Iowa quarterback James Vandenberg (16) tosses a pass during the team's openspring practice Saturday, April 15, 2012 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG TV-9)

Phil Steele has become the E.F. Hutton of college football national gurus. For those of you who don’t remember the company’s world-famous commercials back in the 1980s, E.F. Hutton touted its stock market success and left you with a simple phrase: “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”

Well, Phil Steele has that kind of clout, too. Nobody crunches the numbers on college football quite like Mr. Steele. His annual preseason guide is a must-buy and not for the articles. The numbers are free-flowing and crammed into the tiniest spot on a page. But they have power, as we learned last year after Iowa’s 22-21 loss at Minnesota.

Phil Steele knows his players, too, and he releases his preseason all-conference teams on his website each spring. Today, he unleashed the Big Ten, and two Iowa players landed on the first team.

Wide receiver Keenan Davis, who caught 50 passes last year for Iowa, headlines Iowa’s offensive honorees. Cornerback Micah Hyde was tabbed first-team defense. Nobody would argue that Hyde deserves that nomination, but Davis is maybe a bit of a surprise. But not overly so.

Iowa totaled eight players on Steele’s top four teams. Linebacker James Morris was a second-teamer with tight end C.J. Fiedorowicz and center James Ferentz landing on the third team. Fourth-team members include safety Tanner Miller, linebacker Christian Kirksey and left tackle Brandon Scherff, who has yet to play a snap at that position.

Perhaps the greatest surprise for Iowa fans might be at quarterback. Senior James Vandenberg passed for 3,022 yards and 25 TDs, last year and finished third among Big Ten quarterbacks in passing yards per game at 232.5. Vandenberg’s the top returnee in that statistical category, followed by Michigan’s Denard Robinson, who averaged 167.2 yards per game, Nebraska’s Taylor Martinez (162.3 ypg) and Illinois’ Nathan Scheelhaase (160.7 ypg). I’d say 55 yards a game is pretty significant.

Robinson was listed as Steele’s first-team QB and rightly so. He’s a dynamic dual-threat player and has a real shot at the Heisman Trophy. Martinez was listed third and Scheelhaase was fourth. Steele’s surprise was at second-team with Ohio State sophomore Braxton Miller, who passed for 1,159 yards last year as a freshman. While Miller has tons of talent, it’s a real stretch to think new Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer will mold Miller into the next Tim Tebow this year, let alone outplay a returning senior who topped 3,000 yards and threw just seven interceptions last year.

Vandenberg passed for 399 yards and four TDs in the greatest comeback in Iowa football history, a 31-27 win against Pittsburgh. Miller completed 1-of-4 passes in an improbable win at Illinois. Granted Miller had a couple of nice performances last but nothing to push him ahead of Martinez, Scheelhaase, Vandenberg or even Minnesota’s MarQueis Gray entering this season.

While Phil Steele, who resides in Ohio, remains a college football genius, he might have miscalculated with Miller, maybe like we all did with the Mayans and that whole end-of-the-world thing. Maybe Miller will be better than Vandenberg in a year or two, and the Mayans will be right in 7,000 years. Or Steele could be right with Miller this year, and his projections forever will remain stainless. Hopefully that doesn’t coincide with the end of the world.

— Scott Dochterman

LINK SLIME

– Off Tackle Empire is offering its thoughts on Iowa’s head football coach and his two coordinators.

While it’s flattering to Kirk Ferentz overall (though not entirely), it doesn’t paint OC Greg Davis as the bridge from the Insight Bowl to the Rose Bowl.

Greg Davis thrived on consistently boring screens, slant patterns, and QB’s who could take it upon themselves to make the coach look good despite the obnoxious plays that were called.

– The list of the 60 players invited to June’s NBA Pre-Draft Camp in Chicago has been released. Five players are from the Big Ten. Iowa’s Matt Gatens isn’t among them.

– How much money did Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany earn in 2010? Almost $1.8 million.

– Northwestern quarterback Dan Persa had a game of games against Iowa in 2010. Unfortunately, the game-deciding touchdown pass he through in the Wildcats’ come-from-14-points-behind victory was costly. Persa landed the wrong way after the throw and tore an Achilles tendon.

He returned last season, but he was no longer a threat to run. He could still throw and quarterback, though, and got a tryout with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this month. Alas, he tweaked the same area, will have surgery in August, and will halt his football career.

– Illinois is trying to sell football season-tickets. It has 1,600 of them available for $99 each. They aren’t great seats, but who’s to complain at that price?

Purdue is selling 7,000 season-tickets for $98. They are in the south end zone of Ross-Ade Stadium, and have been knocked down from $147 last year.

Though it had a mild renaissance on the field in 2011 (7-6), Purdue was only 51st in NCAA football attendance with 45,225 fans per home game. Illinois was 42nd with an average home crowd of 49,548.

– The Big East already stretched conference basketball tournaments to the heights (depths?) of goofiness by having all 16 of its teams come to New York to play for the championship.

Who knows how many Big East teams there are or will be tomorrow, let alone in years to come, but the plan is to have a six-round, 18-team tourney when Houston, Memphis, SMU, Temple and UCF join the league.

 – Compiled by Mike Hlas

If I’m Florida State, I let the Big 12 Conference help me pay a $20 million buyout to the Atlantic Coast Conference and jump leagues.

The rocks have already started to melt and the sea has begun to burn. College football’s inevitable evolution toward four superconferences took off when the Pacific-12 added two schools from other conferences, the Big Ten annexed Nebraska, and the SEC expanded into Texas and Missouri.

Then the Big 12, previously declared dead by so many, resurrected itself by pilfering TCU and West Virginia from the Big East.

Might FSU's Chief Osceola and Renegade ride to Big 12?

The SEC gave the Big 12 extra legitimacy from a national perception with last week’s announcement of an upcoming New Year’s, prime-time bowl between the champions of those two leagues, or the best non-champions.

“It shows stability,” Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds told CBSsports.com Tuesday. “I like the statement it makes. It puts us in the role of being in the top four.”

If the 10-member Big 12 can bulk up with two or more additions of marquee football programs, it will leave the ACC in the dust and be one of those four superconferences.

Dodds said he thinks 10 is a “perfect” number of members for his conference “because you play everybody in football and there is a double-round-robin in basketball.”

But while those things are convenient and pleasant, they certainly aren’t essential.

Florida State folks have sent a lot of mixed signals about whether they would entertain a conference-switch. But the possibility of being in a league with better television deals than the ACC and much-better football cachet has to be pretty enticing.

Despite adding Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech within the last eight years, ACC football hasn’t taken off. No ACC team has played in the BCS title game since Florida State in 2000.

The ACC’s record in BCS games is a woeful 2-13. Iowa was dominant (403 yards to 155) in its 24-14 win over Georgia Tech in the 2010 Orange Bowl, and that was competitive compared to the two Orange Bowls that followed it.

Stanford walloped Virginia Tech, 40-12, then West Virginia battered Clemson, 70-33.

The ACC is known for this

The highest-ranked ACC team in last season’s final Associated Press poll was No. 21 Virginia Tech. The highest-ranked team at the end of any of the last six seasons was No. 9 Virginia Tech in 2007.

Those are numbers that don’t compute in the Big 12. And Florida State, which was one of college football’s King Kongs from 1987 through 2000, could use an injection of football-fueled adrenaline.

Staying in the ACC won’t provide that. The ACC’s recent additions of Pittsburgh and Syracuse won’t provide that.

Hopping in the Big 12 with Texas and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State would be a rush. Maybe the Seminoles could find a prominent pal like Miami or Clemson or even Notre Dame to come along.

Of course, maybe incoming commissioner Bob Bowlsby will urge stability. Maybe he doesn’t want his legacy to be that of someone who promoted a further separation of the haves and have-nots. I wonder if he’ll have a choice.

At any rate, Iowa State was in danger of being an orphan that would go begging to the Big East or Mountain West for a new home.

But the Cyclones are still in their old conference house, and it’s been renovated. It could turn out to be a palace before all is done.

Iowa's Devyn Marble (4) looks to pass the ball around Illinois' D.J. Richardson (1) and Meyers Leonard (12) during their first-round game in the 2012 Big Ten men's basketball tournament at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Ind. (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG)

Big Ten basketball lacks the schedule intrigue of its football counterpart partly because all league schools play one another at least once during the season. But clearly there are basketball rivalries that rise above the rest, and there are questions as to whether they automatically are played twice each year.

Purdue and Indiana come to mind immediately, followed closely by Michigan-Michigan State. After those two, there are a handful that receive consideration as important but not necessarily vital to the basketball program.

With a 12-team league, each school plays seven schools twice and four schools once. The schedule rotates every two seasons and there are no established home-and-home rivalries.

Last week at the Big Ten spring meetings in Chicago, Purdue Athletics Director Morgan Burke was asked if there was any discussion about changing that rule to include one special rivalry as a home-and-home every year. Burke said, “You bet that’s in the schedule for basketball. That’s changed. When we got into it … I’m not sure everybody has a natural rivalry. Michigan and Michigan State is a natural rivalry.

“I think we’re (Purdue-Indiana) home-and-away ad infinitum.”

Burke then backtracked slightly and told reporters to check with the Big Ten office. The league’s answer didn’t quite match Burke’s recollection.

View This Poll “We don’t have protected basketball rivals,” said Mark Rudner, the Big Ten’s senior associate commissioner for television administration and handles scheduling. “There will come a time when Purdue and Indiana will play only one time.

“Nothing has changed as I’ve been aware of, and I would have been made aware.”

Indiana and Purdue last played one time during the 2007-08 and 2008-2009 season. In 2002-03, another year when the schools were scheduled to play only once in the Big Ten, they decided to play a neutral site game at the RCA Dome and drew a crowd of more than 32,000.

Michigan and Michigan State also played just once per season in 2007-08 and 2008-09.

Part of the reason permanent rivalries have not been established is after Indiana-Purdue and Michigan-Michigan State, there are plenty of good rivalries but none that scream out as “gotta plays.” I’m sure you could look at Wisconsin-Minnesota as a possibility or Illinois’ rivalries with either Iowa or Northwestern. But the response would be tepid to force rivalries between, say, Ohio State-Penn State or Iowa-Nebraska. But it’s something officials can suggest or implement into the future, Rudner said.

“They may, as directors, choose to change that, but that’s not going to happen this year,” Rudner said.

If permanent rivalries were established, here’s a guess on how they’d play out. Vote for yours in the above poll and we’ll post the results both here and in The Gazette at a later date.

• Indiana-Purdue — Duh. Best rivalry in the Big Ten and top five in the nation.
• Michigan-Michigan State — Now that the Wolverines are contenders, this rivalry will be fierce on the court and for recruits.
• Wisconsin-Minnesota — It’s a perfect rivalry between the states in college/pro sports and top fishing spots.
• Ohio State-Penn State — Location, location, location.
• Illinois-Northwestern — I’d prefer Iowa-Illinois, but the instate factor would earn the final nod.
• Iowa-Nebraska — Hardly a rivalry, but the Cornhuskers could use a permanent border foe, and Iowa fans in Council Bluffs/Omaha would stoke the fire a little bit before spring football starts.

— Scott Dochterman

LINK BLOTTER

— The Big Ten is learning an NFL trick. Which is, come out with news items at dead times of the year to keep your name in the public eye.

So on Monday, the conference announced its conference football games for 2015 and 2016. That’s three years and three months from now, but people reacted. For instance:

• Doug Lesmerises of the Cleveland Plain Dealer notes the 2013 Ohio State recruiting class that Urban Meyer is putting together right now will go through its time at Ohio State without playing Nebraska during the regular season. At least the Buckeyes who are around for only four seasons.

• The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Jeff Potrykus points out that Wisconsin and Michigan State — who met in two terrific games last season — won’t face each other from 2013 through 2016. They will meet this Oct. 27 in Madison.

• Nebraska has what could be a pretty formidable schedule in 2015. Rich Kaipust of the Omaha World-Herald points out the Huskers play Southern Mississippi and BYU at home and Miami on the road, so that’s a better-than-average nonconference collection of opponents (the other is South Alabama). In league play, Nebraska travels to Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin.

• We don’t know who will be great, good, and godawful in 2015 and 2016, but Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune knows this: Northwestern won’t play Ohio State, Penn State or Wisconsin in either of those regular-seasons.

Plan your weddings accordingly.

— Should my child play football?

It’s a question more and more parents are asking as concussions in football become a hotter and hotter topic. This story by Steve Hummer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gets a lot of feedback in this story.

Football isn’t the only dangerous organized activity for youths.

Dr. Steve Kroll of Georgia Sports Medicine estimates that he has seen more than 1,000 concussion cases in the past two years. Maybe 20 percent of those involve football. Other sources may surprise you.

“One in particular is cheerleading,” he said. “They don’t have pads. They don’t have helmets. And they actually suffer quite a few concussions.”

— I’ve seen show-stopping shots on NBA playoff telecasts the last two nights. Now, so can you.

First up is Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers Sunday in the Clips’ swansong, a loss to the San Antonio Spurs. Next is Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder in OC’s series close-out win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday. (The reaction of the gentleman at the scorer’s table at the :32 mark of the clip is appropriate and wonderful.)

 Compiled by Mike Hlas

Who would you say is the best NFL player among all the ex-Iowa Hawkeyes currently in the league?

When I thought about this, the answer that leaped to my mind was Minnesota Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway. He hasn’t missed a game in the last five seasons, and averaged 9.6 tackles per game last season. Greenway is a terrific pro player.

The NFL Network is counting down its top 100 NFL players, 10 per week. It has given us Nos. 61 through 100. So far, no ex-Hawkeyes.

Marshal Yanda (AP photo)

Pete Prisco of CBSsports.com gave his top 100 all in one burst. There is just one former Iowa player. He is No. 44 Marshal Yanda, Baltimore Ravens guard.

Offensive linemen never get enough respect. I should have thought of Yanda immediately. The guy was a Pro Bowler last year. He’s good.

Prisco wrote: This right guard has emerged as one of the league’s best. He is a tough-guy mauler who can also block well in protection.

I’ll cede to that.

So who are the top five former Hawkeyes in the NFL. My criteria would be like Prisco’s and the NFL Network’s. It isn’t based on a body of work, but the here and now. So, tight end Dallas Clark would have been atop or near the top of this list the last several years, but not now.  The same goes for defensive end Aaron Kampman.

I’ll go with (in this order) Yanda, Greenway, New York Jets running back Shonn Greene (1,054 rushing yards last year), Indianapolis linebacker Pat Angerer (148 tackles last year),  and … and … and then it gets difficult.

Defensive tackle Karl Klug had seven sacks in his rookie season for the Tennessee Titans. Defensive end Adrian Clayborn of Tampa Bay forced a pair of fumbles in December, and seems a safe bet to crack the top five soon and stay there a while. Nate Kaeding has been a Pro Bowl performer kicking for San Diego, but missed all but one game last season because of injury.

I’ll go with Green Bay Packers offensive tackle Bryan Bulaga at fifth.

Do I have a glaring omission? Who would be in your top five?

The Big Ten made a Big Deal about releasing its 2015 and 2016 conference football schedules Monday. Well, maybe not a big deal, but it was a press release.

I took little interest in it since a) There’s no guarantee I or the world will be here in 2015 and b) who’s to say the Big Ten won’t have 32 members by then?

But then Iowa sent its version of the release with the 2013-through-2016 Hawkeye football skeds, and I took a look for some reason. Hey, I’m a curious cat.

Something struck me. Namely, this section from 2014:

Sept. 27     Open

Oct.    4     at Wisconsin

Oct.   11    Open

Oct. 18      Ohio State

After playing its four nonconference games, Iowa has an open date. Then it plays at Wisconsin. Then it has another open date.

That’s one football game in three weeks, in the heart of the season. And the Hawkeyes’ Big Ten home-opener isn’t until Oct. 18. I don’t think that will go over real well in Hawkdom.

If Iowa wants to find an upside, it’s that it will have two weeks to prepare for both Wisconsin and Ohio State and should be in pretty good health for both. But it seems like a hard way to keep a head of steam if you’re winning or to get out of the doldrums if things aren’t going so well.

Because of the vagaries of the calendar, Iowa has two open dates in 2013 and 2014.  The ones in 2013 are a month apart, so that’s a little more palatable. Here are the 2013 through 2016 schedules:

Coming to Kinnick Stadium in 2013

2013

Aug. 31     Northern Illinois

Sept.   7     Missouri State

Sept. 14     at Iowa State

Sept. 21     Western Michigan

Sept. 28     at Minnesota

Oct.    5     Michigan State (HC)

Oct.  12     Open

Oct.  19     at Ohio State

Oct.  26     Northwestern

Nov.   2     Wisconsin

Nov.   9     at Purdue

Nov. 16     Open

Nov. 23     Michigan

Nov. 30     at Nebraska

Coming to Kinnick Stadium in 2014

2014

Aug. 30     Northern Iowa

Sept.   6     Ball State

Sept. 13     Iowa State

Sept. 20     at Pittsburgh

Sept. 27     Open

Oct.    4     at Wisconsin

Oct.   11    Open

Oct.   18    Ohio State

Oct.   25    Purdue

Nov.    1    at Michigan

Nov.    8    at Northwestern

Nov.  15    Minnesota

Nov.  22    at Michigan State

Nov.  29    Nebraska

Coming to Kinnick in 2015

2015

Sept.   5     Illinois State

Sept. 12     at Iowa State

Sept. 19     Pittsburgh

Sept. 26     North Texas

Oct.    3     Northwestern

Oct.   10    Michigan State

Oct.   17    at Purdue

Oct.   24    at Minnesota

Oct.   31    Illinois

Nov.    7    at Penn State

Nov.   14   Open

Nov.   21   Michigan

Nov.   28   at Nebraska

Coming to Kinnick Stadium in 2016

2016

Sept.   3     North Dakota State

Sept.  10    Iowa State

Sept.  17    Central Michigan

Sept.  24    TBA

Oct.     1    Minnesota

Oct.     8    at Michigan State

Oct.   15    Purdue

Oct.   22    at Northwestern

Oct.   29    at Illinois

Nov.    5    Penn State

Nov.  12    Open

Nov.  19    at Michigan

Nov.  26    Nebraska

UPDATE:  Clark has signed with Tampa Bay.

A vivid reminder of what tight end Dallas Clark meant to Iowa’s football program was on display the other night on the Big Ten Network.

The BTN re-aired the Purdue-Iowa game of 2002, when Clark not only had a Kinnick Stadium-record 95-yard touchdown play on a basic pitch-and-catch, but caught the game-winning score on 4th-and-goal from the 7 with 1:07 left and the Hawkeyes trailing 28-24.

Dallas Clark: Not done yet

The following season, the former walk-on linebacker was with the Indianapolis Colts, and had been ever since until this offseason, when the Colts released him. The NFL is not sentimental. Concussions and all, you know.

But Clark won’t be unemployed much longer. The Tampa Bay Times says Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Kellen Winslow says he is headed out the door, quite possibly to be replaced by Clark.

Here’s what surprised me, though: Clark visited the New England Patriots last week. The Patriots are as deep in quality at tight end as perhaps any NFL team has ever been with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, who combined for 169 catches last season. Who knows what lurks in the mind of Bill Belichick?

Clark missed 15 games to injuries over the last two seasons and he’s 32.

The helmet comes off Illinois defensive lineman Will Davis (81) as Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi (12) is tackled for a loss of four to bring up 2nd and 14 during the fourth quarter of their game at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Ill. on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008. (Jonathan D. Woods/The Gazette)

Ten things that have happened since Iowa played Illinois on Nov. 1, 2008:

1) Obama elected — Coincidentally, the renewal (six years after) will be played the Saturday before the next presidential election.

