Tuesdays with Torbee

Doom and gloom, however, can wait until the first actual loss on the ledger.

• Tuesdays With Torbee, Sept. 19, 2023

Here we are gentle reader.

The first loss on the ledger and the doom and gloom are doomier and gloomier than imaginable.

Unlike most of online Hawkeye Nation, however, I had a nice little weekend. Consider this my confession: when the season schedule dropped and I saw an away game in Happy Valley looming on Saturday, Sept. 23, I scheduled a guys-only golf weekend.

I’ve been criticized in the past for being a “sunshine pumper” when it comes to the Hawkeyes but this game screamed loss – and very likely a bad loss – from the outset. Between Iowa’s moribund offense, Penn State’s revenge factor, a designated night game whiteout and the Nittany Lions looking the part of a legitimate College Football Playoff caliber team, hope for victory was scant.

On the 12 Saturdays podcast I predicted a PSU victory of around 24 to 13. Even that felt overly generous. Early in the first quarter, following the first fumble, when a shanked Penn State punt hit an unaware Iowa gunner in the back of the helmet handing the ball and momentum back to Penn State, every Iowa fan on Earth knew how this was going to end.

Confession two: I didn’t even watch the second half. (If Hawkeye Report publisher Tom Kakert wants to dock my pay by 50%, he is well within his rights.)

Our golf group enjoyed a morning round at one of central Illinois’ most challenging courses, with the plan to give the Iowa game a go at a local drinking and dining establishment afterward. The smoked wings were as excellent and smoking hot as the Penn State defense, by the way.

When it was blindingly obvious the Hawkeyes were going to be uncompetitive and the erstwhile Brian Ferentz was going to spend the ensuing week as the butt of every college football writers’ jokes and every angry fan’s verbal piñata, we pulled the plug and retreated to our lodgings to enjoy a stress-free nightcap.

This might make me a “bad” fan. I mean, the song says “until the final gun” after all. I’m not really into metaphorical self-inflicted gunshots, however.

Because this was a golf weekend, I’m going to us a golf-inspired acronym to walk you through my psychological approach to my favorite football team performing awfully. If you hate golf or acronyms, stop reading now.

I call it the P.A.R. principal.

Perspective. Acceptance. Redemption.

Perspective

This game always looked like a loss on paper. The gap between the current iteration of the Iowa program and its better, more blueblood peers in the sport, has been growing wider over the past several seasons. In its last five matchups against ranked opponents, the Hawkeyes have an average losing margin of just over 26 points. The team that once was able to drag you down into a street brawl and find a way to reverse its way to victory is now too often the ass supplier in a butt-kicking contest.

This makes me mad. Not mad enough to spend my entire weekend demanding the entire football staff be fired like some alleged Iowa fans, but mad enough to not bother watching a pointless second half or spar with mouth breathing PSU fans on social media, however.

Sometimes your favorite team runs into a buzz saw. That happened to Iowa Saturday and things spiraled out of control.

This is where you apply perspective. Even with an influx of new skill players, there was no way the sport’s worst offense was going to reinvent itself in one offseason. It remains very much a work in progress. After Saturday, the vast majority of fans are ready to declare that effort a failure. Me? I don’t give up that quickly. I actually believe Cade McNamara and Kirk Ferentz when they say the ingredients are there to build a good team. Maybe I’m a schmuck, but one game into a long Big 10 season seems a bit premature to start throwing soil on the grave.

Every single team remaining on the schedule is beatable – yes, even by this flawed Iowa team. There is still drama and intrigue in seeing how that plays out.

Acceptance

Saturday’s outcome reminds us where Iowa sits in the hierarchy of college football right now. It is likely a Top 30 to Top 20 type program that can compete with – and often beat – other “middle class” programs. It is not currently built to challenge the Top 15 or so.

I am not advocating for fans to accept that as Iowa’s fate going forward forever. I do recommend accepting that this is the current situation and to apply patience and optimism that the coaching staff is working to close that gap. I also think it’s premature to declare the effort a total failure based on the results of one game, against an elite opponent where every single intangible lined up against Iowa.

The Big 10 West is the ultimate middle-to-lower-middle class neighborhood. The first step to breaking out is to keep beating those teams. Iowa’s upcoming schedule shouldn’t be viewed with trepidation, but rather the excitement of opportunity. Keep improving, keep learning and keep winning.

Redemption

Admittedly, this one requires a bit of blind faith. Nevertheless, “fan” comes from “fanatic” right?

Iowa sits 3-1 and only one game into its conference schedule. It can earn redemption. That starts this coming Saturday evening at a sold out Kinnick Stadium against a program in far, far worse shape than the Hawkeyes. Coming off a pair of home losses by a combined score of 78-16 and headed by an interim coach, Michigan State should be the slumpbuster Iowa needs to get back on course.

We have seen such turnarounds before. I left at halftime of Iowa’s 44-7 thumping at Arizona State in 2004 thinking that team was dead in the water. All it eventually did was win the Big 10 with a 10-2 final record and beat the Nick Saban led defending national champions LSU in the Capital One Bowl.

Iowa can engineer another such turnaround. How fun would it be if it managed to win the West, earn a trip to Indy and find itself lined up once again with Penn State?

Talk about a chance at redemption.

Follow me on Twitter @ToryBrecht and the 12 Saturdays Podcast @12Saturdays.