It’s going to take a while to wrap my mind around the fact Jim Zabel has died, even though he was 91 years old. Though I guess he technically was retired from WHO Radio, he was still doing  “Two Guys Named Jim” for the station on Sunday nights with former Iowa State football coach Jim [...]

The University of Iowa fired head baseball coach Jack Dahm Thursday, and submitted a five-paragraph press release in announcing the move: We aren’t supposed to reprint press releases here, and it’s just as well, because the only paragraph that said anything other than the first one containing the news was the final one. It said: “Hawkeye [...]

      For one more year, the Big Ten will have four bowl games being played simultaneously for a couple hours on Jan. 1. The Heart of Dallas, Gator, Outback and Capital One. This wasn’t a wise idea originally, and it remains unwise today. But that will probably change after the following season after the [...]

  All it takes are three things for Iowa’s football and/or men’s basketball team to make you rich in the next school year. 1. Bet a substantial amount on the Hawkeyes to be BCS or NCAA champions. 2. The Hawkeyes then win the national-championship. 3. Make your wager in Nevada, where it’s legal.   According to [...]

  Some of the greatest minds of our generation have claimed there are too many college football bowl games, or too many that are meaningless. Rubbish! They clearly are magnificent. Why else would Little Rock, Ark., consider hosting one?  The NFL’s Detroit Lions want in on the bowl business, even though they are reportedly a professional football [...]

I’ll have a podcast with Iowa associate head wrestling coach Terry Brands posted later this afternoon. He, to no surprise, was a good guest. Until then, here are a few observations from the weekend: 1. It’s great to have enough frequent-flier points for a free trip. Finding a time you want to go somewhere that [...]

Iowa associate head wrestling coach Terry Brands is on this week’s Mike Hlas Podcast to talk about the progress wrestling has made in trying to get reinstated for the 2020 Summer Olympics when the International Olympic Committee votes in September. Brands has a long, continuing involvement with international wrestling. He talks about recent rule-changes FILA, [...]

FORT DODGE — The I-Club annual spring banquet tour made a stop in Webster County Thursday night. Here is audio from Iowa men’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery. Here is audio from Iowa assistant football coach Brian Ferentz. Here is audio from Hawkeyes head wrestling coach Tom Brands. “We’re going Star Trek!” Brands said. You’ll see what that means. [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Come a time in the not-so-distant future, people will brag about how they saw Byron Buxton play baseball in Cedar Rapids before he began tearing it up in the majors with the Minnesota Twins. The Cedar Rapids Kernels have provided more good baseball in the first six weeks of this year’s Midwest League [...]

As a schedule-maker, you’ll never make everyone happy when you’re scheduling teams to play eight conference games in a 14-team league. You can’t. Unless you give a team eight home games and none on the road. But that probably wouldn’t fly with the rest of the conference. The Big Ten released its 2014 football schedule Thursday, [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Kurt Warner’s public charity is the First Things First Foundation, but his recurring theme is second-chances. That has been illustrated in his USA Network reality show, “The Moment,” in which Warner gives people the chance to pursue career dreams they had set aside when their lives took unexpected turns. It also was [...]

Iowa assistant men’s basketball coach Sherman Dillard tweeted the following Wednesday afternoon: Congrats to our own Devyn Marble and Aaron White for being selected to try out for the 2013 USA Basketball World University Games. So cool! Marble’s reply: Thanks Coach Dillard we’re going to represent to the best of our ability The World University Games are held every [...]

  OK, the headline was an exaggeration. But the Big Ten bowl lineup is about to get a makeover, starting with the 2014 season. And Mikey likes it. Because it puts all sorts of bowls, and lots of ever-changing possibilities, in play. That’s good for a sportswriter in November. Great, in fact. If you think in-season [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Three years ago, Iowa State offered its fans a popular, familiar face as the new men’s basketball coach, and a blank slate beyond that. How would Fred Hoiberg, who had never coached at any level, be able to swim with the sharks of the Big 12 Conference and the rest of major-college [...]

I’m going to quit complaining about April through August being the Dead Zone when it comes to writing about college sports. There no longer is such a thing. The NFL and college athletics have figured out you can stay in the news every day if you parcel the material out, and if you stage events. In [...]

As the Big Ten spring meetings continue in Chicago and the league gets nearer to releasing its 2014 football schedule with new members Maryland and Rutgers included, it seemed timely to talk to Mark Rudner. Rudner ( @BigTenMarkTV) is the Big Ten’s Senior Associate Commissioner and the man in charge of television administration for the league. [...]

  Last November, it was revealed that Rutgers University would be joining the Big Ten Conference and start competition in the league during the 2014-2015 academic year. The reason for adding Rutgers seemed to be singular, at least realistically. That, of course, is the New York-New Jersey television market. It wasn’t that Rutgers had any sort [...]

I can’t believe I’m going to publicly disagree with Bob Dylan, and it will never happen again. But his line in ” Lay Lady Lay ” was wrong. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. As I wrote recently, I’m in the camp for maintaining the Iowa-Iowa State football series when the Big Ten goes to [...]

We don’t know how many of the six remaining slots are already filled on Iowa’s 2013-2014 nonconference men’s basketball schedule. For this exercise, let’s assume none. I’m assuming the six slots will all be filled by home games, since five of the seven games we know about are away from Iowa City. And of those six [...]