2) The economy crashed — Mainly, the housing bubble burst. Who knew, right?

3) The Chicago Blackhawks won a Stanley Cup — Hey, it was 49 years of darkness. (Yes, this list somewhat self-serving.)

4) A TV show called “Jersey Shore” burst on the scene — We now know about Snooki and the Situation and all that jazz. And we are not the better for it.

5) Tiger Woods’ balloon popped — Remember that odd newsflash on Thanksgiving weekend in 2009? Who knew we’d be still feeling that today. I still think Tiger will be great again, but I’m looking at my watch and wondering when. Well, he’s made for great Howard Stern fodder since then. Sigh.

6) Craft beer became a thing — Place your ad here, Stone. (Stone is coming to Iowa, you know.)

7) Hot Doug’s — It’s a restaurant in Chicago that I’ve discovered since 2008. Maybe I’ll be able to hit it prior to the Soldier Field game this fall. I highly recommend. Here’s Hot Doug’s special menu for today. Mmmmmm. Yes, I would try a yak sausage.

The Bubble has tumbled — OK, this is pretty recent. The UI has released a few pics of the new place today. Here’s one:

The new indoor facility. (UI photo from the Twitter feed)

9) Conan O’Brien canceled, re-issued — Remember all that Conan stuff? Team Coco and all that? Late Night with Conan O’Brien was canceled in 2008 and then brought back to life a year or so later on TBS. I watch very little late-night Talk TV outside of Letterman and that Ferguson guy, but I did watch some Conan. I don’t watch Conan on TBS. I’ve never watched a second of anything Leno. It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s his show.

10) Stanzi rises– Remember Ricky Stanzi in the 2008 Illinois game?

Stanzi finished 11 of 29 for 191 yards and a touchdown. He threw two interceptions, one leading to an Illinois field goal and a 10-6 halftime lead, and the other ending the game.

Stanzi fumbled on a sack by cornerback Dere Hicks, who returned the fumble 7 yards for a 24-9 lead with 13:56 left in the game.

After the sack, fumble recovery and TD, Stanzi zipped Iowa downfield, completing 3 of 3 and finishing with a 29-yard TD pass to wide receiver Andy Brodell. Stanzi finished the fourth quarter 4 of 10 for 91 yards with a TD and interception.

The next week, Stanzi helped beat No. 3 Penn State. The Hawkeyes went on to win 13 straight games between the end of ’08 and ’09. That was Iowa’s longest winning streak since 20 straight in 1920 through ’23.

Stanzi also talked about America.

– Marc Morehouse

POTIONS, LOTIONS, LINKS

– I covered an NCAA basketball tournament in Worcester, Mass., in 1992. On Sunday evening, hours after Rick Pitino’s Kentucky team beat Johnny Orr’s Iowa State squad 106-98 in a real dinger of a second-round game, a snow descended on downtown Worcester. It was pretty. It felt like being in a postcard as I trudged through the snow under the street lights of a quiet downtown.

There was a doughnut shop across the street from the Hampton Inn that was my home for five nights. But this is no time to get sentimental.

Anyway, a prep school in Worcester brought together Kirk Ferentz, Ken O’Keefe, Joe Philbin and Mike Sherman as football coaches. Ferentz was the defensive coordinator. O’Keefe was the head coach. Sherman was an assistant coach. Philbin was a tight end. That was in 1979. A long time ago.

Ferentz went on to employ O’Keefe and Philbin at Iowa. Philbin went on to employ O’Keefe and Sherman with the Miami Dolphins.

Brian Biggane of the Palm Beach Post had a story this weekend about the Worcester Academy days of the three new Dolphins coaches.

By the way, Christian Laettner broke Kentucky’s heart six days after the Wildcats eliminated Iowa State. Twenty years later, I was in Louisville for an Iowa State-Kentucky NCAA tournament game. Unlike Ferentz and O’Keefe, I’m doing the exact same thing I was 20 years ago.

Well, I wasn’t blogging back then. Or tweeting. Or writing about Nebraska in the Big Ten, Missouri in the SEC, West Virginia in the Big 12, and Colorado in the Pac-12.

– There was so much weekend commentary written about the big-picture, grand-scheme meaning of the announcement the Big 12 and SEC will have their own New Year’s, prime-time wingding of a bowl game. Here are a few assorted essays on the topic, and subjects related to the topic:

Let’s start with a juicy piece of gossip. Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com says “sources say (Texas Athletic Director DeLoss) Dodds is telling some in the Big 12 he thinks Notre Dame is seriously looking at the Big 12.”

Brown says Dodds has been courting Notre Dame to join it in the Big 12 since 2010.

If perception is reality, the Big 12 is about to blow the ACC’s doors off. Pete Thamel of the New York Times says the creation of the SEC-Big 12 Champions Bowl will further the perception that the top football conferences — the Pac-12, the SEC, the Big Ten and the Big 12 — have further distanced themselves from everyone else.

Scott Michaux of the Augusta Chronicle agrees, suggesting “the four most powerful conferences seem to be running an end around and creating their own bracket and backups at the exclusion of everybody else.”

In the land of the Capital One Bowl, an annual pairing of Big Ten and SEC teams, Matt Murschel of the Orlando Sentinel warns locals the playoff system-to-be could cause the Cap One Bowl to be on shaky ground.

The Omaha World-Herald’s Tom Shatel asks Nebraska fans this: If you knew the Big 12 would not only survive but be in position to become an SEC partner and bring in Florida State, Miami and others, would you still want to be there?

Shatel’s answer: No.

However, Shatel did add this: The plodding style of Big Ten football had Nebraskans looking for their remote control. The lack of urgency often shown toward the national title race was a cold splash of water. The Rose Bowl mentality.

 Compiled by Mike Hlas

NEWTON — On Wednesday, we’ll find out if a black man enters NASCAR’s Hall of Fame.

The late Wendell Scott won a 1963 NASCAR Grand National (now Sprint Cup) race in Jacksonville, Fla. It remains the only victory by an African-American in stock car racing’s top circuit.

Scott raced in NASCAR from 1961 to 1973. He was underfunded, to say the least. His family was his pit crew. His equipment was woefully inferior to much of his competition.

But he had 147 Top Ten finishes, and somehow finished in the Top Ten of the Grand National point-standings four times. He didn’t lack for talent or tenacity.

Darrell Wallace Jr., before Sunday's race at Newton (Mike Hlas photo)

On Sunday, we saw the NASCAR Nationwide Series debut of an 18-year-old named Darrell Wallace Jr., a NASCAR name if ever one existed. He answers to “Bubba.” His Twitter handle is @bubbawallace. He is just the third African-American to run in the series, and the other two had a combined 11 starts.

He finished ninth in the 43-car field in his Nationwide debut, the Pioneer Hi-Bred 250 at Iowa Speedway. Many a Nationwide regular won’t finish as high as ninth all season.

“It feels great,” Wallace said. “To get ninth in my debut is outstanding.”

Wallace didn’t lack for first-rate equipment or a capable crew Sunday. He was driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, one of NASCAR’s foremost race teams. Gibbs, the former Washington Redskins head coach, signed Wallace to a developmental contract in 2009.

In 2010, Wallace began racing for Gibbs on NASCAR’s K&N Pro Series East developmental circuit. As a 16-year-old, he won his debut on that circuit, and has six victories in 26 starts.

Wallace's able pit crew (Mike Hlas photo)

Gibbs plans to start Wallace in four Nationwide events this year, including the two at Newton.

“The bottom line is that we wanted him to finish all the laps today, that was goal number one,” said Steve DeSouza, the vice president of JGR’s Nationwide division. “Goal number two was trying to finish in the top 10.

“He kept the car clean. He communicated well about what the car was doing and what he thought it needed. He kept his composure all day. Sometimes mental or physical fatigue can set in. But he was surprised the end of the race came so soon.”

NASCAR determined it needs more, to use its own word, diversity. Nine years ago, it launched its Drive for Diversity program to provide drivers and team-members the mentoring to help them advance in the sport. Wallace was in the program in 2010 and 2011.

“I will tell you Darrell Wallace is a young African-American driver that’s winning,” said Brian France, NASCAR’s CEO.

“We’re going to have a breakthrough in that area. It’s going to be on my watch, and I’ll be very proud of that when that occurs.”

After Sunday’s race, Wallace simply said “In two years hopefully I’ll be full-time on the Nationwide Series. In five years, maybe, I’ll start to crack into the Cup series. I’m going day to day, race to race.”

When that 1963 race in Jacksonville ended, Buck Baker was declared the winner and was given the trophy.

Hours after the race ended, NASCAR officials told Scott what he already knew. Which was that he had won. By two laps, in fact. But there were fears the crowd would riot if a black man was given the victory.

Maybe before this decade is over, Wallace will win a Sprint Cup event. NASCAR in the 21st Century would love it.

Iowa players hoist the Heartland Trophy into the air as they celebrate their 20-10 win over Wisconsin at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009, in Madison, Wis. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

The Big Ten’s realignment process produced one key casualty among the league’s football rivalries: Iowa-Wisconsin.

The schools had played 72 of 74 years before the Big Ten added Nebraska as its 12th member for the 2011 school year. When the league split into two divisions based not on geography but competitive equality, the Iowa-Wisconsin rivalry was doomed. In the 17-year evaluation period the league used to determine the divisions, Wisconsin ranked fifth and Iowa sixth in winning percentage. Based on realignment’s primary tenet, the schools had to go to opposite divisions.

When the league established a permanent cross-divisional rivalry, Iowa-Wisconsin was outranked by the nation’s oldest major-conference rivalry: Wisconsin-Minnesota. There was no way to keep Iowa-Wisconsin as an annual rivalry without completely gerrymandering the league schedule.

In 2010, the final year the schools were slated to meet as annual rivals, the teams reached an epic conclusion to an under-the-radar  rivalry. Wisconsin outlasted Iowa 31-30, and the series stands tied at 42-42-2. The schools rotated off one another’s schedule in 2011 and 2012, will play again in 2013 (Iowa City) and 2014 (Madison), then go back on hiatus in 2015-16, as The Gazette first reported Wednesday.

Members of the Wisconsin Badgers hoist the Heartland Trophy after beating Iowa 31-30 in their Big Ten game Saturday, Oct. 23, 2010 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. (Brian Ray/ SourceMedia Group News)

Wisconsin Athletics Director Barry Alvarez fought hard to preserve the rivalry during the realignment process. Alvarez coached under Iowa’s Hayden Fry and became a Hall of Fame coach for the Badgers, winning three Rose Bowls. Even when it was a foregone conclusion the rivalry wasn’t making the cut, Alvarez forced the league’s athletics directors to consider it one more time.

“I feel for our fans and I feel the Iowa fans because it’s such a natural rivalry,” Alvarez said Wednesday at the Big Ten spring meetings. “It’s an easy trip for both schools. But it is what it is, and  you just move on. That decision was made over a year ago. We stated our case, and I knew the criteria going in, what it was. We’ll just live with it.”

Unless the Big Ten expands, revamps the divisions or adds a ninth game to the league schedule, Iowa and Wisconsin will play just four times over a 10-year period. Is there any possibility the schools would line up for a non-conference game in the years they don’t play?

“I really haven’t thought of that,” Alvarez said. “I think that would be a little awkward.”

Maybe so, but it sure would add something to the non-conference schedule.

 – Scott Dochterman

SMOKIE LINKS

– Jon Solomon of the Birmingham News is used to covering national-championship football teams. So maybe he has reason to have a short tolerance level for Big Ten folks who have their complaints about the SEC. Solomon writes:

No more cracks at the SEC’s weak history of traveling out of the South.

No more rants at how the SEC avoids playing in the cold.

No more pining for a significant SEC-Big Ten game in Big Ten country instead of Florida, New Orleans or Dallas.

You lost that right this week. Your conference favors the warmth and brand of the Rose Bowl for semifinal playoff games instead of campus sites — the very idea your own commissioner was championing in February.

Mike Slive continues to beat Jim Delany, on the field and in the conference rooms. Sometimes Delany even does the job for Slive, who enjoys the advantage of being on the right side of history with his failed plus-one proposal in 2008.

– Add Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to those who don’t want the bowls or the BCS to have anything to do with the coming four-team major-college football playoff. He wrote:

It makes no sense that the NCAA, which runs a successful basketball tournament, would allow outside contractors to stage potentially its most profitable venture. Imagine the NFL going through the regular season and then telling a start-up company, “OK, you take it from here. See if you can make the Super Bowl work.”

The Big Ten disagrees. The Big Ten loves the bowls. The Big Ten really, really loves the Rose Bowl.

I’ll say it again. The upcoming battle to determine the playoff format is going to be awesome.

– The Big Ten Network is cutting air time for shows about academics from its programming schedule.

Which begs an obvious question: Does anyone ever actually watch one of those shows?

The BTN is choosing to live in the real world. All networks do at some point. History network’s biggest hits are “Pawn Stars, “American Pickers,” and “Swamp People.” History, they ain’t. Given a choice between watching a program about history and one about alligator-hunting, Americans side with the reptiles.

– Are transfers an epidemic in college basketball? Well, two guards Kentucky will rely on two former North Carolina State guards next season. One, Julius Mays, transferred from North Carolina State to Wright State before transferring to Kentucky.

Texas Tech, meanwhile, has had six players leave its program since the end of the season. Six. Four are freshmen.

But four of Tech’s five top scorers are returning, so the Red Raiders should improve on their 1-17 Big 12 record of last season. After typing that, I realize it’s not saying a whole lot, is it?

– The first quarterback to commit to Iowa football’s recruiting class of 2013 likes to kick bulldogs. Nic Shimonek’s Mildred High Eagles of Corsicana, Texas, beat the Wortham Bulldogs and Edgewood Bulldogs last season by a combined score of 125-6.

 – Compiled by Mike Hlas

You may have seen Marc Morehouse’s blog post on the latest Iowa football recruiting oral commitment, quarterback Nic Shimonek of Corsicana, Texas.

When you’ve never lived in Texas and you like football, as I haven’t and I do, there’s a mythology to Texas high school football that you find fascinating. Well, I do. Look, I watched every episode of the five seasons of “Friday Night Lights.” Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

Long ago while in College Station for an Iowa State-Texas A&M football game, I dropped in on a high school game the night before in either College Station or Bryan, I can’t remember which.

It looked like no different than any other high school game I’d ever seen, but that was OK.

This doesn't look roughneck

Anyway, I hoped Corsicana was some remote small Texas town, like Dillon, the home of the “Friday Night Light” Panthers. Some roughneck place that puts its emotional state-of-mind on the fortunes of its high school football team.

That’s sick in real life, of course. But since I don’t live there, I can deal with it.

Colt McCoy was a star quarterback at Texas with a Texan’s name. He played for the Jim Ned High School Indians in Tuscola, Texas. Tuscola is three miles from Ovalo, seven miles from Buffalo Gap, eight miles from Lawn, and 205 miles from Austin.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

But Corsicana is 55 miles south of Dallas. It has about 25,000 residents. It has produced NFL players, country music stars, and some rapper named Spice 1.

That doesn’t sound quaint or romantic. I guess it could be roughneck, but I want a town that is at least three hours from any sort of civilization, where you can get a mouthful of dust on any given windy afternoon in the 95-degree heat.

But at least the Mildred High School Eagles had killer instinct. They beat the Wortham Bulldogs last September, 62-0, and punished the Edgewood Bulldogs in early November, 63-6.

In fact, Mildred brutalized everyone in the regular-season, even teams not named the Bulldogs. They won their first nine games by an average score of 55-4.

Cisco has good high school football ... and a big dam

The Eagles were 13-0 when they faced Cisco in a Texas Class 2A Division II championship semifinal, but lost 35-28. The Loboes rushed for 405 yards, so it wasn’t Shimonek’s fault. Slick Nic threw for 312 yards and three touchdowns in that game. Well, his last pass was intercepted in the end zone as Mildred tried to tie the game as time expired, but it was a Hail Mary.

It sounds like it was quite a game.

Cisco went on to lose 36-35 to the Refugio Bobcats in the 2A D2 title game. That must have been a slobberknocker, too.

I’d prefer that Shimonek came from Cisco, 136 miles west of Dallas, or Refugio, which is down in southeast Texas by Corpus Christi, a fairly short trip from Mexico. But kids usually don’t choose where they grow up.

It does encourage me that Shimonek’s only other offer to this point had been from Lamar. That makes the story (I’m all about the story) a lot better if he turns out to be the next Colt McCoy.

And Nic Shimonek is a pretty good name, too. There hasn’t been a Nic or a Shimonek I’m aware of who has been a storybook quarterback, and it’s always a better story (I already told you, I’m all about the story) if you’re an original.

Adam Sandler, 50 Cent and I caught an Indiana Pacers game in Indianapolis on Feb. 4.

I don’t know what those two, who were in Indianapolis for the Super Bowl the following day, thought about the Orlando Magic’s 85-81 win over the Pacers in Bankers Life Fieldhouse. I thought it was borderline dreadful, and I’m not an NBA-hater.

Pacers fans had a dress code Thursday night (AP photo)

Indiana was pushing a piano uphill all night in the game. It shot just 34.1 percent from the field, and was 4-of-22 from 3-point range. Orlando superstar center Dwight Howard easily got the best of the Pacers’ big man, Roy Hibbert.

The Pacers dropped to a still-glossy 16-7 with the loss, but I figured the team was a house of cards. Today, that house of cards has a 2-1 lead on the Miami Heat in the NBA’s Eastern Conference semifinals.

Indiana didn’t play that game 3 1/2 months ago with guard George Hill, who was out with a chip fracture in an ankle. Seeing how Hill played Thursday night (20 points, 5 assists) in the Pacers’ 94-75 pounding of the Heat in Indy, I guess I didn’t see the complete Indiana team.

Hibbert likes playing against whoever or whatever it was Miami had in the middle Thursday more than he enjoys battling Howard, I’m guessing. Hibbert had 19 points and 18 points in Game 3.

I went to that game in February because it was the night before the Super Bowl, my pregame work was done, and I basically had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. It was a chance to sit for two-and-a-half hours and vegetate. Little did I know I was watching an Indiana team that would be a serious threat to eliminate Miami from the playoffs.

I still think the Heat win the series and go on to win the East, but I’m pulling for the Pacers. Midwest, small-market, no-name team, all that good stuff that make network executives queasy.

The prospect of an Indiana-San Antonio or Indiana-Oklahoma City NBA Finals isn’t what ABC/ESPN has in mind. But if that’s how it shakes out, Miami and the Los Angeles Lakers simply need to buy better players.

12/30/87 A happy Hayden Fry hugs a Wyoming coach with a Hawks victory in the Holiday Bowl 20 to 19. (Gazette file)

Day 1 of the Big Ten spring meetings: Ohio State athletics director Gene Smith said he didn’t think a national semifinal played in Columbus, Ohio, in 5-degree weather in December was good for college football. He said college isn’t pro.

OK, fair opinion.

Day 2 of the Big Ten spring meetings: Conference commissioner Jim Delany said he’ll talk with the Pinstripe Bowl, which is played in NYC, Yankee Stadium in late December.

“New York City is the financial sports capital of the world,” Delany said Wednesday. “It’s a global city like Chicago. We’ll have conversations with them.”

Not OK for national semifinal, but OK for piddly mid-tier bowl game. Got it.

The Big Ten is just coming out of year 2 of its four-year bowl cycle. (Iowa fans can count this easily, just keep track of the Insight Bowls.) The Pinstripe was the only one specifically mentioned this week, but the Big Ten and Pac-12 are becoming really, really tight, like blood brothers or something.

