 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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No one in college football has played more close games than Iowa
I know all I have to do is type “Iowa football” and I’ll get Variation No. 888 of the same complaints about the Hawkeyes from the same handful of people in the comments section.
They’ll show up on this post, too. And I can rightly be accused of stoking their fires with this, I guess, but I refer you to the first sentence of this post.
By the way, if the usual suspects want to hold off just this one time, no one will hold it against them.
That said … Iowa leads FBS in games decided by 3 points or less, with six. That’s 60 percent of their games. You don’t see that any old year.
I’m not just talking about one-score games. These are one field-goal games.
The Hawkeyes were in two such games last season when they went 7-6, four in 2010 when they went 8-5, five in 2009 when they went 11-2, and four in 2008 when they went 9-4. That was a four-year total of 35-17, by the way. They weren’t bad times, all in all, unless you don’t like Outback and Orange bowls. And I’ve been to worse bowls than the Insight. Oh, yes I have.
Here are the six such games this season:
vs. Northern Illinois W 18-17
vs. Iowa State L 9-6
vs. Central Michigan L 32-31
at Michigan State W 19-16 (2 OT)
at Indiana L 24-21
vs. Purdue L 27-24
I am counting all games that went overtime as 3-point games, because they were tied at the end of regulation. That said, here are the others with four or more:
Wyoming has more close games than uniform styles
Wyoming 5 (plus a 5-point win over New Mexico yesterday)
BYU 4
Notre Dame 4
Maryland 4
Wisconsin 4 (plus a 5-point win over Northern Iowa)
Michigan State 4 (plus two 4-point games)
Indiana 4 (plus one 4-point game)
Other Big Ten teams:
Ohio State, Purdue 3
Nebraska, Northwestern, Michigan 2
Penn State, Minnesota 1
Illinois 0
As you can see, the Big Ten easily has more 3-point-or-less games than any league in the nation. They are much fewer and further between in the Big 12 and Pac-12.
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The Big 10 has great competitive parity!
Oh wait, that’s just another way of saying everybody is terrible and this bowl season is going to be even more embarrassing than recent years. That, in itself, is quite a feat. At least Iowa’s chances of getting pantsed in a bowl are slim to none at this point.
On the bright side, the SEC might not win a national championship this year!
Mike, I don’t even understand why you would write this article. Who cares how many close games we have lost? The reality is that Iowa is 27-27 in the Big Ten over the last 7 seasons. After we lose to Michigan and Nebraska, we will be 27-29. We had 2 seasons in those 7 that we were above .500 in the Big Ten (6-2 and 5-3). To me, that means 7 years that we were average at best. This is bad program with no upside any where in sight.
This is my first comment on any of your stories. Although I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. Now, if the iowa offense was even average to below average in any of those years instead of being one of the worst in the entire country we would have had dominate wins instead of close wins and close losses. Now I will back my horrible offense claim up with factual information, here is iowa’s offense ranking (currently this year we are 106 in the country in total offense)
2007: iowa was 109 out of 119 fbs teams
2004: 101 out of 117 fbs teams
2000: 99 out of 114 fbs teams
1999: 97 out of 114 fbs teams
Maybe it is time we try a new offensive scheme like say the I don’t know the spread (see michigan and ohio st as teams who have switched) since the current offense has proven not to work over the last 12 years? If our coaches are not good at the spread then we should get new ones because they clearly are not good at implementing the current offense based on the stats above.