There is no correlation between assistant coaches salaries and where your team sits in the Big Ten pecking order. It just kind of works out that way. I’d lean to the fact that there are schools that have money and there are schools that don’t have as much money. Ohio State and Michigan are the [...]

Let’s set the scene here: This was the week of Purdue last November. Iowa needed to win two of its next three to gain bowl eligibility. The Hawkeyes were putting on the military uniforms in salute to Veteran’s Day. At this point, Iowa had lost three straight. Purdue was the one most everyone thought Iowa [...]

The general consensus is that Iowa’s 2014 football schedule is a cool breeze on an island beach. A veritable boat drink with a little reggae in the background. It kind of is. The Hawkeyes will be part of the welcoming crew for Maryland when it joins the Big Ten in 2014. Iowa will travel to [...]

The Big Tough Big Ten doesn’t want anything to do with an outdoor venue for its football championship game. Actually, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Who does an outdoor title game outside of the Pac-12? Where would the B1G have it’s title game? Soldier Field in Chicago? Forget that. The turf there is [...]

Iowa’s first taste of the Big Ten’s newbies will come Oct. 18, 2014 when the Hawkeyes travel to Maryland. The Big Ten released its conference schedules in the last few minutes. There were murmurs of “parity-based” scheduling at the Big Ten meetings earlier this week and, in Iowa’s case, that seemed to hit home. Iowa’s [...]

  – Big Ten athletics directors and commissioner Jim Delany were unanimous in their desire to make 7-5 the minimum record for bowl teams, but with so many bowls, they conceded that isn’t possible and accept that 6-6 teams will be bowl eligible in the Big Ten. “We were hoping the 6-6 would go to [...]

  CHICAGO — The buzzwords you hear on the Big Ten’s new bowl lineup are “national,” “diverse” and “recruiting.” The conference has seemingly achieved national with bowl deals from the Holiday Bowl in San Diego to the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York. The diversity stems from the less sexy word, “fatigue.” Many [...]

CHICAGO – These Big Ten May meetings took on a life of their own in 2010 when the conference was in the midst of expansion. The meetings are still going strong as far as news cycles go, with the B1G’s bowl lineup and future schedules being among the topics on Tuesday. Expansion wasn’t a topic. [...]

CHICAGO — Five things that have happened since the last time Iowa and Illinois met on a football field (Nov. 1, 2008): 1) Barack Obama was elected. 2) The Chicago Blackhawks ended a 49-year Stanley Cup drought. 3) Craft beer became a thing. 4) A TV show called “Jersey Shore” came and went. 5) Justin [...]