So, probably expect a Florida or Texas bowl to bite the dust (I’d kick the Gator and TicketCity Bowls out right now, without even blinking) and say hello to a California bowl with a PAc-12 team.

Which brings us to sunny . . . San Diego!

Yes, the Holiday Bowl, basically built by Hayden Fry (three Hayden teams played in the Holiday), would be a perfect marriage between the Big Ten and the Pac-12. It also would give Big Ten fans some variety. Since 2003, Iowa has played in six Florida bowls. Granted, two of those were Orange Bowls, and you will make exceptions for Miami. Tampa? I guess so, but it’s not Miami.

Of course, the Hawkeyes have played in the two Insight Bowls. There are others. Wisconsin has played in Orlando or Tampa in six consecutive years (2004-09). Michigan State has played in Orlando or Tampa in four of the past five seasons.

So, goodbye TicketCity (in Dallas, blah) and Gator (no one really likes you, Gator) and hello Holiday (San Diego is the nation’s craft beer capital) and illogical but still pretty cool Pinstripe Bowl.

That said, who knows what it’ll look like with a possible national final four on the horizon in 2014 (maybe, perhaps).

– Marc Morehouse

LINKIN’ BLINKIN’, AND NOD

Let’s start with tweets, not links. Miles and miles of tweets about all the news and speculation from the Big Ten Conference meetings and elsewhere regarding the possible format for a four-team college football playoff, and other stuff in general. Like:

‏@dirkchatelain 3 reasons I favor conf champs model 1) Adds value to title games 2) Decreases penalty of losing non-con 3) Reduces role of polls/committee

‏@McMurphyCBS (ACC Commissioner John) Swofford did say ACC favors conference champ model, but champs should reach certain standard (ranked among top 5 or 6)

‏@slmandel  Prediction at this point: Top 3 champs, 1 wild-card.

@MrCFB  Big Ten wants conf. champs only and wants to strength of schedule to be more important. Only one way to do both: Selection Committee.

@BTNTomDienhart Just because you win a conference doesn’t mean you are a good team. Am I missing something?

‏@DeWittCBS The best example of the regular season still matters in college football even with a playoff is Division II. And they let 24 teams in.

‏@Ianfitzespn I hate that the higher seed in the new 4 team playoff in college football will not host semi-final game. Fans can’t afford to travel twice.

@tommydeas College football seems on course to use “playoff” as code for locking out best teams from championship

@schadjoe What about BCS Final Four that simply limits any conference to maximum of two participants?

@MilesFomby @schadjoe Anything besides the top 4 overall teams is stupid.

@MatthewDTTWLN ESPN College Football Live wants to know the best format for a 4 team playoff? Easy! Expand it to 8 teams!

@TDAlabama Coach Saban announced in his most recent Crimson Caravan stop that Bama will open 2014 season against W. Virginia in ATL.

OK, on with the links:

– The Big 12 is on board with this “protect the regular season” theme that is getting rattled around these days. The Oklahoman reports that’s what Oklahoma Athletic Director Joe Castiglione says.

“Every Saturday matters,” Castiglione said. “The idea that when we host football games on our campuses, it’s important. We don’t have that in college basketball right now. Whether that is a fair or an unfair comparison …

“The games need to matter in the minds of the stakeholders in college football. That’s what draws television ratings and ticket-holders. That’s what draws attention to the sport in general.”

A little explanation would be helpful. How would the regular-season be diminished if two more teams made it into the national-title postseason picture and even more teams thus became legitimate contenders? If it were a 68-team tournament like men’s college basketball, yes, the regular-season would lose its juice. Four is a long way from 68. Eight would be, too.

– Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer says the current system isn’t broken, and a playoff wouldn’t be a good thing according to this Columbus Dispatch story.

“You play in one of the bowl games, No.4 vs. 1, 2 vs. 3, then you go play in the championship game — I can only imagine the workload that’s going to be on that coaching staff and their players,” Meyer said.

Taking into account the travel back from the semifinals and then the travel to the champ game site, and saying it happens in a one-week window as some have proposed, “I can’t even fathom trying to get ready for a championship game in two days, and that’s what you’ve got,” Meyer said.

But Urban, we’re told the reason the Big Ten didn’t want the national semifinals played on campus sites is because the players do so enjoy the “bowl experience.”

Michigan State Athletic Director Mark Hollis said the following this week: “And from the kids’ perspective, the bowl experience is the one thing they want to keep in the equation. With campus sites, it becomes like a regular-season game.”

Yeah, sure, a national-championship semifinal will seem like a regular-season game. And that “bowl experience” at a national semifinal would involve nothing but visits to theme parks and eating contests at steakhouses.

Give us a break!

– Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds and Big Ten folks will not be holding hands and singing “Kumbayah” when this four-team playoff deal gets hammered out according Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman.

“This entity needs to be separate,” Dodds said of the final grouping of four. “It needs to be their own bowls, their own TV, their own sponsors. Those four selected would not play in the bowls.”

Oh, dear. Nebraska AD Tom Osborne said the following this week:

” … the bowls have been good to us. If you took them out of the playoff, it would pretty much destroy the bowl system.”

It’s incredible, but true. Nebraska and Texas are in disagreement about something.

A four-team playoff might be interesting. The upcoming battle to decide on the playoff format will be awesome.

– Compiled by Mike Hlas

Start spreadin’ the news. Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said Wednesday “We’ll have conversations” with New York City’s Pinstripe Bowl.

Now this is what I’m talking about. I’ve long complained that the Big Ten’s cluster of bowl-affiliations didn’t have enough variety or pizazz.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of offensive linemen

Three bowls in Florida is one too many, and the Gator Bowl was an addition the conference didn’t need. Jacksonville is the Oakland of the Sunshine State. And by that, I mean to quote Gertrude Stein, who once said this about Oakland:

“The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there,” Stein said, “there isn’t any there there.”

(As I type this, I just saw NBC Sports Channel show Dennis Miller sitting next to James Lipton at the New Jersey-New York Rangers Stanley Cup playoff game at New York’s Madison Square Garden. If I had to run into a pair of fans at a Rangers-Devils game, I’d prefer it would be Jerry Seinfeld and David Puddy.)

Anyway, the Pinstripe Bowl would be a good get for the Big Ten. Let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York.

Hey girl what’s it like to be in New York?
New York City, imagine that!  — Michelle Shocked, “Anchorage”

“New York City is the financial sports capital of the world,” Delany said Wednesday. “It’s a global city like Chicago. We’ll have conversations with them.”

Iowa State was the Big 12′s representative in the 2011 Pinstripe Bowl. The Big East has the other conference tie-in. But these deals frequently change, and the Big Ten will mix things up after the 2013 season.

The Big Ten needs to ditch Jacksonville, and lose either Houston or Dallas. One Texas bowl is enough. Then, it should get itself to New York and either San Francisco or San Diego. Keep two games in Florida, one in Texas, one in Arizona, and if it must, the one in Detroit.

Why New York? Because it’s New York, that’s why.

Now I know some people don’t want to go to a bowl in New York. Too expensive. Too cold in late December to sit outdoors. And many a Midwesterner isn’t crazy about the Big Apple. Well, if college football really is part of an educational system, maybe it should also be educating its fans. Don’t get in a comfort zone going to Tampa or Phoenix all the time. Explore a different world, see a bowl game in a totally different atmosphere. Like outside in Yankee Stadium, the South Bronx.

Chris Edwards of Marion and SourceMedia, the company that also employs me, went to last year’s Pinstripe Bowl. His account:

“Overall, I would highly recommend going to that bowl. You just can’t beat New York for tourism, food, shopping, etc. It also can be done cost effectively if you work at it.

“For instance, we stayed in Newark at a business hotel and took the train into the city each day instead of paying $250+ per night for a hotel and attempting to drive and find places to park. I think it’s also worth mentioning that pretty much everyone we encountered there, be they random New Yorker on the street to the Rutgers fans we were jammed in with on the trains – were REALLY friendly and helpful. I was expecting stereotypes, but was pleasantly surprised by all the nice folks.

“As for the bowl game itself, seeing a football game in Yankee Stadium is a fun experience, though it’s pretty hard to find a good seat because of the way they lay out the field. Iowa State fans traveled pretty well to it and you definitely saw a lot of ISU gear as you moved around NYC, particularly tourist spots like the Brooklyn Bridge and the like.

“I think that if you talked to most any ISU fan who went to the game, they would tell you that it was a great experience and fun time. I think they would also tell you that it would probably be something they would do once and not necessarily return to if ISU played there the following year or year after. After all, it’s not like you’re going tropical, and it’s novel to make that trek once but not necessarily twice.”

Much thanks for that, Chris.

But if the Big Ten does tie in with the Pinstripe Bowl and Iowa should go one year, here’s my advice to Hawkeye fans: No face-painting.

Iowa's Brett Morse is tackled by Mitchell Evans of Indiana before he can reach the end zone during the first half at semi-empty Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Ind., on Saturday, November 6, 2010. (Cliff Jette/Sourcemedia Group News)

As the Big Ten meetings wind down today (and playoff talk around the country ramps up), it’s important to look at what’s most important to the league and its member institutions: money.

Every public Big Ten athletics department (11 schools) achieved the gold standard of college sports by equaling revenue and expenses in fiscal year 2011. Those schools submitted that information to The Gazette this spring through each state’s open-records laws.

The bottom line for Big Ten schools has three major power surges helping it achieve and sustain financial success: league/NCAA revenue (TV, etc.), contributions and football revenue. Each school earns roughly the same amount in league/NCAA revenue depending on tournament reimbursements and other issues. Contributions will vary among the schools, soaring if there’s a facility drive, slipping if there’s not. Football, however, is the driving force for on-campus, athletics department revenue, so let’s look at this a little more closely.

In fiscal year 2011, Ohio State ($79.3 million) and Michigan ($70.3 million) blazed past their Big Ten brethren in football revenue. Trailing way behind are Illinois ($28.3 million), Indiana ($24.4 million) and Purdue ($18.3 million). We in the media endlessly have discussed and written about the financial disparity among Big 12 and other conferences, but this is just as real in Big Ten country. The only difference is the league/NCAA revenue-sharing structure enacted by the Big Ten.

Those numbers won’t fall for the league powerhouses and maybe the bottom ones will climb if any of the three schools gain some football traction and consistency. But don’t expect the gap to close too soon between the heavyweights and welterweights.

Football revenues and expenses for the 2011 fiscal year:

• Ohio State: $79,339,962/$39,217,983
• Michigan: $70,300,676/$23,552,233
• Penn State: $58,893,006/$15,049,592
• Nebraska: $54,748,156/$20,147,302
• Michigan State: $45,041,806/$18,913,908
• Iowa: $44,506,833/$20,510,805
• Wisconsin: $43,296,598/$23,662,925
• Minnesota: $30,524,946/$16,985,183
• Illinois: $28,353,822/$14,146,821
• Indiana: $24,379,333/$16,175,386
• Purdue: $18,359,413/$12,420,742
• Northwestern N/A

Ohio State fans fill the field after their overtime victory over Iowa at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday, November 14, 2009. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

Perhaps even more telling are football ticket sales. Nothing shows a fan base’s commitment to their program quite like how they purchase tickets and fill their stadiums. It doesn’t take Christopher Columbus to discover a sold-out 105,000-seat stadium (ironically in Columbus) generates more revenue than one in Indiana (where people literally wonder, “Who’s here?”). But the disparity still is somewhat staggering.

Big Ten’s ticket sales for 2011 fiscal year:

• Ohio State $41,885,216
• Michigan $35,747,432
• Penn State $34,232,483
• Nebraska $27,378,667
• Iowa $20,272,653
• Wisconsin $18,285,170
• Michigan State $16,877139
• Minnesota $10,787,667
• Purdue $10,239,049
• Illinois $9,426,634
• Indiana $4,711,558
• Northwestern N/A-

– Scott Dochterman

CHAIN LINKS

– Incoming freshman running back Barkley Hill of Cedar Falls is built to come in and make the transition both mentally and physically.

Sez who? Sez his soon-to-be Iowa football coach, Kirk Ferentz. Those were Ferentz’s exact words at the I-Club event in Waterloo Monday night.

– Flying in the face of the wishes of Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta and some of his Big Ten peers, Iowa State football coach Paul Rhoads said he strongly favors bowl-eligibility not being changed from six to seven wins.

The guess here is Rhoads speaks for a lot of coaches.

– Andrew Sweat started at linebacker for Ohio State the last two years. He signed as an undrafted free agent and went to rookie camp with the Cleveland Browns last month, but then bid the gridiron adieu. His Monday tweet at @asweat42:

“Concussion symptoms didn’t want to risk it.. Thanks to the browns for the opportunity. Health trumps football any day”

– Buzz Bissinger wrote one of the great sports books of any time two decades ago. It is called “Friday Night Lights.”

Bissinger has what sounds like another terrific read in “Father’s Day,” a story of his relationship with his son Zach, now in his 20s, whose brain was deprived of oxygen at birth and who has an IQ of about 70. The two went on a cross-country trip together, including a stop back in Odessa, Texas, where “Friday Night Lights” was set.

It does not sound anything close to overly sentimental, but rather, painfully honest. I look forward to reading it.

– Dochterman and Morehouse were in Chicago this week for the Big Ten meetings. (Well, they weren’t in the actual meetings, but you know what I mean). They may not have heard this while they’ve been there:

Wrigley Field must be destroyed.

 – Compiled by Mike Hlas

CEDAR RAPIDS — Amid a lot of suggestions there is a movement to change bowl-eligibility in college football from six wins to seven, Iowa State Coach Paul Rhoads cast a strong dissenting voice Tuesday.

“I don’t think there’s a need to change where it’s at right now,” Rhoads said at the Cyclone Tailgate Tour at Veterans Memorial Stadium. “There’s a lot of high-quality six-win teams in the postseason, us obviously included in that.”

Paul Rhoads (Mike Hlas photo)

ISU was 6-6 in the 2011 regular-season and advanced to the Pinstripe Bowl, where it lost to Rutgers. Twelve other 6-win teams played in bowls, including Ohio State.

“With the strength-of-schedule the way it is, there’s a lot of times you’re winning six football games and you’ve got a heck of a football team and you’re accomplishing quite a bit. I would be disappointed to see any kind of change made that way.

“The first thing that would take place if that did happen is you’d see the quality of the schedules decrease as teams try to put more victories on their schedules.

“If people said you’ve got to win seven or you’re not getting into a bowl game, there would absolutely be a change in quality.”

I’ll interject this: I’m guessing Rhoads speaks for a lot of coaches. A lot of them. Especially the vast majority who get bonuses if their teams go to any sort of bowls, and who get an additional feeling of job-security for going to a bowl.

The Big 12 will be a 10-team conference for the second-straight season. Missouri and Texas A&M have departed for the SEC. They have been replaced by TCU and West Virginia.

“There’s no deeper conference in the country in football right now than the Big 12 Conference in my opinion” Rhoads said. “We’ve got to step up as far as the national-championship is concerned. The SEC’s done a fantastic job these last few years. But if you’re talking about top to bottom, I think the Big 12 Conference is as strong as there is.”

For Jeff Johnson’s story on ISU Athletic Director Jamie Pollard’s thoughts about conference-realignment and the Big 12′s new commissioner, click here.

ISU players Jacob Gannon, Spencer Thornton and Kirby Van Der Kamp at the Cyclone Tailgate Tour in Cedar Rapids (Mike Hlas photo)

So now Big Ten athletic directors, Iowa’s Gary Barta among them, are pounding a drum for seven wins being the minimum for a college football team to go to a bowl game.

Naturally, I’m suspicious. Is it really to put some sort of quality-control on the postseason? Why now after so many years of so much flotsam and jetsam in the postseason?

Or is it it to rid themselves of the weird, lowest-level bowls that frequently have one or two 6-6 teams, and provide little hope for participating teams to make profitst, let alone come close to breaking even?

Where 6-6 is good enough ... for now

Last year, the 6-win teams in bowls attended the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl (Marshall), the Las Vegas Bowl (Arizona State), the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl (Purdue), the Pinstripe Bowl (Iowa State), the Music City Bowl (Mississippi State and Wake Forest), the Meineke Car Care Bowl (Northwestern and Texas A&M), the Liberty Bowl (Vanderbilt), the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl (Illinois and 6-7 UCLA), the Gator Bowl (Ohio State), and the BBVA Compass Bowl (Pittsburgh).

That’s 13 teams, or 6 1/2 bowls worth.

Iowa played in the 2006 Alamo Bowl as a 6-6 team.

It’s all a joke and we’ve all known it’s a joke. But what’s the worse joke, a 6-6 team going to a bowl, or major programs scheduling themselves even softer nonconference games — perhaps two contests against FCS teams — to help get to seven wins.

The moment the bowl-requirement is raised to seven wins, phone wires will be ablaze with FBS-school ADs calling FCS-school ADs to line up more games. Crummy games, in many cases.

Northern Iowa Athletic Director Troy Dannen is a straight-shooter. He told this to the Des Moines Register recently:

“A seven-win requirement will help us from a leverage standpoint. If the FBS goes to seven wins (for bowl eligibility), it will help us.”

The Big Ten has an upcoming agreement to have their teams play one nonconference game a year against Pac-12 teams. That’s good, I guess, depending on who you’re paired against. I can live without Indiana-Oregon State and Minnesota-Utah, but I’ll watch USC-Wisconsin and Oregon-Michigan. I’d love to see Iowa take its cuts against a good Pac-12 team, like Mike Leach’s Washington State crew if Leach gets the Cougars up to his old Texas Tech standards.

But for the rest of the Big Ten nonconference games, it’s going to be even more tilts with the Mid-American Conference and FCS team, even though the rule as it currently stands only lets you count one win over FCS teams toward bowl-eligibility.

And 7-5 will become the new 6-6.

This is coming from someone who has mocked 6-6 teams going to bowls, and the bowls that have welcomed them. But upon further review, I’d rather have a lot of chaff among the bowl lineup’s wheat instead of even more dumbing-down of the September schedules.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany talks with the media during a news conference, Tuesday, May 18, 2010, in Chicago. Delany addressed questions about conference expansion, sticking with the time frame he laid out in December when he said the league would explore its option over the next 12 to 18 months. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

CHICAGO — The Big Ten wants to own the Rose Bowl, and so it will, along with their buddies from the Pac-12. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has made this clear since college football has veered into serious talk about a playoff last month.

What can Delany and the league expect to gain from playing the Rose Bowl chip? Probably not much.

The playoff models are a major topic of discussion for the Big Ten’s illuminati, which meets today and Wednesday in Chicago. The Big Ten is in with the playoff state of mind, but it does want some stickiness with the Rose. Makes sense, of course, but is it viable? Is it that big of a deal? Do players who’ve grown up in the Big Ten footprint identify with the Rose as the ultimate prize anymore?

If I’m the Big Ten, my play is from home playoff games. That is a game changer. Rather than play an SEC team in a national semifinal at a sunny place in Florida, get the SEC team at, say, Ann Arbor in December. Weather could be the great equalizer, although the way Nick Saban builds teams at Alabama, it probably won’t mean a whole lot. Saban’s teams are armadillos, weather-proof, defense-first armadillos.

The Big Ten is going to want to “get something” out of the playoff discussions. Will it be protecting the Rose Bowl, which hasn’t been the sole domain of Big Ten/Pac-12 since 2002, be it? It’s a thought, but it’s sunk by sentiment and the fact that TCU, Oklahoma and Texas have played in Rose Bowls more recently than a lot of Big Ten teams (Iowa’s last appearance was 1991).

