Blog Carnival hosted by a Badger fan

He might be a badger fan, but don’t hold that against him. He has done an outstanding job organizing a college football blog carnival on his site. Lots of good nuggets in their to pick through.

Go check it out at Badger Sports.

Technorati Tags: college football

Preseason college football sucks

Preason college football is miserable.  There is very little press because most people are still watching baseball drag its way to a conclusion.

You end up watching a lot of good teams play a lot of bad teams.  The Big 10 went undefeated in the first weekend.  There were some classic matchups to pull that off.

Unless you end up in the National Championship hunt, none of it matters.  The first goal is to win your conference.  Iowa does not get to make progress on that goal until it plays two more games.  The outcome on those two games will have nothing to do with how well Iowa places in the Big 10.

You hear way too much about the traditional powers because none of them have had time to fade away yet.  I was really pulling for Georgia Tech to make quick work of Notre Dame’s season.  I even expected them to win.  We can always pull for Penn State this weekend.

Please let September pass quickly.

Hawkeyes 41 - Montana 7

It is tough to really get a read of how good a team is when they play a team that matches up physically as poorly as Montana did.  They are well coached and play tough and one of the best teams in Div 1-AA.  That does not help much when playing one of the better teams in Div 1-A.

Iowa looked young.  Eight penalties is just sloppy.  They will need to get that under control quickly.  Tate was 15 of 28, but at least three passes hit open receivers right in the hand and were dropped.

In games like this, Iowa does not ever open up the playbook at all.  There really is not any way to measure how they will compare to Syracuse and then Iowa State over the next two weeks.

There were several really nice things that I saw.

We have more running backs then we deserve.  It must be makeup for the year we lost the first 4 running back options we had.  Young is solid.  Simms is quick.  Green really likes to run people over.  And all of them seem good at catching the ball out of the back field.

Iowa gets a lot of good field goal kickers.  It is amazing what giving scholarships to kickers will do for the special teams.  Schlicher was out today with a little injury.  His backup, Signor went 2 for 2 with a long of 41 and made 5 of 5 extra points.  He kicked several kickoffs deep into the end zone, too.  Not bad for a backup field goal kicker.  Schlicher might have to earn his spot back except he is on the Lou Groza list for this year.
The young receivers know how to block.  They might drop some balls this year, but they did a really good job of holding their blocks long enough to free the other guy for a few more yards.  That has become one of my favorite things to watch over the last couple years.  Iowa does not get as many of the guys with crazy break away speed, so downfield blocking is very important for helping create the big plays.

Iowa heads to Syracuse next weekend.  Syracuse looks like they are going to be about as talented as Montana.  Playing on the road is alway useful.  Playing in a dome will help for the Minnesota game.  An easy’ish road trip will help teach all the freshman what happens on a road trip and how to stay focused on the game without running too much risk of losing.
1-0 is diffently the best way to start the season.  I’m sure there will be a lot of specific drills in practice this week to address the sloppy problems.

My player of the game is Signor, a next-man-in doing the job he gets asked to do.  Nice game.

My allegiances in college football

Want some help deciding who I will be rooting for in any given game?  Here is my order of priority.

1) Iowa
2) Anybody in the Big 10 playing somebody outside of the Big 10
3) Anybody undefeated in the Big 10 over anybody else.  National Championships are good for the league
4) Anybody body playing an undefeated team outside of the Big 10
5) Anybody playing Notre Dame or any Florida school
6) Anybody on Iowa’s non-conference schedule to help the strength of schedule.  It may not officially be part of th BCS magic formula anymore, but it is definitely buried in the computer rankings.
6) The underdog.  Chaos is good.

Let me know if you think I missed something that all good Iowa fans should factor into who they root for.

If you look at who is playing and then find start at the top until you find the option the game fits, then you pretty much know who I’ll be picking.

So, congrats to Northwestern for beating Miami of Ohio last night.  I’m especially happy after all you went through this off season.

Congrats to Minnesota.  I would make fun of who you are playing, but Iowa’s pre-Big 10 looks pretty weak this year.  Who knew Syracuse was so bad?

What a crazy start for Iowa State?  I wonder if a big long game like that right off the bat is good for getting everybody in game condition or bad because it just wears everybody out.  At least they managed to get the W.

Technorati Tags: college football, big 10, iowa hawkeyes