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 [...]

I thought there would be more of an uproar when the University of Illinois recently announced its basketball arena, Assembly Hall, will be renamed State Farm Center. But I guess people have become inured to such things. At least the spaceship-shaped gym on the prairie does have a connection to a farm. The university’s Beef Research Farm isn’t [...]

It may have been mentioned a time or 10,000 that Iowa’s men’s basketball nonconference schedule wasn’t the stuff that dreams are made of last season. Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said the schedule would get better. It couldn’t get much worse. But there is already some teeth in McCaffery’s words. Wednesday’s pending announcement that the Hawkeyes will [...]

Cedar Rapids has never been a town for heavy hitters. And by that, I don’t mean successful and powerful people. I’m talking baseball. Willie, Mickey and the Duke. Sosa, McGwire and A-Rod. Sluggers. Ryan Sweeney of Cedar Rapids got called up to the Chicago Cubs this week from Class AAA Iowa. Sweeney, an outfielder, is no stranger [...]

  Tuesday’s announcement that former Ohio State offensive tackle Orlando Pace will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame was surprising. Surprising in the sense I would have sworn Pace already had been inducted. What took so long? Players are eligible 10 years after their last college games, and Pace’s Buckeyes career was over [...]

New York Giants tight end Brandon Myers is this week’s guest on the Mike Hlas Podcast. Myers is one of the several former Iowa tight ends who have been NFL success stories. He had a blast-off in 2012 as an Oakland Raider with 79 catches, then signed as a free agent with the Giants in [...]