Everything is on sale here, let’s stop pretending it isn’t. Tradition wears a Nike swoosh. The Rose Bowl isn’t and hasn’t been the top of the mountain in college football for a long time. The crystal football is the thing, and a playoff gets the Big Ten to the table.

Let’s do the playoffs and let’s do them the way the NFL does, home sites. If Lambeau Field can host an NFC title game, then Ann Arbor, Columbus, Madison, East Lansing, Lincoln and Iowa City can host national semifinals.

The Rose Bowl will fit in somewhere. It’s not going to vanish, but the Big Ten needs to elevate its thinking to the crystal football. That is the thing.

[Coverage note: Scott Doctherman and I are in Chicago for the Big Ten spring meetings. We'll see what we see and post some stuff.]

– Marc Morehouse

LINKIN CONTINENTAL

– There is virtually no off-season for major-college football players, as this article by none other than the university’s athletics Web site illustrates.

But a short break is currently in progress. Iowa quarterback James Vandenberg is headed to Canada to do some hunting, and cornerback Micah Hyde is going home to Ohio and will see some baseball games in Cleveland.

Hyde is from Fostoria, Ohio. It’s also the home of WFOB-AM.

– Who is Barrett Kelpin? He’s a University of Iowa golfer. And on Monday he advanced from a U.S. Open local qualifier to sectional play in a few weeks. If he advances out of the sectional, he joins golf’s elite at the Olympic Club in San Francisco next month for our national Open.

Also among the five players out of a field of 71 who advanced from the local qualifier in Davenport was Sean McCarty, a former Hawkeye golfer. McCarty qualified for the 2003 Open and is the club pro at Brown Deer Golf Club in Coralville. He has long had PGA Tour-type talent.

– Another day, another team changing conferences.

Virginia Commonwealth to the Atlantic 10? Well, at least Virginia actually borders the Atlantic Ocean. Colorado and Utah joining the then-Pacific-10 didn’t quite ring true.

Nor did Houston and SMU and Boise State and San Diego State joining the Big East for football.

Nor did … well, we could go on and on, couldn’t we?

– Afghanistan has its first bowling alley. It is very popular.

Compiled by Mike Hlas

Gotta tell you, I’d be a lot more interested in seeing Iowa play both Northern Iowa and Drake in men’s basketball than playing Virginia Tech once.

This ACC-Big Ten Challenge is entering its 14th year, and the Hawkeyes will be making their 12th appearance (they weren’t part of it in 2003 and 2004). Iowa played Virginia Tech in 2006 and 2009. Quick, tell me something (anything) about those games.

Iowa is the only team Virginia Tech has beaten (twice) in the Challenge. The Hokies are 0-5 otherwise. Iowa, meanwhile, is 2-9 in Challenge history.

Virginia Tech was 16-17 last season, then fired coach Seth Greenberg. Just last week, new Hokies coach James Johnson lost freshman Dorian Finney-Smith and Greenberg’s top recruit for next year, Montrezi Harrell. So the team has just eight scholarship players returning for next season.

Which sounds like Iowa after Fran McCaffery stepped in two years ago. And it sounds like about everywhere else where they have a coaching change. Or don’t have one.

When you think ACC, you think basketball. But you don’t think Virginia Tech, a football school. It has made just one appearance in the NCAA men’s basketball tourney since 1997. It hasn’t gotten out of the first week of the NCAAs since 1967.

If the Challenge has brought November excitement, Iowa hasn’t been part of it. The Hawkeyes have yet to be paired with North Carolina in the event, and were partnered with Duke just once, in Chicago in 2000.

This year, North Carolina will play at Indiana. Ohio State goes to Duke. An up-and-coming North Carolina State team is at Michigan. For the complete Challenge schedule, click here.

For Iowa (18-17 last season) to get one of the marquee ACC names on its schedule, it will have to take care of business during next season and offer promise of being a Top 25 team in the year after that.

If the Hawkeyes make it to the 2013 NCAAs, I wouldn’t rule out a North Carolina-Iowa game in Iowa City in November 2013. Sophomore Carolina guard Marcus Paige of Linn-Mar against sophomore Iowa guard Mike Gesell. Iowa’s Adam Woodbury against whatever big man or big men the Tar Heels are rolling out at that time. It could happen.

Minnesota Vikings football players Chad Greenway John Sullivan, speak to the media as they leave the Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., after an unannounced visit, Wednesday, April 25, 2012. The athletes came to do some lobbying for the stadium bill now passing through committees. (AP Photo/The Star-Tribune, Glen Stubbe)

Minnesota’s legislature passed a bill last week to help build a new $975 million stadium for the Vikings. The stadium should open by 2016 at the latest.

The structure will have a roof, but it’s undetermined if it’s retractable or fixed. The Vikings will spend $477 million, the state kicks in $348 million and Minneapolis contributes $150 million. The new stadium will overlap a portion of the current Metrodome.

The Vikings will play at least one and up to four seasons at the Gophers’ TCF Bank Stadium. The agreement calls for the Vikings to pay $250,000 a game and up to $3 million per season. Because TCF Bank Stadium seats just 50,000, the Vikings will bring in temporary seating and install heating coils under the turf for those December games.

Many of you might ask what this has to do with Iowa. Well, aside from a sizable amount of Iowa fans who also follow the Vikings and four current members of the roster once played for the Hawkeyes (Chad Greenway, Allen Reisner, Christian Ballard, Tyler Nielsen), maybe the stadium situation could help Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium (70,585 seats) snag a preseason game.

This is pure speculation, but it’s not entirely foreign for the state to stage a preseason game. In fact, as unlikely as it seems, Cedar Rapids played host to a preseason game back in 1961.

On Sept. 2, 1961, the Vikings and Chicago Bears played at Cedar Rapids’ Kingston Stadium (seriously) before 12,500 people. The Bears won 30-7. It was the Vikings’ fourth preseason game in their inaugural season.

Iowa Athletics Director Gary Barta has experience accommodating the NFL. When Barta worked at the University of Washington in the 1990s, the Seattle Seahawks had to play two seasons at Husky Stadium. Barta, a Minnesota native, also was a Vikings’ season-ticket holder when the team played at Metropolitan Stadium. Of course that’s just anecdotal information.

NFL preseason games are lightly attended and generate little buzz. If the Vikings are given a home preseason game against, say, the St. Louis Rams, and play it Kinnick Stadium (Avenue of the Saints Bowl?), you could generate a decent crowd midway between the metro areas. If a preseason game is scheduled in early August 2014 or 2015 before Iowa students are on campus, maybe it brings a crowd to Iowa City, fills a few hotels and restaurants and gets some decent publicity for the region.

All of this is speculative. But once in a while it’s fun to think about something like this.

— Scott Dochterman

ON THE LINKS

– Rob Gronkowski had 90 receptions for the New England Patriots last season. Aaron Hernandez had 79.

They are both tight ends.

Brad Herman caught eight passes for Iowa in 2011. He is trying to make the Patriots’ roster as their third tight end and as an undrafted free agent.

“I can develop in all areas — that’s the important thing,” Herman said. “Compared to these guys, I’m nothing. I’m just trying to learn from them, get better, and get to the level that the coaches want me at, and what I need to be at to play to my best abilities. …

“You’re at the same level as they are,” he continued. “They are just men, like you, at the end of the day just trying to have a job. That’s how you have to treat it. You can’t be star struck.”

– Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press has an interesting column entitled “Risks won’t deter the NFL dreams of rookies like Lions’ Riley Reiff”

Excerpts:

He might achieve fame and glory in his chosen profession. And the uncomfortable truth is that 30 years from now, he might not remember it. He might end up, like other great NFL players, with knees that don’t work, arms he can’t lift and, worst of all, a brain that won’t function properly. If the NFL, doctors, equipment makers and scientists don’t solve the concussion crisis, then Reiff, or others in his draft class, will end up in the worst kind of headlines. …

“I just hope I’m alive when I’m 55,” Reiff told me this weekend. “I don’t look that far ahead. I love playing. If I’m stumbling around or something, I’ll take it with pride, because I worked hard and it was fun.”

– If the Big 12 should happen to call Florida State, FSU Board of Trustees chairman Andy Haggard said the school should listen.

“We have to listen to how much more money may be out there,” Haggard said. “There are other issues that need to be considered. My only point is to listen to anybody who wants to talk – especially in these economic times.”

– Alabama football coach Nick Saban feels the suggestion from Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany that the upcoming four-team national playoff in BCS football is, well, absurd.

“The people want to see the best teams play,” Saban said. “They don’t want a bunch of conference champions to end up playing in the championship game.”

Oh by the way, Bama didn’t even play in the SEC Championship last season before it won the BCS title game.

– Adam C., Biggers of Yahoo Sports believes in Mark Dantonio.

The headline kind of says it all for Biggers’ essay: Mark Dantonio Will Do for Michigan State Spartans Football What Tom Izzo Has Done for Spartans Basketball

– Phil Mushnick of the New York Post says that if NCAA President Mark Emmert is delusional if he’s serious about being an academic-reformist. Mushnick wrote:

In just the case of football, “student-athletes” lost the first semester to football. Now, while the rest of the student body preps for and takes second semester finals, the schools’ football players had better show up trained and ready to compete in April and May for starting positions early next semester!

Round and round it goes. If we logically were to conclude that recruited Division I football and basketball players are among the minimal academic qualifiers for full scholarships, the mere notion that these enrollees are pursuing — or even able to pursue — legit college educations defies the most rationalized applications of practicality and just plain common sense.

– And here’s how to get into trouble in Kentucky: Publish a cartoon that ridicules John Calipari:

Compiled by Mike Hlas

He is the new controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He is the chief executive officer of Guggenheim Partners, a privately held financial services firm with offices in nine countries and more than $125 billion in assets under management.

He reportedly is a billionaire.

Dodgers owners Peter Guber, Stan Kasten, Mark Walter, Magic Johnson (AP photo)

But Mark Walter wasn’t born on third base and thought he hit a triple. There was no toney community and exclusive prep school in his childhood. He grew up on the west side of Cedar Rapids and went to Jefferson High School.

If you’ve never heard of Walter, that wouldn’t offend or displease him in the slightest. He has never been an attention-seeker, though buying a major-league baseball team for a pro sports-record $2.15 billion would indicate otherwise.

Many other members of Jefferson’s Class of 1978 didn’t know of Walter’s whereabouts until the news broke this spring that he was heading a group, including former Los Angeles Lakers superstar Magic Johnson, to buy the Dodgers.

The few public comments Walter has made have pretty much been out of necessity. He and his five fellow owners held a press conference at Dodger Stadium on May 2, where he said it was just the second time he had done an interview with the press. He didn’t respond to an interview request for a feature the Los Angeles Times published about him two weeks earlier.

I made three efforts over three weeks to try to get Walter on the phone for an interview. No luck.

After my third try, I got an email from Guggenheim’s media contact, Brunswick Group. It was boiled down to this: “ … as you can understand he is very busy right now.”

Walter did speak to a Chicago Tribune reporter in late March, though.

“I’m a fairly quiet and private person,” he said. “So I haven’t sought publicity.

“To be frank, my belief is if you just keep your head down and work, and you have the fortune to be successful, there really aren’t moments that change you. Yes, your company gets bigger and owns more things, but you’re just the same person you were the day before.”

At that Los Angeles press conference, Walter said he was raised “not far from the Field of Dreams, where my parents taught us to work hard and to know the value of love,”

Franklin Center, the Chicago building that houses Guggenheim Partners (Mike Hlas photo)

I called Walter’s father, Ed Walter, who worked at a concrete block manufacturing plant in Cedar Rapids and still lives here. He declined to be interviewed when I called him, referring me to his son. Which makes him a good parent, protecting the wishes of his child.

But it’s not like there appears to be a chunk of dirt — or even a speck — to write about Walter. He sounds like he has embodied a version of the American dream.

Walter grew up in a middle-class family in middle America, graduated from Creighton University in accounting, earned a law degree from Northwestern University’s law school, worked in a Chicago law firm, then went on to First Chicago Capital Markets. He went on to found investment firm Liberty Hampshire Col, which is now a subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners.

He lives in Chicago, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood adjacent to Lake Michigan. He and his wife, Kimbra, have a daughter. The Walters are trustees of the Lincoln Park Zoo, and are involved with Chicago Hope Academy and Urban Students Empowered.

“I think I’m turning a page in my life, where I can begin to focus on things beyond business, such as building platforms that have impact, social responsibility and philanthropic activities,” Walter told the Tribune.

Chicago is less than an hour from Cedar Rapids via private jet, but Lincoln Park and the 60-story Franklin Center in the Chicago Loop where Walter works are quite a ways from westside Cedar Rapids. Yet, some of his former Jefferson classmates didn’t seem at all shocked that Walter had done so well for himself.

“We were friends from junior high through high school,” said Jeff Nechanicky, who has done mighty well himself. He is the associate director of Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Indianapolis.

“He was a smart guy, driven, focused on goals and objectives. I had no doubt he would succeed.”

Tracy Sankot of Cedar Rapids added “He was a great guy, a quiet guy, and usually about the smartest guy in class. I had some of the high-end math classes with him.

“We were on the J-Hawk golf team, but if I remember well, we were usually fighting for the last varsity spot or one of the JV spots.”

Walter’s prom date in his senior year at Jefferson, Cathy Boland Polito, has not seen him since high school graduation. Until a copy of a story about Walter’s group purchasing the Dodgers was posted on the Jefferson Class of 1978 Facebook page, she didn’t know what he had been doing with his life.

“Nobody seemed to know where he was,” said Polito, who lives in Oro Valley, Ariz.

She thinks Walter must have taken a lot of Cedar Rapids and Jefferson with him.

“A lot of people from my class are very successful,” Polito said. “I’ve lived in many places, and Cedar Rapids had a fabulous school system.

“The work-ethic there was huge. It wasn’t that you had to be the valedictorian, but that you do it right and do it well. We were working-class, but said ‘Let’s go for it.’ I think that’s what Mark grew up in. Everybody I knew there was solid as a rock.”

Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda presents Walter with a team jersey (AP photo)

Polito remembers Walter picking her up for prom in a car that he had bought.

“I wasn’t a car person,” she said, “But he had this green car that was perfectly clean. I asked him if that was his mom and dad’s car, and he said, ‘No, it’s mine.’ I think he worked at a gas station.

“I thought ‘Wow, he paid for his own car, he’s dressed to the hilt, groomed.’ He was just the perfect gentleman. He had everything planned.

“We had three dates in the last six weeks of high school. He was like a great friend.

“I can’t quite categorize him. He was like the All-American guy, blond hair, a killer smile. Just a nice guy. He didn’t talk a lot. He was a great listener and he smiled a lot.”

Walter still doesn’t talk a lot. But he did tell ESPN.com this after the press conference in Dodger Stadium’s center field:

“I didn’t think that this (buying the Dodgers) would be about me or public appearances … because it’s not about me.”

Apparently, even a billionaire can be a bit naive. But Walter did admit he had a joke ready about moving the team to Cedar Rapids if anyone asked a question about relocating the team for some reason. Unfortunately, no one asked.

Walter’s prom date isn’t a baseball fan at all, but Polito said his purchase of a big-league franchise is “awesome.”

“I think we should hold our next class reunion at Dodger Stadium.”

– Rookie cornerback Shaun Prater of Iowa signed a four-year contract with the Cincinnati Bengals Thursday.

That doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed four years, or even one, with Cincinnati, but it’s better than trying to be a holdout as the 156th player selected in the NFL draft. Prater will make that team, and he’ll be making more money than we will. Well, me for sure.

Shaun Prater returns a pick for a TD vs. Tennessee Tech as Micah Hyde runs interference (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

Prater picked off a pass and returned it 89 yards for a touchdown in Iowa’s season-opening 34-7 victory over Tennessee Tech.

“I need 13 (interceptions),” Prater said after the game, though no major-college player has had that many INTs in a season in the last 50 years.

“It’s a pretty big goal,” he said. “But I just want to focus on setting goals for myself.

“Everything’s possible.”

That was Prater’s only pick of the season.

– The NCAA has released 2011-2012 men’s basketball attendance figures for all of its schools. For the second straight season, Iowa is 31st, but with an increase of 234 fans per game from the season before.

– Iowa will face Edinboro in a dual wrestling meet at Carver-Hawkeye Arena next Feb. 15. Iowa will repay the visit in one of the two following seasons.

Edinboro’s nickname is the Scots. Edinburgh is in Scotland. Edinboro is in Pennsylvania.

The Hamilton Hawkeyes' mascot

– The Hawkeyes have a huge baseball double-header tonight.

That would be the Hamilton (Mich.) Hawkeyes, who wear Iowa Hawkeyes colors, and have a twin-bill this evening at Holland Christian.

Both teams are 8-1 and tied atop the OK-Green Conference. The Hawkeyes are going for their fourth-straight OK-Green title.

It’s great to be a Hamilton Hawkeye!

– Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany thinks a team that doesn’t win its conference division shouldn’t be part of the four-team playoff that is on the verge of coming to FBS football in 2014,

That would have kept national-champ Alabama out of last year’s playoff, had one been in effect.

Be careful what you want. What if Michigan goes 11-1 some season, but its only loss is to a Big Ten Legends Division team that wins that division?

Ahhh, Delany knows that kind of scenario is far more likely in the SEC than his own league.

I don’t get this. Delany is an extremely intelligent person who knows this isn’t going to fly. Is he just saying things like this to needle the SEC? That league has six straight BCS titles. Are its supporters supposed to get flustered by someone else’s suggestion that won’t ever come to fruition?

Or maybe it will get a certain football team from Tuscaloosa fired up when it plays Michigan on Sept. 1. Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News thinks it could.

Well, it makes good copy for a day and keeps the Big Ten in the news. Maybe I just answered my own question.

– Compiled by Mike Hlas

Iowa’s average attendance for men’s basketball games went up in 2011-2012 from the season before, but not enough to elevate it from No. 31 in the nation.

The Hawkeyes’ average home crowd in 2011-2012 was 11,869, up 234 per game from the season before. Iowa was one of six Big Ten teams to raise its average attendance from the season before. Michigan State was sold out for the season in both years.

A Carver-Hawkeye Arena crowd (Gazette photo)

Iowa State made more of a gain, going from 12,110 fans per game in 2010-2011 to 13,015 in 2011-2012 for a gain of 895 fans per game. ISU ranked 28th nationally a year ago, 24th this year.

Northern Iowa’s average crowd in 2011-2012 was 4,406, down 361 from the previous season. Drake’s average also dropped, from 4,230 to 3,965.

Here are the 2011-2012 averages, where they ranked nationally, and the plus-minus from the season before:

BIG TEN

5. Wisconsin  17,181  (-49)

8. Ohio State  16,511  (+1,386)

9. Indiana  16,462  (+1,203)

14. Illinois  14,986  (-865)

15. Michigan State  14,797  (0)

21. Purdue  13,324  (-592)

31. Iowa  11,869  (+234)

33. Minnesota  11,794  (-1,447)

34. Michigan  11,436  (+796)

40. Nebraska  10,019  (+624)

77. Penn State  6,937  (-520)

90. Northwestern  5,972  (+681)

BIG 12

10. Kansas  16,445  (+9)

Royce White after Iowa State beat Kansas at Hilton Coliseum (AP photo)

24. Iowa State  13,015  (+895)

25. Kansas State  12,783  (+131)

30. Texas  11,950  (-1,749)

32. Missouri  11,830  (+718)

43. Oklahoma State  9,239  (-1,208)

49. Texas Tech  8,665  (+152)

53. Oklahoma  8,525  (-38)

62. Baylor  7,914  (+970)

71. Texas A&M  7,383  (-1,617)

LEADING CONFERENCES

1. Big Ten  12,868

2. SEC  11,513

3. Big 12  11,057

4. Big East  10,881

5. ACC  9,876

6. Mountain West  7,800

7. Pac-12  7,143

Iowa Corn Growers Association CEO Craig Floss speaks during a news conference, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011, in Urbandale, Iowa. Less than a week after introducing a new trophy for the winner of the football game between Iowa and Iowa State the Iowa Corn Growers Association announced they will create a replacement trophy after receiving negative feedback from fans. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

HEADLONG HAWKEYE (AND CYCLONE)

It kind of flew under my radar because I’ve been in and out of town the last few weeks. There is a new Cy-Hawk football trophy and it’s not bad.

