopos said. “Every week, for crying out loud.”
According to one such ranking, Iowa had the nation’s toughest schedule in 1974. It played four of the top seven teams in the final Associated Press rankings of that season.
However, Iowa’s schedule wasn’t an oddity. If you were in the Big Ten, you played serious nonconference opposition. In 1974, all but four of the league’s 30 nonconference games were against teams that are now in BCS conferences, or Notre Dame.
Illinois played three teams from the then-Pacific-8. Wisconsin played three teams from the Big Eight. Three Big Ten teams played national-power Nebraska.
“My take is this,” said Lopos, “you’ve got to play a champion every week to become a champion. When you do that, you get acclimated. If you play a softer schedule, softer opposition, then you get into conference play and get whacked.”
Unless everybody’s doing it. Which they are. Some other teams entering Big Ten stadiums today include UTEP, UAB, Idaho State, Eastern Michigan and South Dakota.
Iowa’s 1974 schedule didn’t mold it into a champion. In the midst of what would be 19 straight non-winning seasons, the Hawkeyes went 3-8.
$55 each
Said Lopos: “People say ‘Geez, you were only 3-8,’ But as a football player, you don’t look at it that way. I was 11-0. It all came down to one-on-one street fights up front. That’s the Division I mindset. You either have it or you don’t.
“I was a 5-foot-9, 220-pound defensive tackle. “Even back then that small. But I was strong and had leverage. I was never pancaked, never knocked back on my heels.”
Lopos was a senior transfer from Weber State who walked on at Iowa and played his way into the starting lineup and a scholarship. He played for the first of Bob Commings’ five Iowa teams.
Commings yielded to Hayden Fry, and two decades of losing ended not long afterward.
“God bless Coach Commings’ spirit,” Lopos said. “He planted a seed of toughness, and I think that’s what started it all at Iowa. Then Coach Fry came in, and history’s history.”
In the 21st Century, many BCS conference teams have had winning records because of their scheduling. Take away their games against Eastern Illinois, Ball State, Tennessee Tech and Louisiana Monroe the previous two years (Iowa won by a total score of 161-31) and the Hawkeyes were 5-5 in both regular-seasons.
But the big guys play not-as-big guys so they can have seven home games. And, quite often, bowl-eligibility.
“I talked to Kirk Ferentz in Starbucks in Iowa City,” Lopos said. “He said ‘You didn’t schedule very well in ‘74.’ I said, ‘No, Coach, you’re wrong. That’s what it’s all about. You’ve got to play champions.’ ”
No, they don’t. And won’t.
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Thank goodness the Cap’n knows how to schedule well.
Otherwise the good, old 7-5 would be too tough to achieve.
Teams played tougher schedules back then, no doubt, and that made for more entertaining games. But it also appears that the talent gap is narrowing between the BCS and non-BCS schools. How else can you explain Appalachian St. beating Michigan, James Madison beating Virginia Tech, and Louisiana-Monroe beating Arkansas?
It is the only way Iowa can get a winning season is to schedule cream puffs and marshmellows, but what is funny is when they even jump up and bite the Hawks behinds.
I’ll reiterate what I wrote in the column. Everyone’s doing it and has been doing it for some time now.
South Dakota is at Northwestern today. Eastern Michigan is at Michigan State. Idaho State is at Nebraska.
It isn’t just an Iowa thing by any stretch of the imagination, but since I’m in Iowa and write primarily about Iowa, that’s the hook. I hope that once the playoff takes hold and strength-of-schedule matters more, we’ll see less of it.
Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, to his credit, has been vocal about wanting to see his league’s teams beef up their nonconference schedules.
Mike, any idea how much if any CMU will receive for playing this game? I know Iowa typically pays smaller schools for coming to play at Kinnick.
Expand the playoff system to 12-16 teams and make strength of schedule one of the top factors in making the field. Then you’ll see this nonsense stop!
There is no nonsense in having this happen, smaller schools need to take toad games at larger D1 schools to fund their athletic programs.
It would be great to watch Iowa play anybody on Saturday. Yes, it is kind of silly to play the smaller schools, but what’s more pathetic is the GREED going on between BIG TEN Network and Dish Network. A large part of the fans of the Big Ten can’t even watch their favorite team play this season.
I preferred the old system, where nonconference presented great “intersectional” games.
One thing that Ferentz often mentions is that he prefers to focus on the Big Ten slate. This is another way of saying, “I would prefer to coach in 1975 (maybe not, coaches were paid like high school principals then!) because all I know is if we win the Big Ten we go to the Rose Bowl.”
TV and the 30 bowl games have made it important to load up on minor wins. And since football is played with 50 guys, game day, a good program like UNI can be as tough as playing Washington State.
But I would rather watch a 6-6 team or 3-8 team that played USC than one that squeaked it out against Arky State.
3-8 just to watch us play a big name team? You’ve lost your mind! Only TWO TIMES, since 2003 have we scheduled less than 2 BCC non conference games (this year and 2005.) And I’m pretty sure these schedules are made well in advance (Chalk another complaint up about Ferentz: He can’t predict the future.)Lopos sounds a little bitter that he wasn’t a part of any team that actually mattered. Support Iowa and their coach. Negativity never did anybody any damn good at all.
Have to remember, there werent millions at stake for the micronpc.com bowl like there is now. Teams schedule to guarantee themselves 6 wins.
Iowa’s football and basketball non-conference schedules are a joke. Yes, I know, everybody’s doing it. That doesn’t make it right. Most players should have the attitude of Mr. Lopos: I want to play the best. And I want to beat the best.
So you beat NI, UNI, CMU…so what? What does it prove? Does it make you better able to take on MSU, OSU, Wisconsin? Thank goodness this new playoff thing may force schedule upgrades in football.
And I know Fran wants to upgrade the basketball schedule, which will be pretty easy. About the only teams Iowa isn’t playing this year are Southeast Jr. High and the famed Sisters of the Poor.
Iowa has a captive fan base, so it’s been able to get away with this. But if you check the attendance at many places this fall, including in the Big Ten, you’ll find that many fans have given up on spending the money and enduring the hassle of watching Illinois play Charleston Southern, whatever that is.
It is nice to see all the haters are out today, Yes Iowa and other big schools do this and it will most likely change once the 4 team playoff system begins, but unfortunately it will only hurt the small schools. Obviously most of you do not understand that these small schools can fund most of their season by taking 1 road game at a major university, not only that colleges like UNI need this money to keep their other athletic programs alive and to fund female athletics, non football and female sports typically cost way more money than they bring in, so before you make a stupid comment about why schools play the little guys think about the benefits, there are many benefits outside of the easy win that D1 schools typically get in these matchups.
Yes, and back then, going to a bowl game meant winning the Big Ten title. The softer schedules are engineered, for the prospect of playing in a bowl, but I am beginning to think there is now parity, Central Michigan, Northern Illinois, Louisiana Monroe, etal., with Iowa.