Beware, Iowa. A temporary head coach often leads a temporarily fired-up team

The previous visiting team to perform at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium is now No. 3 in the nation and headed for a second straight College Football Playoff berth, two years after it went 3-9.

Saturday night brings us Penn State, which went from No. 3 to three losses in 15 days, and now is in worse shape than war-torn Portland.

Penn State fired a head coach who guided it to the College Football Playoff semifinals nine months ago. If Kirk Ferentz gets Iowa to the Final Four, the governor will grant him sainthood, and his favorite local Starbucks will charge him only grande prices for venti coffees.

All year, this game had looked like one of Iowa’s tallest hurdles toward having a noteworthy season. Now, the Hawkeyes are the favorite and seemingly have 100 percent of the momentum between themselves and the Nittany Lions.

Plus, the Lions lost starting quarterback Drew Allar to a season-ending injury last week in their debacle of a home loss to Northwestern. Going against the Hawkeyes in their Kinnick Stadium wall of sound at night will be a redshirt freshman who has thrown 11 college passes.

You probably recall the last time Penn State played at Iowa, in 2021. The Lions had a 17-3 second-quarter lead built with two touchdown passes by Sean Clifford. When Hawkeye linebacker Jack Campbell smashed into Clifford’s ribs and knocked him out of the game, Clifford was replaced by Ta’Quan Roberson.

The poor guy. With the crowd setting a stadium-record for unfriendly noise, it was a victory for Robinson and his blockers any time they successfully snapped the ball. Penn State had -- and this is not an exaggeration -- eight false-start penalties after Roberson entered the game late in the first half.

Iowa rallied to beat the Nittany Lions, 23-20, and fans stormed the field.

Saturday night, Penn State will try to go the distance in the Land of a Thousand Decibels with Ethan Grunkemeyer making his first college start at quarterback.

As first-starts go, this isn’t exactly similar to playing Villanova in Happy Valley.

Yet, any security Iowa or its fans may feel should be tempered. The word “interim” doesn’t conjure much respect when it comes to job titles, but many a team has given it the old college try for a fill-in head coach in his first game in the new role.

UCLA went from seemingly unlikely to win a game this season to Penn State’s conqueror not long after DeShaun Foster was fired as the Bruins’ coach. It added a second pelt last Saturday by crushing Michigan State in East Lansing.

Virginia Tech began this season 0-3 and head coach Brent Pry was fired. The Hokies won their next game over Wofford as expected, then prevailed at North Carolina State as a 9.5-point underdog. The Hokies have begun losing again, but at least they got that one adrenaline rush from the coaching change.

The reality of the situation usually starts to sit in for everyone involved. Assistant coaches may spend as much time sniffing out job openings to come as they do instructing their players, who may be more preoccupied with considering new schools for next season as they are studying game film.

Immediately after the head coach is fired, though, a temporarily united and scrappy team often emerges. It’s that “Us Against the World” thing. An oldie but a goodie.

Still, Kinnick’s noise box and Iowa’s defense should be enough to neutralize the Nittany Lions’ intention to shock the world after UCLA and Northwestern shocked the world by shocking them.

That said, remember this about the previous Penn State-Iowa game at Kinnick four years back:

The Hawkeyes entered 5-0 and ranked No. 3 in the nation while Penn State came in 5-0 and ranked fourth. Iowa proceeded to lose its next two games to Purdue and Wisconsin by a cumulative score of 51-14 and went on to a No. 23 final ranking. The Nittany Lions dropped three of their next four, and finished 7-6 and unranked.

Every Saturday in big-time college football is a new day, always with the potential to blow your mind. The only constant is that the losing coach can make more money by getting fired the next day than everyone on your block combined makes in a year for staying employed.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com