Here it is:

Obviously, it’s the one on the top.

It’s fine. It’s not the grotesque stereotype the “Family of the Corn” was. The whole “larger concept” than just a football game rang extremely hollow statewide.

Huge credit to Iowa Corn Growers Association CEO Craig Floss who took the temperature of the reaction and came back with singed eyebrows to pull the plug on the Family of the Corn after sinking $40,000 into it. That took fortitude, a completely unheralded Iowa quality. The schools were entered into the endorsement. The trophy could’ve been pig testicles and they would’ve been cool with it.

Once the wheels are in motion on something like this, it never seems to stop. No one at Coca-Cola said, wait a minute, New Coke? Get outta here. No one tranq’d George Lucas when he was putting out three unnecessary Star Wars (desecration). Jim Belushi still gets gigs.

So, for Craig Floss to stand up and drastically change streams in the midst of a PR disaster, well done, sir.

Now, the new one? It’s nice. It’s OK. It’s a trophy with some design to it. It doesn’t look like, as Kirk Ferentz called the old old Cy-Hawk, a soap box racer project. This trophy will become outdated quickly when Iowa State changes logos again. I State will cave to something at some point. ISU logos are made to be broken. But hey, that’s a quick fix.

I would’ve liked to have seen a nod to Nile Kinnick and Jack Trice. They do, after all, have their names on the stadiums. The football that Cy and Herky will be holding is slated to be big and bronze.

OK.

I still like my idea for the football.

The schools’ Army ROTC programs have been running the game ball from Ames to Iowa City as part of a tradition that started in 1986. I would’ve loved to have seen a a bronzed corn scene cradle the ROTC game ball.

Winning team runs out and grabs the big, bronze trophy. Later, when it goes into the school’s trophy case, the team and coaches sign the ROTC game ball and place it in the bronze corn cradle. Maybe emblazon the football with “ROTC” in the school’s colors.

On the Monday of the next season’s game week, take the autographed ball and auction it off. Proceeds go to a food shelter somewhere in Iowa.

That’s a higher concept. But hey, the Family of the Corn is sitting in someone’s office or den somewhere and it’s a helluva conversation piece.

– Marc Morehouse

Recruiting note — According to Rivals.com, West Des Moines Valley OL Jake Campos has committed to Missouri, which, as you know, is now in the SEC.

So, strike one for Iowa on the West Des Moines Big Three. Iowa remains in the hunt for West Des Moines Valley’s Sam Raridon, a 6-2, 256-pound D-lineman with an Iowa offer and interest from Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Also, Dowling Catholic tight end Jon Wisnieski has offers from Iowa, Nebraska, Purdue, and Iowa State with Oklahoma showing strong interest. At the end of last month, he didn’t appear close to a decision.

– Marc Morehouse

DIEZ DE MAYO LINKS

– Did former Iowa/current New England Patriots offensive lineman Robert Gallery get a haircut? For the first time in a decade, maybe, you can see his ears.

Here is the link to his question-and-answer audio with New England media on Thursday.

– The road from undrafted free agent to making an NFL team is a hard one, but rookie punter Eric Guthrie of Iowa has survived the first obstacle: Getting a contract after participating in last weekend’s rookie minicamp on a tryout basis.

The team, by the way, is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

– Former star Hawkeye defensive tackle Andre Tippett is entering the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame Saturday. He is a Birmingham native.

Tippett entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2008. He was inducted into the National Iowa Varsity Club Athletics Hall of Fame in 2007.

– Kirk Ferentz is Big Ten football’s youngest elder statesman since Hayden Fry in 1985.

– Purdue has had a bit of a drought when it comes to winning Big Ten baseball titles. The last one came in 1909.

“The Titanic sank after we won our last Big Ten championship,” Purdue second baseman Eric Charles said. “You’d think we could have squeaked one out in all that time.”

At 14-4, the Boilermakers have a 3-game lead with six conference games remaining. The final three are at Iowa May 17-19.

The last time the Hawkeyes had the Big Ten’s best regular-season league record was 1990. The last time they got a piece of the conference’s championship was 1974.

That’s a drought, too. It doesn’t bring the Titanic to mind, but it’s a drought.

– It isn’t every day when you hear a commissioner of a major conference say “It’s probably time for a commercialized kind of perspective. Clearly the collegiate model is dead.”

Make that ex-commissioner of a major conference. John Marinatto resigned as the Big East’s commissioner on Monday.

And what does this have to do with new Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby? Let’s ask Pete Thamel of the New York Times. He wrote:

The Big East is a bit like the game Jenga, a stack of wooden blocks haphazardly arranged atop one another. The most likely piece to be removed is Louisville. It is not a matter of whether it wants to go to the Big 12 as much as if it will be invited. If the Big 12, which has 10 teams, decides to expand to 12, would it invite Cincinnati to go with Louisville?

– The lead paragraph of this Charlotte News & Observer story says plenty:

Football and basketball players accounted for nearly four out of every 10 students enrolled in 54 classes at the heart of an academic fraud investigation at UNC-Chapel Hill, according to figures released Monday.

Don’t get too mock-y toward North Carolina. This 2011 story by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that several university football programs — at some excellent universities — have players who tend to congregate in the same fields of study.

Lost Letterman is a pretty good college football/basketball site. It just listed its 10 football coaches on the proverbial hot seat, and none work in the Big Ten.

Of course, Ron Zook went from hot seat to ejection button last year at Illinois, and Purdue’s Danny Hope got his chair cooled down by leading the Boilermakers to a bowl win, even if it was the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.

– Compiled by Mike Hlas

First of all, 56 isn’t all that old.

That’s how old Kirk Ferentz of Iowa is today. He’ll be 57 in September when the dean of Big Ten football coaches also will be the league’s oldest head football coach. He was born on Aug. 1, 1955. Also 56, but born seven months after Ferentz, is Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio.

None of this occurred to me in a dream. I came upon those facts while reading this blog post by Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman. Tramel was surprised Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops, 51, is the Big 12′s seventh-oldest coach. (Paul Rhoads of Iowa State is eighth, at 45.

Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferentz in 1998

When was the last time the Big Ten’s oldest coach was younger than 57 (Ferentz will be 57 when the season starts)? Not since Penn State played its first Big Ten season in 1993, that’s for sure. That’s because Joe Paterno was the Nittany Lions’ coach.

The answer is 1985, when Iowa’s Hayden Fry (born Feb. 28, 1929) and Michigan’s Bo Schembechler (born April 1, 1929) were the league’s elder statesmen at 56. Coincidentally, Iowa and Michigan finished 1-2 in the Big Ten in ’85.

Earle Bruce of Ohio State was 54 that year. Bruce always seemed older than Fry when they were in the league together, though.

Minnesota’s Lou Holtz was a kid at 48 in 1985. Dennis Green was Northwestern’s 36-year-old coach. The Wildcats’ current coach, Pat Fitzgerald, is 37 and about to enter his seventh season in that role.

As Tramel’s post notes, the Big 12 has a 72-year-old coach in Bill Snyder of Kansas State. He was Fry’s offensive coordinator in 1985.

The SEC has five coaches older than Ferentz, including Nick Saban of Alabama (60), Les Miles of LSU (58) and Steve Spurrier of South Carolina (67).

Ferentz would be the sixth-oldest coach in the ACC and the second-oldest in the Pac-12.

If his team does in ’12 what Fry’s did in ’85, Ferentz not only will be the Big Ten’s oldest coach, but he’ll be its Coach of the Year.

RIVERSIDE — Marvin McNutt knows how many touchdown passes he caught for Iowa.

This autographed photo (the first one) is in a convenience store in Riverside, or at least it was recently.

McNutt has a unique autograph.

Hey, this stuff isn’t all deep-thinking. I had eight hours of attending a seminar at work on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so this was as comprehensive as I was going to get. Thursday is back to a normal work day.

When this has a definitive answer, I’ll give it to you the moment I get it. But for now, there is no traditional telecast scheduled for the Sept. 1 football game between Iowa and Northern Illinois at Chicago’s Soldier Field.

Now, don’t panic. There’s time, and necessity is the mother of invention, and a rolling stone gathers no moss. But Northern Illinois played Wisconsin at Soldier last Sept. 17, and … no television. The only way to watch the game live was via ESPN3.com on the World Wide Web.

Iowa beat NIU 16-3 at Soldier in 2007 (AP photo)

Who do you know who has a 50-inch laptop screen? I know some people watch the Internet on their TVs, but the world in general isn’t wired that way just yet.

Northern Illinois is the home team for Iowa-NIU, so the Mid-American Conference has the television rights. ESPN Regional TV retains the “local and regional” syndication telecast rights. So maybe the game will be made available to Iowa stations via syndication.

But the Wisconsin-NIU game last year wasn’t.

About two weeks ago, I e-mailed NIU Associate Athletic Director for Communications Donna Stewart to ask what the TV scenario for Iowa-NIU was. Her reply:

Sorry, MAC has not released its TV schedule yet.  Probably some time in June.

Last week, I asked Big Ten Senior Associate Commissioner Mark Rudner about the possibilities. He said the situation could — could — turn out to be the same as Wisconsin-NIU last year. He said the chances of the game somehow ending up on the Big Ten Network were nil.

When the Hawkeyes and Huskies played in Chicago in 2007 (Iowa won, 16-3. Charles Godfrey, pictured, had two interceptions.), the game was televised by ESPNU. That would seem to be a possibility this go-round. So cling to that, I guess.

But if this is an ESPN3.com-only deal, the solution is simple. Just fire up your PC or laptop or smart phone and watch the game on that. And you can watch another game or two or three on cable/dish at the same time. Like Northern Iowa-Wisconsin in Madison. That will be televised for sure, since it’s a Big Ten team’s home game.

The Buffalo Bills are taking care of their own. They have signed running back Fred Jackson to a two-year extension to the year he had remaining on his previous contract.

Jackson’s average salary more than doubles during the extension, rising to about $4.5 million a year. According to the Buffalo News story I have linked, it, that salary could escalate to about $10.7 million for the two new years if he hits certain incentives.

Fred Jackson was a bit difficult to defend when he played at Coe (Gazette photo)

That’s not bad for a 31-year old running back who suffered a fractured fibula last season. Many an NFL team would have released or at least marginalized a player in the same situation.

Jackson played at Coe College in Cedar Rapids. News of his new contract today got me wondering where Jackson would rank among Iowa collegians who have played running back in the NFL. The short answer is this: Pretty darn high.

First, let me give you Jackson’s numbers. Five seasons, 66 games, 38 starts, 3,794 rushing yards, 1,535 receiving yards, 20 touchdowns. His rushing totals the last three seasons were 1,062, 927 and 934. He got a late NFL start because he didn’t hook up with an NFL team until he made his Buffalo debut in 2007. He had NFL tryouts out of college that didn’t materialize into anything, then spent two years with the Sioux City Bandits of United Indoor Football. In 2006 he played in NFL Europe, and made the Bills’ roster in ’07.

Jackson has been a mainstay the last three seasons with totals of 2,923 rushing yards and 1,028 receiving yards. Had he not fractured a fibula in his 10th game of last season, he was headed to the Pro Bowl. He had 1,376 total yards in 10 games to rank among the NFL. That average of 137.6 yards per game was topped only by Houston’s Arian Foster.

Over the last few years, I have wondered what kind of play Jackson’s ascent to NFL stardom would have received in Iowa had he played for the University of Iowa instead of Coe. I think we all know the answer to that question. It’s the headline of this post, in fact.

So, who are the best historical running backs among Iowa collegians other than Jackson? The truth is, there aren’t many to choose from, and they all played at Iowa. Unless I have a glaring omission, in which case someone will point it out within 30 seconds of this getting posted and I will work on damage control.

Ed Podolak, 1969-1977. Rushed for 4,451 yards and had 2,456 receiving yards in 104 games. His top rushing year was 749 yards in 14 games. But he had something no one else we’ll mention here owns, which is one of the greatest postseason performances in American pro sports. He had an NFL playoff-record 350 total yards (85 rushing, 110 receiving, 155 on kick-returns) in his Kansas City Chiefs’ 1971 double-overtime playoff loss to the Miami Dolphins.

Ronnie Harmon, 1986-1997.  In 181 games, he had 2,774 rushing yards and 6,076 receiving yards, and scored 34 touchdowns. His top rushing season was 544 yards. He was the prototypical third-down back, with almost as many catches in his career as rushes.

Ladell Betts, 2002-2010. In 111 games, he had 3,326 rushing yards. One-third of those (1,154) came in 2006, his only season as his team’s No. 1 running back. He also had 1,646 receiving yards, and scored 18 career TDs.

Shonn Greene, 2009-present. Is coming off a 1,054-yard rushing season with the New York Jets. In his three seasons, he has 2,360 yards rushing and 331 receiving over 45 games. He could be the best running back from an Iowa college before his time is done.

This man had a lot of game and mustache

Those three played at Iowa. Other former Hawkeye star running backs who never made much of a dent in The League include Tavian Banks, Fred Russell, Albert Young, Owen Gill and Sedrick Shaw.

Nick Bell did score seven touchdowns from the Oakland Raiders, but only played from 1991 to 1993 and never topped 366 rushing yards in a season

Fullback Jim Jensen totaled 876 rushing yards for the Denver Broncos in the 1979 and 1980 seasons and had 377 receiving yards in ’80, but did little statistically in the rest of his 6-year NFL career.

The top Iowa State NFL running back is Mike Strachan, 1975-1980. A ninth-round draft pick, Strachan rushed for 668 yards as a rookie. His 62-game totals were 1,902 rushing yards and 392 receiving yards.

UPDATE: Tony Baker of Iowa State had a 9-year NFL career. His career-high was 642 rushing yards in 1969, his second pro season. He also had 354 receiving yards that year. His career rushing total was 2,087 yards.

Troy Davis of Iowa State, who was the Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1996, played from just 1997 to 1999 in the NFL, compiling 681 total yards. He then played eight years in the Canadian Football League, and topped 1,000 yards in four different seasons.

The most-prolific Northern Iowa player when it comes to playing running back in the NFL is Randy Schultz, 1966-1968. He had 301 rushing yards and 220 receiving yards over 31 games.

OK, have I forgotten anyone, from a state school or one of Iowa’s other colleges?

Wait, I’ve got another. Clarence “Pug” Manders of Drake had an NFL-best 486 rushing yards in 1941 for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and rushed for 2,712 yards over 90 games.

Adam Rittenberg, ESPN.com’s senior Big Ten blogger and someone who has been a good friend to the Hlog, is inadvertently giving this blog some material on an otherwise slow news day.

(By saying it’s a slow news day, I virtually guarantee a monster story will break out just as I’m about to go home for the night.)

Rittenberg wrote Monday that he expects Wisconsin running back Montee Ball to be the Big Ten’s preseason football Offensive Player of the Year. As good as other players in the league are, you can’t dispute that. Ball was a Heisman Trophy finalist last season, with 1,923 rushing yards and 39 total touchdowns last season.

James Vandenberg directing traffic in a 2009 game (Gazette photo)

Rittenberg picked four other league players and asked “Which Big Ten player is most likely to challenge Wisconsin’s Montee Ball for offensive player of the year honors this fall?”

He cited a couple of slam-dunks in Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson (4,931 passing yards and 3,229 rushing yards in three seasons) and Nebraska running back Rex Burkhead (1,357 rushing yards in 2011, 2,657 in his career). A fourth was running back Silas Redd of Penn State (1,241 rushing yards last season).

He wrote this: The fourth choice was tough, and I considered several candidates, including Ohio State QB Braxton Miller, Iowa QB James Vandenberg and Michigan RB Fitzgerald Toussaint. Any of them could contend for offensive player of the year honors, as could several others. But I’ve always thought Michigan State’s Le’Veon Bell could be a potential superstar in this league. As Michigan State transitions back to a run-heavy offense behind an improved offensive line, Bell will have a chance to shine.

Bell rushed for 948 yards and 13 touchdowns last season on a team that had an excellent passing game and also had a 665-yard rusher in NFL-draft pick Edwin Baker.

I’m guessing Iowa campers would have tossed Vandenberg into those four choices and omitted Bell or Silas. Vandenberg is coming off a junior season in which he threw 25 touchdown passes and just seven interceptions, and threw for 3,022 yards.

But I’m not ripping Rittenberg, because he’s right about Bell possibly becoming a superstar. And Vandenberg has to beat a good team on the road before he can go from solid quarterback to excellent one in many minds. He’ll get his chances, at Michigan State and Michigan.

As Rittenberg duly notes, no preseason Offensive Player of the Year has ended up winning that award since Ohio State’s Troy Smith in 2006. Iowa running back Shonn Greene wouldn’t have been on anyone’s preseason Top Five list in 2008, but he was the postseason OPOY, the award that matters considerably more. And I don’t know who would have picked Ball to win the 2011 OPOY before last season began.

College basketball generates muted buzz with non-conference matches. With a 30-plus game schedule, most fans simply nod when it’s released. But heads turn every so slightly with the Big Ten-ACC Challenge announcement.

The leagues will co-release the annual showdown’s match-ups and dates in mid-May as they have the last two seasons. This is the second (and probably last) season both leagues contain 12 teams, and there’s an agreement to simply flip the locations and shuffle the opponents from last year. With the ACC going to 14 schools as early as 2013, locations then will shuffle to accommodate top match-ups.

The Big Ten dominated the Challenge 8-4 last year, the third consecutive series win for the league. Of course it’s more of a momentum shift than a true pendulum swing. The ACC did win the first 10 installments after all.

Iowa's Melsahn Basabe (1, right) shoots over Clemson's Devin Booker (31) in the first half of the Big Ten-ACC Challenge at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011, in Iowa City. (Liz Martin/SourceMedia Group News)

Iowa has been no help to the Big Ten when it comes to the Challenge. In fact, the Hawkeyes easily have been the worst team in Challenge history, losing 9 of 11 games. Iowa has lost six straight in the series. Equally as strange Wake Forest has provided the ACC with a huge lift, winning 10 of 12 in the Challenge. The Demon Deacons have beaten Iowa twice in the Challenge.

I look for Iowa to play at Miami this fall, which would be the first meeting between the teams. The schools were supposed to play last year, but there was a late schedule revamp which placed the Hurricanes at Purdue and Clemson at Iowa.

Iowa and Miami each had winning records and won one NIT game last year. Both return the core of their roster but lose one key contributor. Other possible Challenge competitors for Miami would include Purdue and Minnesota, but the Hurricanes played both (and lost to both) last year. Other possibilities for Iowa include Clemson (which beat Iowa last year), Wake Forest (which beat Iowa in 2010 and 2007) and Virginia Tech (which beat Iowa in 2009 and 2006).

Because the Challenge are made-for-TV games, at times it’s fairly predictable to project at least a few of the match-ups. That’s especially true this year with the home/away flip. So here’s a stab at possible games this fall, provided that there won’t be any Challenge repeats from 2011:

Michigan State at Duke

• The teams met early last season in neutral New York; would be teams’ fourth Challenge meeting

North Carolina at Indiana

• The defending ACC champion traveling to the potential preseason No. 1? No way this doesn’t happen

Ohio State at Florida State

• Teams won either share of leagues’ regular-season or tournament title and return stars from last year’s NCAA squads

North Carolina State at Michigan

• The 24-win Wolfpack’s top four players (and 24-win Michigan’s top three) were underclassmen last year

Virginia at Wisconsin

• Could this be the reason Wisconsin Coach Bo Ryan initially restricted Jarrod Uthoff from the Cavaliers (and the ACC)?

Iowa at Miami

• Iowa’s last Challenge win came in 2005 against N.C. State; Miami beat Minnesota in 2009 for its only Challenge win

Georgia Tech at Illinois

• Former mid-major coaches in Ohio square off at Champaign

Boston College at Northwestern

• BC was only team in either league to register single-digit victories; Northwestern lost all-time leading scorer John Shurna

Minnesota at Clemson

• Teams were mediocre in league play last year, although the Gophers were sterling in NIT

Purdue at Wake Forest

• Uneven game based on last year’s standings, but Purdue loses top two scorers, rebounders

Nebraska at Virginia Tech

• New coaches square off in Blacksburg to add intrigue

Maryland at Penn State

• Maybe Penn State will get a needed attendance bump from a regional rival if this happens

Here are the team records in the 131-game series. Remember the ACC had nine teams until 2005 and Challenge didn’t go to 12 games until 2011:

• ACC (76-55) — Duke 11-2; Wake Forest 10-2; Maryland 9-4; Clemson 9-4; Virginia 7-5; North Carolina 7-6; Florida State 6-7; Boston College 5-1; North Carolina State 5-7; Georgia Tech 4-8; Virginia Tech 2-5; Miami 1-4
• Big Ten (55-76) — Ohio State 6-5; Michigan State 6-6; Illinois 6-7; Northwestern 6-7; Wisconsin 6-7; Purdue 5-6; Penn State 5-6; Minnesota 5-8; Michigan 4-7;  Indiana 4-7; Iowa 2-9; Nebraska 0-1

– Scott Dochterman

LINKS-A-LUJAH

– T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times doesn’t gush about much. But the Times’ Page 2 sports columnist is enjoying how the Los Angeles Clippers have opened a 2-1 NBA playoff series lead over the Memphis Grizzlies, and the reserve power forward from Iowa who has helped them to that edge.

Simers wrote: (Chris) Paul is the best player on the court and he’s wearing a Clippers uniform. The Clippers really are making history.

But the fans are understandably confused. Who is most deserving of their attention when (Blake) Griffin, Paul and Reggie Evans are in the game at the same time?

So far Evans is winning out, and you have to be here. He comes off the bench and the fans start yelling, “Reggie, Reggie,” and who cheers for someone in the entertainment capital who can’t score?

“If I wasn’t in the game I’d be chanting his name, too,” Paul says.

Evans argues later he can score, so he’s a dreamer as well as a gifted rebounder.

Evans had 11 rebounds in Saturday’s 87-86 win. Game 4 is tonight in Los Angeles.

Evans said he slept wrong Friday night and woke up with neck pain Saturday. Then … you can see this one coming down Main Street … he was a pain in the Grizzlies’ necks.

Jeff Miller of the Orange County Register wrote “Evans, who, in a twist on a familiar home-court theme, plays with such passion that the crowd feeds off him.”

– How many players in Division I basketball transfer? Try one in every 10.

Iowa's Devyn Marble pass the ball behind him as he gets tangled up with Drake's Rayvonte Rice during the second half at Carver-Hawkeye Arena at Iowa City, Iowa on December 17, 2011. Rice will transfer to Illinois and be eligible to play in 2013-14. (Cliff Jette/SourceMedia Group)

New Illinois coach John Groce is going the Fred Hoiberg route. Start snapping up transfers to fill in gaps as you begin the process of stocking your program with high school players.

Groce has landed guard Rayvonte Rice from Drake and forward Sam McLaurin from Coastal Carolina. Rice had a team-high 16.8 points per game at Drake. He has two years of eligibility left, which begin after he sits out a season.

“We’re blessed and fortunate the timing of him transferring coincided with us coming to Champaign,” Groce said.

McLaurin is a senior who will be eligible this season under the NCAA rule that allows him to transfer if he has already graduated college and enrolls as a graduate student in a program not offered at the school he is leaving. He will enter Illinois’ one-year master’s programming in sports management, which he can complete online.

McLaurin averaged 10 points and 7.5 rebounds last season.

– Buzz Bissinger likes football. He wrote “Friday Night Lights.” Not the movie, not the TV series. He wrote the great book about high school football in Odessa, Texas.

But he thinks college football should be banned, and explains why in this essay for the Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

A radical solution, yes. But necessary in today’s times.

Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there for the vital and single purpose of learning as much as they can to compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.

Banning college football would throw a wrinkle into the career paths of the contributors to On Iowa Daily Briefing. But if it’s for the good of American academics, we’ll happily shelve our selfish concerns.

– Oh, but college football success translates into more money for universities. That may not be so, indicates this piece by Jon Solomon of the Birmingham News.

A University of Arkansas doctoral student in sport management and his professor have examined 10-year data from 2000 to 2009 at 29 Football Bowl Subdivision schools. They haven’t drawn firm conclusions yet, but say there could be a negative impact on academic giving based on football triumphs.

– Junior Seau’s suicide has confused many people. This terrific column by Chris McCosky of the Detroit News said Seau wasn’t being a coward and he wasn’t being selfish.

He was sick.

– Without demonizing Nebraska assistant coach Ron Brown for his anti-homosexuality beliefs, Tom Shatel of the Omaha World-Herald has a fine piece suggesting it would behoove Brown to take a gentler tone.

This is Brown’s letter to the Lincoln Journal Star, which was published Sunday:

I wholeheartedly agree with UNL’s Non-Discrimination Policy.  As a follower of Jesus Christ, and a UNL employee for twenty-two years, I haven’t, nor will I violate this policy.

In 1979 I realized Christ’s death and resurrection freed me from the many sins I am guilty of.  I received Christ’s forgiveness then and the Bible became my source of truth for every phase of life.  God offers His grace to all of us. WOW!

Not all of my players have agreed with the Bible’s views. One example, of many, would be those choosing heterosexual sex outside of marriage. Though the Bible teaches this as sin, I haven’t penalized them with playing time or discrimination of any sort.  Because I love them, I’ve invested in them even outside of football and gently asked them to consider God’s view on it.

If I coached a gay player, because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, I would do the same. If he didn’t agree, I wouldn’t penalize him with playing time or any form of discrimination.

I have and will embrace every player I coach, gay or straight … but I won’t embrace a legal policy that supports a lifestyle that God calls sin.

– Ron Brown, private citizen of Nebraska

Brown said a media frenzy will deter him from speaking today at a Lincoln City Council public hearing that will be held on a proposal to add gender identity and sexual orientation to the classes of people specifically protected against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

There was a similar hearing in Omaha on March 6, and Brown spoke for three minutes, challenging council members to remember the Bible doesn’t condone homosexuality.

– Compiled by Mike Hlas

ROSEMONT, Ill. — A four-team major-college football playoff seems to be on its way, but a vigorous debate is likely to be in the details.

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany sat at a restaurant table with sports writers from CBSsports.com, Yahoo! Sports, The Sporting News, the Detroit Free Press and The Gazette last Wednesday, and talked for 90 minutes about college sports topics of the day.

It wasn’t really an interview. It was more a monologue than a dialogue. We had been invited to participate in a panel with discussion with Big Ten communications officers and league-member sports information directors at the conference office in nearby Park Ridge. The sit-down with Delany was presented as a bonus.

An unassuming little conference

Representing his conference’s thinking, Delany was long-opposed to a football playoff. But being hardheaded never positioned anyone better for the future. Delany conceded that sometimes there are times when you have to go with the winds of change.

He noted there are those whom he speaks for still do not want a playoff, including Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. Another is Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

Perlman said Thursday that a “plus-one,” where the top two teams would be chosen for a national-championship game after the bowl games are played, is still a possibility.

“It is clear the presidents will still make the final decision,” Perlman told ESPN.com. “We’ve had some informal meetings, the Big Ten presidents and the Pac-12 presidents, and I think we’re largely aligned in thinking a plus-one with a different ranking after the bowl games to select No. 1 and 2 would be acceptable. Our second choice would probably be a four-team playoff inside the bowls. Our highest priority is to preserve the status of the Rose Bowl and our connection to it.”

But the SEC and ACC and Big 12 and Big East don’t have the same priority when it comes to Pasadena.

And the four-team playoff sounds more likely to emerge as the format than a plus-one. On Wednesday, Delany said one option was a playoff in which conference champions are included rather than the top four teams in whatever system is used to rank the teams.

That’s assuming the league-champs are in the top six of the rankings. If the top six doesn’t contain four league-champs, the highest-remaining ranked teams would fill the other spots.

Last season, for instance, the playoff participants would have conference-champions LSU, Oklahoma State and Oregon from the top five with Alabama (No. 2) the highest-ranked non-champion.

League office, view from the street

That seems reasonable enough, until you realize Boise State would have replaced No. 2 Alabama had the Broncos not lost to TCU. So the second-ranked team in the nation — and the eventual national-champ — would have been iced out of a four-team tourney.

You think people have been screaming about the BCS? Alabama and the SEC would have gone insane had ‘Bama been left out of the two-team BCS format, let alone a four-team event.

It would have blown up in the Big Ten’s face in 2006 when Michigan was No. 3 in the BCS standings. The four playoff teams under Delany’s scenario would have all been conference-titlists, including No. 6 Louisville.

The way the rankings will be determined is to be determined. It won’t necessarily be the present BCS formula. Delany said he favors a selection committee, which sounds to me like another concept that has the odds against it being approved.

The people who would be on such a committee would probably have to live on the other side of the moon for their own safety.

Oh, the new format is highly unlikely to be called the BCS, Delany said. The “BCS” connotation is overwhelmingly negative with the public.

But if the new four-team championship system had a formula that excluded a team that was No. 2 in the final rankings, the BCS would actually start to look good again.

Iowa tight end Allen Reisner (82) is taken down by Illinois defensive back Dere Hicks (28) during the third quarter of their game at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Ill. on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008. (Jonathan D. Woods/The Gazette)

The Big Ten will release the football schedules for 2015-16 later this month. Considering we don’t have the times set for most of this year’s match-ups or dates for any basketball games, it might be premature to circle the calendar and wait with anticipation for the football announcement.

But football drives the train for college athletics in terms of prestige, economics and interest. And in the new-look, 12-member Big Ten, it matters who you play as much as when you play them.

Each team already knows six opponents — five in divisional play, one protected in non-divisional play — on an annual basis. The intrigue comes with the combination of picking two opponents among the other six for an eight-game league schedule.

It’s likely Iowa finally will play Illinois in 2015-16. The teams last met in 2008 in Champaign, and they’re at six seasons and counting without playing. It’s the longest gap among Big Ten schools since Iowa and Illinois skipped each other’s schedules for 14 consecutive seasons until playing again in 1967 after a 1952 apple-throwing incident at Kinnick Stadium.

Iowa running back Shonn Greene (23) stiff arms Illinois defensive back Vontae Davis (1) as he steps into the end zone for a touchdown during the fourth quarter of their game at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Ill. on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008. (Jonathan D. Woods/The Gazette)

The reason this time around was simply scheduling. When the Big Ten stood at 11 schools, each team designated two opponents as annual rivals and played the league’s other schools six times over an eight-year period. In 2009-10, Illinois and Iowa rotated off one another’s schedule for two years as scheduled. When the league added Nebraska in 2011 and split into two football divisions, Iowa and Illinois were placed into opposite divisions. After all the time and effort league officials spent determining divisions and selecting priority match-ups, Iowa’s non-protected, non-divisional opponents (Indiana, Penn State) were picked randomly for 2011-12. No big deal. It was a busy time.

Cross-divisional scheduling was more calculated for 2013-14. The league placed long-time rival Wisconsin back on Iowa’s schedule, which was in motion once the divisions were set. The other choice was between Ohio State and Illinois, and the league tapped Ohio State. If it had been the Illini, that would have meant four straight years — and six of eight years — without Ohio State-Iowa. There’s no winner either way.

Should the league select Iowa-Illinois in 2015-16, Iowa will face one of four possible opponents — Wisconsin, Ohio State, Indiana or Penn State. It’s unlikely (and unfortunate) Iowa will play Wisconsin or Ohio State four consecutive years as non-divisional opponents. Iowa facing both Illinois and Indiana (and Purdue) for two straight years without playing Wisconsin, Ohio State or Penn State will be met with jeers around the league and possibly the country if Iowa is a national contender. My guess is Penn State is Iowa’s other opponent.

Iowa Hawkeyes Adam Shada (19) gets his head tweaked by Illinois Fighting Illini Joe Morgan during the second half of their game at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa, on Saturday, Oct. 13, 2007.(JONATHAN D. WOODS/THE GAZETTE)

But to me, Big Ten non-divisional scheduling is a mess that takes away from the conference’s best attributes, which includes its proximity, longevity and history. It’s a problem when teams from the same conference fail to play one another for more than two consecutive years. Rivalries dissipate and interest wanes unless something is at stake. I applauded Commissioner Jim Delany in 2010 when he advocated for a nine-game league schedule beginning in 2015. He told reporters multiple times, “We want to play each other more, not less.”

Of course scheduling issues — primarily most schools’ desire for seven home games — made 2015 a bit ambitious. So Delany modified the proposed nine-game league schedule to begin in 2017, and that policy was announced on Aug. 4, 2011. Then on Dec. 28, 2011, the nine-game plan fizzled as Big Ten officials announced an all-sports partnership with the Pac-12. By 2017, Big Ten schools strongly are encouraged to play at least one annual football game against a Pac-12 opponent. It’s an alliance that includes the leagues’ mutual affection for the Rose Bowl and shared academic values.

While the alliance sounds interesting on the surface, it’s going to create more headaches than cartwheels the deeper you go. For every USC-Ohio State football game, there’s an Indiana-Washington State match-up. For every Indiana-UCLA men’s basketball game, there’s a Penn State-Oregon State showdown. Let’s not even start with the Olympic sports.

For all the scheduling and travel issues associated with traveling halfway across the nation (Nebraska/Iowa/Minnesota) or all the way across the country (Penn State/Ohio State) and at times eye-rolling rhetoric associated with student-athlete welfare, let’s consider the biggest focus of all: cost.

One administrator at a Big Ten school told me his first thought about the Big Ten-Pac-12 challenge was “how expensive it was going to be.” In 2010, Iowa football paid $93,700 for a flight to Tucson, Ariz., to play Arizona. When flying to other Big Ten locales, Iowa spends about $59,000. When riding by bus to Evanston, Ill., or Madison, Wis., the football program spends about $6,000. Of course with inflation, all of those costs will soar in the future, even the bus trips.

So when the 2015-16 schedules are unveiled, fans and media will look intently at who plays whom when and where. Then we’ll all remember who isn’t playing whom and wonder when they’ll play again. That’s worst part of realignment — until Iowa and its Big Ten brethren spend more than $100,000 in chartered flights to play a night game 2,000 miles away and eschew a $7,000 bus trip to a neighboring state. Then it becomes personal.

– Scott Dochterman

LINKIN PARK

– What is the nation saying about former Iowa Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby becoming commissioner of the Big 12 this morning? Click on the links to get their complete takes.

Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com: Bowlsby has been in the room when a lot of deals have been made and has a very measured personality. He’s also got such a strong background in college athletics that he would have strong ideas about what college athletics should look like in the next 25 years. I think it’s a good fit.

Mark Purdy, San Jose Mercury News: If Bob Bowlsby is leaving his job as Stanford’s athletic director to become commissioner of the Big 12, more power to him. That’s a rugged, punishing job.

Kirk Ferentz (left) listens to Iowa Athletics Director Bob Bowlsby talk during Ferentz's introductory press conference. (The Gazette)

If you want to know why, listen to this from a longtime college sports administrator I trust: “I think the Big 12 job is probably the toughest of the BCS commissionerships other than the Big East. They’ve taken a lot of hits in the past year and nearly collapsed. They lost Nebraska and Texas A&M and then had to give in to Texas’ television demands to keep the league together. But Bob has stature and clout in the industry. If anyone can build the Big 12 back up, he’d be the guy.”

Burns Hargis, president of Oklahoma State: “The institutions of the Big 12 wanted a commissioner that could take us to the next era as a conference. The search committee looked for a candidate that has a vision for the next generation of college athletics, and his credentials and ideas exceeded this.”

– He is Steve Greenberg of The Sporting News, and he ranks Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz as the fifth-best Big Ten football coach.

Greenberg writes: Ferentz will win his 100th game at Iowa this season, but a first-place finish in the Legends Division seems out of the question. That’s where Ferentz is at right now, in a nutshell. He’s very respected, based on a fine 13-year body of work at Iowa, but he’s no longer one of the very best (if he ever was).

Greenberg’s top four are Urban Meyer of Ohio State, Bret Bielema of Wisconsin, Mark Dantonio of Michigan State and Brady Hoke of Michigan.

– Indiana Athletic Director Fred Glass flies in the face of his Big Ten colleagues when it comes to an opinion on the league’s policy on denying scholarship football and basketball players to transfer directly from one league school to another.

“I think if a kid wants to stay in our conference, and he’s a quality kid and a good player,” Glass said, “why should we force him to help make some other conference famous?”

 – Compiled by Mike Hlas

How to know you aren’t in a professional sports market:

An assistant coach of the local college football team tweets that the head coach may soon be tweeting himself, and people (including the media, including me) actually make note of it. Like me, now.

@HeadCoachFerentz (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

Thursday, Iowa assistant Brian Ferentz (@coachbferentz) posted this:

You will not be seeing our players on Twitter – but expect to see a few more coaches joining the ranks soon. #HeadCoach

I’d rather see the players, thanks. Let me see which are funny, which are smart, which are interesting, which are not. I don’t quite get how you can be unafraid to have college kids perform in front of 70,000 people, but are scared to trust them to communicate on Twitter. But that’s the college football culture.

Not that I wouldn’t love to read or hear what head coach Ferentz really thinks about anything. Which I fantastize would be like …

@HeadCoachFerentz Give me players from SEC states and SEC admission standards, and I’ll tear up any team in the SEC.

@HeadCoachFerentz That song “Back in Black” they play at Kinnick as we head out of the tunnel and on to the field … am I the only one who thinks it’s just a lot of awful noise?

@HeadCoachFerentz It’s time for my weekly press conference with the Iowa media, or as I call it, Tuesdays With Weirdos.

@HeadCoachFerentz I have to admit, I just don’t get the popularity of “The Big Bang Theory.”

The trouble is, Ferentz is too smart for that. So are the vast majority of most coaches who do tweet. Here’s a sample from the last week or so:

@CoachDanMullen Great turnout at fca luncheon in jackson. It’s an honor to be here.

‏ @LSUCoachMiles  Congratulations to our guys who were drafted or signed as free agents! I’m proud of all of you!

‏ @coachfitz51 Congrats to @Jebes11 – drafted by New England- So happy for you and your family! The Wildcat football family is so proud of you!

‏

Non-Tweep, Tweep (AP photo)

@IUCoachWilson Bernard Taylor Selected to BTN’s All-Big Ten Spring Offensive Team!!

‏ @BretBielema Announcing today that our Illinois and MSU games will be 2:30 games on ABC….. Great Badger exposure and tailgaters are happy. On Wisconsin!

@CoachGundy  Congrats to all the Cowboys who were drafted or signed free agent deals. This class of outstanding men had 41 wins in 4 years.

@coachfitz51 Congrats @D_Duns9 – drafted by Tampa Bay! So happy for you and your family! The Wildcat football family is so proud of you!

That’s Dullsville, daddy-o.

But if someone in the Iowa football complex opens a Twitter account for head coach Ferentz and slaps up some tweets for him (like you know graduate assistants do for some college coaches), tens of thousands of us will rush to follow him, and will look for truth and beauty in every one of his tweets.

While you’re waiting, I suggest following @HLMenckenBot. Here are some of his latest tweets:

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

H.L. Mencken

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

Man is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely.

How does so much false news get into the papers? Because journalists are, in the main, extremely stupid, sentimental, and credulous fellows.

Some people historically did better in 140 characters or less than others.

‏

The job of major-college conference commissioner isn’t presenting championship trophies and making sure officiating crews are hired.

You know athletics inside-out if you’re a conference commish, yes, but that better be just one of your many areas of expertise. You have to be a great negotiator and a shrewd innovator.

You have to be the voice of the conference, but must also deftly serve 10 or 12 masters, otherwise known as university presidents.

Bob Bowlsby, after meeting with his Stanford staff Thursday (AP photo)

You need to be perceived as a person with gravitas, because change and turbulence are constants in big-time college sports. Public-relations headaches beyond your control pop up.

You try to constantly keep your bowl partners happy, while always having an eye toward the future in strengthening your overall package of bowl-affiliations.

And at some point, you may try to raid some other conference for a new member or two. By the end of this week, 31 FBS schools will have changed conferences in the last two years.

That’s just a partial job description. Which is why being commish of a major conference makes you one of American sports’ most-powerful people.

Enter Bob Bowlsby, who assumes the reins of the Big 12 this morning.

That’s Bob Bowlsby, native Iowan, athletic director at Northern Iowa from 1984 to 1991, AD at Iowa from 1991 to 2006. Now he’ll represent Iowa State, as nine other schools from Texas Tech to West Virginia.

He has left his job as Stanford’s AD with perhaps one mission clearer than any other: Take the perception of the Big 12 being on shaky ground and leave it in the dust.

A lot of that work has already been done under interim commissioner Chuck Neinas, who helped see the league through a very rough patch when it lost a lot of national prestige and one-third of its original 12 members.

Nebraska left for the Big Ten. A lot. Colorado jumped to the Pacific-12. Texas A&M and then Missouri split for the SEC. That was a lot of fleeing for several different reasons, and it was traumatic.

Meanwhile, there were doubts Texas was committed to staying in the conference after it led a four-school flirtation with the Pac-12 before staying put. As Texas goes, so goes the Big 12.

But with Neinas shepherding things, the league added two high-profile football commodities when it swiped TCU and then West Virginia from the Big East to get back up to 10 members. Texas even now seems content.

In 2003: U. of Iowa President David Skorton, AD Bowlsby, former football coach Hayden Fry (Gazette photo)

Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard tweeted this Thursday: “At Big 12 meetings in Phoenix. Best I have felt about the Big 12 in my seven years.”

Now it’s crunch time, and the ball has been handed to Bowlsby. The Big 12 is close to sealing a deal with ESPN for first-tier football rights, after landing a lucrative extension with Fox Sports for second-tier rights through 2025.

The two deals reportedly would earn the league about $2.5 billion over the next 13 years. The 9-year extension of the Big 12’s current contract with ESPN would run through 2025.

If that contract gets finalized on Bowlsby’s watch, it would leave the Big 12 sitting pretty after being at death’s doorstep not long ago. It would also would reduce and perhaps eliminate a perception that the league needs to get back up to 12 members.

Bowlsby’s six years at Stanford had to make him TV-savvier. He was part of the Pac-12’s team that negotiated a 12-year contract with ESPN and Fox worth about $3 billion. That’s called a blockbuster.

The Pac-12 Networks — yes, networks — debut in August. Also coming soon is the Pac-12 Digital Network.

Along with four other media members from around the country, I had lunch with Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany Wednesday in suburban Chicago. Delany covered the waterfront, but one of his primary topics was the world of TV rights and digital media.

Delany knows how many people in Belgium and Vietnam have access to the Big Ten Network, and what that means to his conference.

This is now Bowlsby’s world, with its base in Dallas. At 60, his job is to lead his new league into some golden years.

“Black Friday” at Kinnick Stadium will have an early start.

As it was last year in Lincoln, this year’s Nebraska-Iowa football game in Iowa City the day after Thanksgiving will be played at 11 a.m., Iowa time.

This year, it's Herky and the kid from Ogallala

So, there will still be time to join the millions of shoppers after the game. Or before it.

Or not at all if you have a shred of common sense.

Also, Iowa’s home game with Minnesota (Sept. 29) and games at Michigan State (Oct. 13) and Northwestern (Oct. 27) are 11 a.m., CT, kickoffs.

Here’s the release from ABC/ESPN:

A rematch of last year’s inaugural Big Ten Football Championship Game – a 42-39 Wisconsin victory over Michigan State – is one of four 2012 Big Ten Conference football games ESPN has selected for broadcast on ABC. Michigan State defeated Wisconsin 37-31 on a last play Hail Mary in the 2011 regular-season showdown between the defending division champions. Each game includes at least one team in the recently released College Football Live preseason top 25, including the No. 12 Michigan State at No. 16 Wisconsin contest on Saturday, Oct. 27, at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Three of the games will be on a Saturday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. while one will be a special Friday after Thanksgiving matchup at noon. Additional telecasts will be announced before the season begins.

This year’s Friday after Thanksgiving telecast will pit Nebraska, entering its second year as a Big Ten Conference member, at Iowa on November 23, at noon. It will mark Nebraska’s 23rd consecutive Friday after the holiday matchup and the second straight against Iowa. The 2011 contest, won by Nebraska 20-7, was the first meeting between the border-state programs since 2000.

Illinois will be showcased in back-to-back Saturdays, both on the road against teams in the College Football Live rankings: Defending Big Ten Champion Wisconsin on October 6 at 3:30 p.m. and No. 10 Michigan on October 13. Both teams defeated Illinois in consecutive November weekends last year.

Date Time (ET) Game Network

Sat, Oct 6 3:30 p.m. Illinois at No. 16 Wisconsin ABC

Sat, Oct 13 3:30 p.m. Illinois at No. 10 Michigan ABC

Sat, Oct 27 3:30 p.m. No. 12 Michigan State at No. 16 Wisconsin ABC

Fri, Nov 23 Noon No. 17 Nebraska at Iowa ABC

ESPN.com reported Wednesday night that the Big 12 has offered its position of conference commissioner to Bob Bowlsby, and says Bowlsby is likely to take the job.

UPDATE at 12:20 a.m. Bryan Fischer of CBSSports.com reported he had confirmation from a source that Bowlsby has accepted the Big 12′s offer.

This would fulfill a step in a career arc that many predicted for Bowlsby. Not necessarily the Big 12 commissioner’s job, but the commish of a major conference. Or, the presidency of the NCAA.

Bowlsby was an athletic director in Iowa for 22 years. He held that job from 1984 to 1991 at Northern Iowa, then served the next 15 years in that position at Iowa. He has been the AD at Stanford since 2006.

Bob Bowlsby

The Stanford move was a good one for him in many respects, and he appears to have earned his money. He gambled on Jim Harbaugh as Stanford’s football coach when Harbaugh hadn’t been a head coach above the non-scholarship (then) Division I-AA level at the University of San Diego. Stanford went 1-11 in 2006, then Bowlsby hired Harbaugh. Four seasons later, the Cardinal went 12-1 and won an Orange Bowl.

When Bowlsby was at Iowa, he was chairman of the NCAA’s wrestling committee and spent five years on the NCAA men’s basketball committee. He was chairman of that committe for the final two years of that stint, a job that tests your mettle and raises or your national profile if you’ve handled it with aplomb.

Bowlsby wasn’t without his critics at Iowa. Fifteen years at a prominent position at any school will lead to one of those familiarty/contempt deals. He is still criticized for the way he ended the Tom Davis basketball era, though some of those critics forget how many people in the fan base were howling at the time, and how many thought the hiring of Steve Alford from Southwest Missouri State to replace Davis was going to bring nothing but milk and honey to Hawkeye hoops.

Bowlsby was also criticized for years for the way he and Iowa’s search committee went about hiring a replacement for retiring head football coach Hayden Fry, but the majority of Iowa fans are happy with how it all worked out in the selection of Kirk Ferentz. The stability and success Ferentz has brought to the program have been essential in having a financially stable athletic department when some others have shown some wobble.

The renovation of Kinnick Stadium that was completed six years ago was piloted by Bowlsby. That was a $90 million move that is now probably taken for granted, but oh, how people would be complaining about the deteriorating old stadium today had the vision and execution not come from the athletic department’s leader.

Being an athletic director isn’t being a conference commissioner, of course. But the 60-year-old Bowlsby has been around the block. A huge part of being a conference commissioner is navigating through the world of television contracts, and Bowlsby has had a hand in that with the Pac-12.

The Big 12 appears to have somehow survived the tempestuous last couple of years, with the defections of Nebraska, Colorado and Texas A&M. Texas and Oklahoma stayed put, and TCU and West Virginia helped seal some leaks. It’s a 10-school league that has retained its status as one of the major players in college sports.

It sounds like Bowlsby comes highly recommended from Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, and Bowlsby is an old friend of Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany.

Bowlsby would be walking into what appears to be a good situation. And the offer shows the Big 12 is making sound judgment these days. Bowlsby would give the league a steadying influence, and that league needs a big dose of steady after its transformation of the last two years.

If you didn’t think being the AD at Stanford was a big deal, wait and watch for the names of those who will be rumored to be possible replacements for Bowlsby. They will be current ADs of accomplishment.

Since Iowa begins its 2012 football season four months from today, let’s talk football preseason rankings. And basketball preseason rankings.

Things are cyclical in both sports. Sure, the SEC has won six straight BCS championships. That isn’t cyclic, that’s dynastic. But this is On Iowa Daily Briefing, not On Arkansas Daily Briefing. We’re focused on the Big Ten here.

(If it were On Arkansas Daily Briefing, we wouldn’t be obsessed with much else but Bobby Petrino, the man, the myth, the motorcycle.)

If this baby had been born today, this is what it look like in four months

The point is, ESPN has preseason Top 25s for football (College Football Live) in 2012 and men’s basketball (Andy Katz) in 2012-13. And while things don’t look quite as promising in football for the conference as it has in some years, it looks really good in men’s basketball. And hey, what’s the SEC done lately in men’s basketball? Oh, yeah. Kentucky. Never mind.

College Football Live has five Big Ten teams ranked in its 2012 preseason rankings, and five is a lot. However, the SEC has five teams among the top nine. The Big Ten’s highest team is No. 10 Michigan. Then come No. 12 Michigan State, No. 16 Wisconsin, No. 17 Nebraska and No. 20 Ohio State.

Wisconsin was the highest-ranked Big Ten team in the final Associated Press poll for the 2011 season, at No. 10. Michigan State was 11th, Michigan 12th, and Nebraska 24th.

It had been 10 years since the last time no Big Ten was ranked higher than 10th in the AP postseason rankings.

Going from a postseason with no team ranked above 10th to a preseason with no team ranked above 10th … that’s not glorious for the Big Ten.

Men’s basketball, however, is a different story.

Katz’s most-recent preseason Top 25 paints the Big Ten as a league that will be killer in the winter ahead, and the nation will agree if it doesn’t already. At No. 1, Katz has Indiana. At No. 5, Michigan. At No. 8, Ohio State. And at No. 9, Michigan State. Throw in No. 22 Wisconsin and No. 25 Minnesota, and you have quite the hoops haven.

Any league with Cody Zeller and Trey Burke and Deshaun Thomas and Christian Watford and Aaron Craft and Tim Hardaway Jr. and Adreian Payne, to name but a few, has players.

Cody Zeller: Not a baby (AP photo)

Compare that to AP’s preseason Top 25 last October, when the Big Ten had just three teams ranked, and only one (No. 3 Ohio State) among the top 14.

So what about Iowa? Well, teams that go 7-6 and 18-17 generally don’t get a lot of national bounce for the upcoming season. But that’s why they play the games, eh?

If it’s any consolation to you Hawkeyes in the audience, seven teams that finished last season in the football Top 25 didn’t start there, including Michigan, which went 11-2.

As Mark Twain, Jane Austen and Plato all said, that’s why they play the games.

– Mike Hlas

LOOK AT HIM NOW

– An astute poster on HawkeyeReport.com picked up on a quick moment in a segment on the Green Bay Packers during the draft last weekend.

The name Richey Williams was heard. He’s now Richmond Williams, but he was the Richey Williams who lettered for the Hawkeyes in 2005, a defensive back recruit from South Carolina.

He got his first taste of behind the scenes with the Hawkeyes as a volunteer assistant with Iowa in 2007. He’s also former Iowa DT Colin Cole’s brother-in-law and is the director of football ops for the Cole Group, an organization formed by Colin and his wife, Kay, that provides consultation services to high school student-athletes.

Williams is based in Dallas and has been with the Packers for four seasons. Good pick up!

– Marc Morehouse

LINKIN’

– I don’t know if our friends at the Detroit Free Press paid attention to Riley Reiff when he was an Iowa offensive tackle, but now that Reiff is the Detroit Lions’ first-round draftee, the Freep has zeroed in on the life and times of young Riley.

Actually, Dave Birkett of the Freep put together a good feature on Reiff and his roots in a short period of time.

Bill O'Brien: Coming to a town near you. Or to a town near someone you know.

– Most college football coaches have to go on tub-thumping caravans in late spring. You give your stump speech at a dozen or two stops, and shake some hands and money trees. Iowa has its I-Club circuit for that purpose.

It’s great to be here, the coaches and athletic department people say a thousand times and a thousand more times after that. Great to be here.

Penn State hasn’t done much of that lately. Hasn’t had to. It was a program that pretty much sold itself, with Joe Paterno.

But with a need to restore its image and get Nittany Lion fans excited about new head coach Bill O’Brien, it’s caravan time. And what a caravan O’Brien began Monday in Philadelphia. Nine days on the road, and 18 stops that include events in Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.

“Joe was a living legend, and the head football coach for nearly 50 years. I’m not sure how many caravans he had to do,” O’Brien said recently. “I think I have to reach out to make sure people get to know me.”

– Should college football be banned?

Slate.com is hosting a forum on May 8 to debate that question. “Friday Night Lights” author and Twitter legend Buzz Bissinger will be on the side arguing for college football’s demise.

Will college football be banned?

Uh, no.

Compiled by Mike Hlas

Iowa's Marvin McNutt (7) pulls in a one-handed catch in front of Michigan State's Darqueze Denard (31) during their Big Ten Conference college football game Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. (Brian Ray/ SourceMedia Group News)

Iowa extended its pipeline to the NFL by 11 players, including six draft picks this weekend. The Hawkeyes have had 18 drafted players in the last three years, four more than any other Big Ten team.

Joy and celebration was fleeting in Eastern Iowa, however, for most of the draft. Tackle Riley Reiff, once projected as a top-10 pick, fell to No. 23 before he was selected by the Detroit Lions. Marvin McNutt, Iowa’s all-time leading receiver in virtually every category, sat undrafted until the late sixth round when Philadelphia scooped him up.

Most of the interaction among Iowa fans Saturday was consternation and disbelief that McNutt could fall so far. Fans who had watched him make some of the school’s most important catches (last-second TD vs. Michigan State in 2009) and unbelievable catches (one-handed haul-in against Michigan State in 2011) thought he was among the best entering the league. Instead, NFL evaluators determined he was the 26th-best wide receiver in the draft.

But that all means little now for McNutt. The real question for him — and all Iowa draft picks and free agents — is can he stick? Here’s a look at every situation facing Iowa’s players entering training camp this summer:

McNUTT — Despite his low draft status, McNutt has a nice chance of making the Eagles as the team’s fourth wide receiver. Philadelphia has three established receivers in Jeremy Maclin (63 catches), Desean Jackson (58 catches) and Jason Avant (52). McNutt’s primary training camp battle will come against Riley Cooper, a Florida product who was drafted in the fifth round of the 2010 draft. Cooper, who like McNutt stands about 6-foot-3, had 16 catches last year for 315 yards and a score. Philly has other decent receivers who are better special teams prospects than McNutt, so he has to win this one-on-one match-up to make the team.

Detroit Lions' first-round draft pick Riley Reiff, right an offensive tackle from the University of Iowa, shakes hands with team president Tom Lewand after arriving at the team's NFL football training facility in Allen Park, Mich., Friday, April 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

REIFF — Other than a hit to the wallet, falling to this spot was almost perfect for Reiff. Detroit returns all five starters up front for a playoff team with a top-shelf quarterback and the league’s best wide receiver. There’s little pressure for Reiff, other than to contribute right away. He’s not going to be forced in as a day-one starter at left tackle, although that’s his ultimate destination. But he likely will start somewhere (right tackle, guard, maybe left tackle) this year.

MIKE DANIELS, DT — The Green Bay Packers picked Daniels in the fourth round and will ask him to contribute right away in their nickel defense, in which he’ll line up over the guard on passing downs. It’s an odd pairing, primarily because Daniels isn’t big enough to anchor a traditional 3-4 defensive line spot. But Daniels brings tenacity, which should help the porous Packers defense. He’ll have every opportunity to make the squad as a situational player.

SHAUN PRATER, CB — Special teams play is critical for Prater’s chances with the Cincinnati Bengals, and that’s where he excelled at Iowa. Prater, a fifth-round pick, was a special teams ace his sophomore year, then helped out when asked as a starting cornerback his junior and senior year. If he can play special teams up to Cincinnati’s standards, he’ll make journeymen vets Terence Newman, Adam “Pac-Man” Jones and Nate Clements somewhat expendable and contribute as a fourth cornerback.

ADAM GETTIS, G — Washington picked up Gettis in the fifth round, and the Redskins have issues along the interior offensive line. Two players — center Will Montgomery and guard Kory Lichtensteiger — are solid and dependable, although Lichtensteiger suffered a torn ACL last year. Coach Mike Shanahan likes to run a quick-trap, zone-style of attack, of which Gettis is familiar. The Redskins also drafted SMU guard Josh LeRiebus in the third round, so Gettis will have every shot at contribute right away.

JORDAN BERNSTINE, S — The Redskins’ secondary is filled with journeymen. Bernstine, a seventh-round pick, has all the ability in the world, as shown by his unofficial 4.38 40-yard dash time. The Redskins will try him first at cornerback and on special teams. If he stays healthy and competes in training camp, he’ll make the team.

As for the free agents:

TYLER NIELSEN, LB — Nielsen agreed to terms with his boyhood favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings. He’s a natural strong-side linebacker, which places him directly behind former Hawkeye and Pro Bowler Chad Greenway. But Minnesota needs help at linebacker and drafted only one (North Carolina State’s Audie Cole) and that was in the seventh round. Nielsen’s experience playing multiple linebacker positions and special teams are crucial and could aid him in battling for a roster spot.

Iowa's Markus Zusevics (56) recovers a fumble by teammate Adam Robinson (32) on the last play of the first half of their Big Ten Conference college football game against Ohio State Saturday, Nov. 20, 2010 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. (Brian Ray/ SourceMedia Group News)

MARKUS ZUSEVICS, T — A torn pectoral muscle at the NFL Scouting Combine sent Zusevics free-falling from third or fourth round to street free agent. He heads to New England, which has invested three major draft picks at tackle since 2009. It will be a challenge making the roster, but he might land on the practice team.

BRAD HERMAN, TE — Herman landed in New England, which immediately sounds daunting. The Patriots boast the best tight-end tandem in NFL history with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez. But former NE tight ends coach and current Iowa offensive line coach Brian Ferentz might have helped Herman land in New England. Herman’s versatility — he came to Iowa as a linebacker — could aid him in training camp and help him fight for a practice team spot.

BRODERICK BINNS, OLB/DE — With the Arizona Cardinals, Binns may have found the best home for him as a street free agent. The Cardinals have shuffled out veterans Clark Haggans and Joey Porter but didn’t invest at rush linebacker/end in the draft. He’ll battle former Wisconsin defensive end O’Brien Schofield and ex-Texas DE Sam Acho along with a pair of street free agents Antonio Coleman and Brandon Williams for a roster spot. If Binns can show a quick first step, he’s got a chance.

ERIC GUTHRIE, P — Guthrie faces a similar situation as former Hawkeye Ryan Donahue last year but faces a tougher road. Guthrie will try to unseat established Michael Koenen, who put up 45.3 yards per punt and 40.3 net (eighth in the NFL). Donahue beat out Nick Harris in Detroit last year in part because of the salary cap. If Guthrie is close to Koenen in training camp and in preseason games, the salary cap may play into Guthrie’s favor.

– Scott Dochterman

NFL DRAFT AND OTHER LINKAGE

– Iowa’s Riley Reiff stayed home in Parkston, S.D., for the NFL draft instead of accepting the league’s invitation to be among other premier players in New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

The story was he was more at ease in the sticks. Which was true. But there was a more-important reason. Reiff wanted to be near his 92-year-old grandpa, Lloyd Reiff, who was more excited about Reiff’s status than perhaps anyone in Parkston, Riley included.

– Former Hawkeye running back Jewel Hampton has an NFL team.

Hampton, who transferred from Iowa to Southern Illinois for his senior season, signed a contract as an undrafted free agent with the San Francisco 49ers.

The Niners have Frank Gore, recent free agent signee Brandon Jacobs, and draftee LaMichael James of Oregon at running back, among others.

Former Iowa linebacker Dezman Moses, who left the team after the 2008 season, agreed to terms with the Green Bay Packers. Moses had 9.5 sacks and was a second-team all-Conference USA defensive end at Tulane.

Report: Concussion ends DiBona’s career

– Iowa linebacker Shane DiBona had multiple injuries during his four years in Iowa City, including rhabomyolysis. The Boston Herald reported over the weekend that a concussion, during a non-contact drill, ended the junior linebacker’s career.

– Marc Morehouse

 – Nebraska lost a running back on Sunday.

Sophomore Aaron Green said he wants to play closer to his Texas home.  Nebraska has released him from his scholarship. As a true freshman last year, he rushed 24 times for 105 yards and two touchdowns.

Green went through spring football with the Cornhuskers. He certainly wasn’t going to win the starting spot from incumbent Rex Burkhead, and sophomore Ameer Abdullah is the clear No. 2 RB. Green’s brother, Andrew, may start for Nebraska at cornerback this fall.

Michigan State's B.J. Cunningham (3) runs away from Wisconsin's Shelton Johnson (24) for a touchdown during the inaugural B1G Ten Championship game Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. Cunningham was drafted in the sixth round by the Miami Dolphins on Saturday, ahead of Iowa wide receiver Marvin McNutt. Former Iowa offensive coordinator Ken O'Keefe is the Dolphins' wide receivers coach.. (Brian Ray/ SourceMedia Group News)

– Michigan State, 2012 national-championship contender? In football?

Spartan linebacker Denicos Allen says yes.

Said Allen: “We know what we have on this team. We know what kind of talent, we know the possibilities. This team can go to the national championship. … Our expectations shouldn’t be Rose Bowl. It should be national champs. Because we can do it.”

That’s after six MSU players went in the NFL draft, including quarterback Kirk Cousins, defensive end Jerel Worthy, and receivers Keshawn Martin and B.J. Cunningham.

Interestingly, the Miami Dolphins took Cunningham in the sixth round when Iowa’s Marvin McNutt was still on the board. Miami’s wide receivers coach is Ken O’Keefe.

There is no sentimentality in pro football.

– Here’s another item from college sports that makes the Bo Ryan-Jarrod Uthoff episode seem like small potatoes:

Larry Brown, who has changed jobs in his sleep over the years, got hired as SMU’s men’s basketball coach. He promptly got rid of four players on the team, including the starting point guard, Jeremiah Samarrippas. None were in any apparent trouble academically or as citizens.

“He basically told me that I wasn’t good enough to play for him,” Samarrippas said.

“I’ve established two years of relationships with people and that’s going to be the hardest part about leaving,”

The four can stay on scholarship. They just can’t play with the team.

Isn’t that special? We hear how players aren’t honoring commitments with schools when they choose to transfer. But these four were honoring their commitments and are getting kicked to the curb.

Oh, but SMU does have $700,000 a year for Tim Jankovich to become Brown’s top assistant.

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Derek Fisher, left, tries to knock the ball away from Los Angeles Clippers forward Reggie Evans (30) in the first quarter of an NBA basketball game in Oklahoma City, Wednesday, April 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

– Roy Williams knows his way around Iowa.

He worked the state hard to get Raef LaFrentz. And Nick Collison. And Kirk Hinrich.

That was when he was Kansas’ men’s basketball coach. At North Carolina he wooed Harrison Barnes from Ames and Marcus Paige from Marion.

At a recent Tar Heel Tour event, someone in the crowd asked Williams if he stopped recruiting current Duke player Mason Plumlee because he didn’t want to go head-to-head with Mike Krzyzewski.

This CBSsports,com item contains this response:

“I went to freaking Ames, Iowa eleven times and his [rear end] went twice,” Williams said, in reference to the recruitment of Harrison Barnes. “Don’t tell me I’m not going to go head-to-head.”

– Finally, the University of Iowa has just one former player in the NBA. And according to poll of 118 of his peers, he is the dirtiest player in the league.

His name is Reggie Evans. And he got 37 percent of the vote. World Metta Peace had a mere 9 percent.

But what a game Evans (13 rebounds) and his Los Angeles Clippers teammates had Sunday night, rallying from 27 points behind to win the opener of their playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies, 99-98.

– Compiled by Mike Hlas

It seems like a hundred years ago when Reggie Evans played basketball for Iowa, but it’s “only” been 10.

There’s been so much change and turbulence in Hawkeye hoops since Evans carried Iowa to the Big Ten tournament title in 2001. Evans had 51 rebounds in four days in 2001 as the sixth-seeded Hawkeyes won that tourney in Steve Alford’s second season as Iowa’s coach.

Iowa won three games at the 2002 Big Ten tourney before losing to Ohio State in the final, but needed that fourth win to go to back to the NCAA tourney a second-straight year. Evans had 44 rebounds in those four games.

Reggie Evans in 2001 (Gazette photo)

Even though it again won the Big Ten tourney in 2006, Iowa basketball never felt as good under Alford as it did that 2001 weekend in Chicago when Evans did the dirty work, and guards Dean Oliver and Brody Boyd had terrific tourneys in carrying the Hawkeyes to four victories in Chicago.

After the Saturday semifinal win, Evans said the United Center crowd was chanting his two favorite words. Namely, “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!”

If he meant that to be a joke, it was a pretty good line. If he was being serious … it was still a pretty good line.

Evans was the Big Ten’s leading rebounder in both of his two seasons at Iowa after he arrived from Coffeyville (Kan.) Community College. In 2001 he led the nation in free throws attempted and made, and he wasn’t a great foul-shooter. Still isn’t.

He wasn’t taken in the 2002 NBA draft, but hooked on as a free agent with the Seattle Supersonics. He is still in the league, to the chagrin of the Memphis Grizzlies.

Sunday night, he had perhaps his finest NBA moment. His Los Angeles Clippers trailed by as many as 27 points, and were down 95-71 to the Grizzlies on the road with just eight minutes left. But in what would have been considered garbage time 99 times out of 100, Evans did what he does. He played hard. He seemed to infuse his teammates with a fire they sorely lacked for three quarters-plus. While the Grizzlies hibernated, the Clippers kept pushing.

Evans was on the floor the rest of the way. He had plenty of help, from hot-shooting guard Nick Young, and from the incredible Chris Paul. But Evans’ 13 rebounds, 7 points, and physical clamp-down on Memphis forward Zach Randolph led Paul to say this after the game:

“Reggie Evans gets the game ball. He was unreal.”

Evans and Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook (AP photo)

See, the Clippers came all the way back for a 99-98 victory in Game 1 of their Western Conference playoff series.

TNT’s Charles Barkley said this: “Reggie Evans was fantastic.”

TNT’s Shaquille O’Neal said this: “The Clippers won the game because of Reggie Evans.”

The Clippers are Evans’ fifth team. In 2006 as a Toronto Raptor, he had one game with zero points and 20 rebounds. That was different.

Evans was injury-plagued the last two years in Toronto. Still, he was signed with the Clippers as a free agent shortly before this season started, to offer a physical presence off the bench. He averaged 13.8 minutes in 59 games, and scored but 1.9 points per game. But he did the things off the bench the Clippers wanted as they earned a playoff spot for the first time since 2006. Sure, MVP-candidate Paul had a little bit to do with that.

Just last week, Sports Illustrated posted results of a poll of over a hundred NBA players. Evans was voted the dirtiest player in the league. He was given the same distinction in 2010.

Evans made a distinct impression on the Clippers in 2010 when he played for Toronto.

That incident cost Evans a $10,000 fine from the NBA.

During Game 3 of the Philadelphia 76ers’ first-round playoff series against the Detroit Pistons in 2008, Evans had 9 points and 5 rebounds, and gave the Sixers plenty of energy in their victory. There were chants of  “Reg-gie! Reg-gie!” from the Philadelphia fans.

They weren’t chanting anything in Memphis after Sunday night’s game. They were probably wishing they had a Reg-gie of their own, though.

Reggie Evans?  You mean the Clippers’ rugged rebounding specialist who couldn’t score in an open gym?

Somehow, Evans made the bookend buckets during that 26-1 run — a layup that started it, then another after he caught a pass on the move from Paul on a pick-and-roll. If Evans has ever finished a play so artfully before — much less one at such a crucial juncture — please send over the tape.

Marques Colston was a seventh-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints in 2006. That was 449 catches ago, not counting the seven he had in a Super Bowl victory.

Stevie Johnson was a seventh-round pick of the Buffalo Bills in 2008. Over the last two seasons, he had 158 receptions, 17 for touchdowns.

But there are a lot more like Aundrae Allison and Arman Shields and Ryne Robinson.

One of Marvin McNutt's 12 touchdowns in 2011 (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette-KCRG)

Who? Exactly. They were wide receivers taken in the fourth and fifth rounds of recent drafts who have never left much of a footprint on an NFL field.

Iowa’s Marvin McNutt isn’t on certain footing himself when it comes to being on an NFL active roster come September. Who inside our borders would have suggested such a thing before this weekend?

McNutt, widely acknowledged as the top receiver in Hawkeyes history, was a forgotten face in the crowd to NFL teams. He finally — finally! — was taken by the Philadelphia Eagles in the sixth round, the 194th player picked.

If there was anything good for McNutt about his so-called slide down the draft chart, it’s that he went to a team that had yet to draft a receiver. Which is saying something, since he was the 26th wideout selected.

It become apparent this weekend that McNutt wasn’t held in quite the same regard outside Iowa and the Big Ten that he was inside it. The million-dollar question (or $465,000, given what 2011 sixth-rounders were paid) is why.

Was it because McNutt presented little perceivable special-teams value? Did NFL executives and scouts see too many drops over his last three seasons of games, and during Senior Bowl week in January?

Were they wary of the way he was blanketed in his final two Iowa games, by Nebraska (Alfonzo Dennard) and Oklahoma (Jamell Fleming, the Insight Bowl’s Defensive Player of the Game)? He had eight 100-yard games in 2011, but totaled just 75 yards against the Huskers and Sooners.

But how much of that was on McNutt and how much was on Iowa’s offense?

Here’s what NFL.com said:

McNutt can struggle when running routes across the middle. There are consistency and effort issues when blocking and running decoy routes that aren’t intended to him, and he can struggle off the line if he isn’t decisive and powerful with his first step.

The site listed plenty of strengths, too. If you saw McNutt play, you already know them. The guy was simply a wonderful college wide receiver.

But the NFL isn’t college ball. And NFL people do actually know a lot of things about players that untrained eyes like mine and (I assume) yours don’t.

The catch that beat Michigan State in '09 (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG)

Iowa is a beloved program of NFL execs. Except when it comes to the Hawkeyes’ passing game. None of the three Hawkeye wide receivers drafted in Kirk Ferentz’s 13 years as coach went higher than the sixth round, and the only quarterback to get picked in that time was Ricky Stanzi last year in Round 5.

When new Iowa offensive coordinator Greg Davis recently spoke of a need for speed among receivers, that was fresh eyes seeing an old story here.

Now, NFL people certainly aren’t always right in April. See Colston and Johnson, and many others late-round picks who blossomed at other positions.

But if I heard this right Saturday during NFL Network’s draft coverage, only 9 percent of sixth- and seventh-rounders become starters in their careers.

In 2010, five receivers were taken over Rounds 5 and 6. One is Riley Cooper, a player McNutt will battle in Philly for playing time behind solid starters DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin. Cooper has 23 receptions over his two seasons as a backup.

Another is 2010 sixth-rounder was Dezmon Briscoe, who had 35 receptions and six TDs for Tampa Bay last season. But the other three have a combined three NFL catches.

Poker calls it a chip and a chair. If you have a seat at the table, you have a chance to succeed. McNutt has a seat at the table.

He may not want to purchase any real estate just yet. But those of us who watched McNutt for the last three years won’t believe he can’t contribute to an NFL team until we see otherwise.

This is how it goes for University of Iowa offensive tackles who leave for the NFL draft after their junior seasons:

Be a consensus upper first-round projection in mock drafts, don’t get taken until the 23rd pick, and go to an NFC Central team that’s in pretty good shape. Oh, and have a few wise guys say your arms are too short to be an effective NFL tackle.

So it was for Bryan Bulaga in 2010 when he went to the Green Bay Packers, and so it is for Riley Reiff in going to the Detroit Lions Thursday night. The “short arms” thing that was said about Bulaga two years ago hasn’t been heard much about him ever since for some strange reason.

Riley Reiff (AP photo)

Bulaga was in a lot of draftniks’ Top 10 — even top 6 — for much of the time leading up to the draft, and was a popular mock draft choice at No. 14 to Seattle on the day before the draft. But he lasted, and lasted. Then Green Bay grabbed him. And he had a Super Bowl ring a little more than nine months later.

If the Lions win the Super Bowl this coming season, well, that would certainly be something. But they aren’t the Detroit Lions we’ve known and laughed at for decades. Reiff goes to a team with a terrific quarterback in Matthew Stafford, and a world-class wide receiver in Calvin Johnson, and a lot of other parts that work.

I scoured the Web and found 28 mock drafts by people of repute, or who work for publications of repute. Only three had Reiff going to Detroit at No. 23. Let’s give them a shout-out: Don Banks of SportsIllustrated.com, Dane Brugler of CBSSports.com, and Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times.

Far more folks had Reiff going either 10th to Buffalo or 13th to Arizona. No shout-outs for them. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr., said Reiff would go 13th. No shout-out for Mel.

It’s hard to enough to come to terms with the fact I just gave and denied shout-outs, period.

Look, there’s no foolproof way to know if the Lions got a steal or a slug in Reiff. My money would be on Reiff being a success, but hey, the guy’s a first-round draft pick. Of course he should be expected to prosper.

But Mike Mayock of NFL Network, who knows a little — make that a whole, whole, whole, whole lot — more than I do when it comes to this stuff, immediately blurted “That’s a good pick,” when the Lions announced they had taken Reiff.

Mayock, unlike ESPN’s Jon Gruden, doesn’t like every single draft pick.

“Tell you right now,” Mayock said. “(Starting Lions tackle) Jeff Backus is 35 years old (34, actually), coming off elbow surgery. They need help on the offensive line. (Reiff) can play left or right tackle. I think he should start on the right side. But let’s remember their quarterback Matthew Stafford has had some injury history. You’ve got to protect the franchise.”

Kiper, when he got time to squeeze in a few words around Gruden, offered this about Reiff:

“I like the fact he’s played left tackle, right tackle and guard. I like the fact he’s started 34 consecutive games. Durable, well-coached, good football player.”

This was my first draft with NFL Network, by the way. I only flipped over to ESPN once in a while to see how many seconds it would take Chris Berman to say something absurd.

Jeff Backus: The Lion in Winter? (AP photo)

It certainly seems like there were content Lions fans after the selection. An unofficial Detroit Lions blog called “Pride of Detroit” polled its readers to ask if they approved the choice of Reiff. As of 10:15 p.m., Thursday, 92 percent of the 848 people who had voted said “Yes.”

Backus is the Lions’ left tackle. The incumbent right tackle is 27-year-old Gosder Cherilus, a 2008 first-rounder and the last offensive lineman Detroit had taken in Round 1. The other starting offensive linemen (thanks to the Detroit Free Press for this easily found info) are 33-year-old center Dominic Raiola, 30-year-old guard Stephen Peterman and 28-year-old guard Rob Sims.

So Reiff won’t be with a bunch of fellow kids. That’s a good thing for him.

“We have five quality starters, but it is good to have a young guy in the pipeline,” said Lions General Manager Martin Mayhew.

“It’s not very often that the second offensive lineman goes 23rd overall,” Detroit Coach Jim Schwartz said.

This is how things have changed with the Lions. Instead of wasting their first pick on a wide receiver every year (with the exception of the gifted Johnson), they now draft what they feel is the best player available.

Oh by the way, Reiff was the first Big Ten player taken in the draft. Eight players from the SEC, five from the Big 12, three from the Big East, two from the Pac-12, and one each from the ACC, Mountain West, Conference USA and Notre Dame were picked before Reiff broke the Big Ten’s drought.

This marked the first time Iowa has had a first-rounder in three straight drafts (Bulaga, Adrian Clayborn, Reiff). — Mike Hlas

REIFF LINKS AND THINGS

– Where was Reiff when he got the news that he had been drafted? In a barn, of course.

He hung out in his family’s barn in Parkston, S.D. (population 1,508).

“I didn’t really care to watch the TV,” he said.

After getting the call from Detroit, Reiff did a conference call with Detroit media. He said “Words can’t describe how happy I am right now. I’m super excited to be a Lion.”

Reiff then headed to Boogs and Co., a Parkston restaurant/bar where 100 or more locals had gathered to watch the draft on TV. He told people there that he was leaving Sioux Falls for Detroit on a 6:30 a.m. flight on Friday.

– Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp says the Lions’ selection of Reiff  “reflects the team’s unwavering commitment to help its most valuable asset — quarterback Matthew Stafford — shine as brightly as possible.”

Sharp added this: “Who knows if he’s going to be any good? Iowa was home to one of the biggest offensive line busts in draft history when one-time second overall pick Robert Gallery went from couldn’t miss to couldn’t play very quickly.”

– Reiff will wear No. 71 with the Lions. That’s the same number legendary Detroit defensive tackle Alex Karras had. Karras played at Iowa, too.

– For the audio of Reiff’s conference call with media Thursday night, click here.

Compiled by Mike Hlas