December 2006 - Posts
Here I sit in San Antonio International Airport, with a few thousand fellow Iowans, waiting to come home. The blueberry scone I'm eating is more like a slab of blueberry-flavored shoe leather. I guess that's the reason they have a sign at the city limits here saying "If you're here for the scones, you're a dope who shouldn't be here. Have a tamale instead."
I covered a lot of mediocre college football this season. Sometimes it happens. But the season-ending Alamo Bowl was a terrific game, packed with momentum shifts, great plays, curious plays, and plenty of reasons for fans of both sides to be pleased with their teams. In my job, that's all you can ask or want from a game.
I pretty much stayed off the Riverwalk for most of the last few days. That's where the thousands of migrating Hawkeyes gathered. I did hear that some Iowa fan forked over $500 in a piano bar to have the Iowa fight song and "In Heaven There Is No Beer" played over and over. And I believe it. Because as I was finishing a late-night meal on that Riverwalk Saturday, a group of eight Iowa fans paid their check and then one of them hollered "One last time!" And they sang "In Heaven There Is No Beer'' as they left the restaurant. After they left, the wait staff looked at each other and smiled, shaking their heads. I hope they got tipped well.
After Iowa got rubbed out at Minnesota in mid-November and both teams finished 6-6, Alamo Bowl CEO Derrick Fox told Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta that it didn't matter. If the Hawkeyes were still available when the Alamo made its pick, Iowa was coming to San Antonio. While Purdue took next to no fans to Orlando's Champs Sports Bowl and Minnesota didn't exactly pack the place at greater Phoenix's Insight Bowl, Iowa once again flooded its bowl location with money-spending travelers. What does that say?
What does it say when someone puts an inflatable Herky the Hawk on the balcony of their 22nd-floor hotel room in downtown San Antonio? What does it say when actor Matthew McConaghey, a Texas fan, shows up for the Longhorns' national-title game last season, but can't be bothered to attend the 'Horns appearance in the Alamo Bowl?
Excuse me, I just spotted Eva Longoria and have to go say hello. Happy New Year, and don't eat bad scones in 2007.
I'm told by several e-mailers that it's borderline impossible to leave a comment here. So until I hear from our online staff that this is remedied, feel free to e-mail me at mike.hlas@gazettecommunications.com, and I'll occasionally print some of the more-insightful and less-obscene of those offered.
Oh, and the 14th caller will get two tickets to Disney on Ice.
Had you just rolled into downtown San Antonio Friday afternoon, you might think the University of Iowa was getting ready to hold an intra-squad game here. Is there a second team involved in Saturday's Alamo Bowl? The game is a sellout. Where are all those Texas fans who bought tickets to the game, lost in Poteet?
Poteet is small town about 40 miles from downtown San Antonio. I just wanted to use the name "Poteet" in print.
Everywhere you roamed on and off the Riverwalk Friday, it was Hawkeye fans, Hawkeye fans, Hawkeye fans. They love to travel to Iowa's bowl games, they love to travel Iowa's bowl games together, they love to be together when they get to Iowa's bowl sites, and by the looks of things, they don't leave their hotel rooms without wearing garb identifying themselves as Hawkeye supporters. The predominant color here, at least until Texas fans presumably start arriving Friday afternoon and evening and add some burnt orange to the canvas, is yellow.
Now, Iowa's school colors are black and gold. But somewhere in time, yellow replaced gold. I'm no fashion expert, but yellow strikes me as being louder than gold. Yellow is about as subtle as a Texas chainsaw massacre. You wouldn't wear a yellow suit to peace negotiations between two warring nations, unless your message was "Our nukes are bigger than your nukes." You wouldn't wear yellow to a funeral, unless the deceased was a parakeet.
Yellow is an aggressive color. Maybe that's the point. It's also worn by USC and Michigan. USC calls it gold, too, and Michigan calls it maize. No one wants to be called yellow.
I look down on San Antone from my hotel room and I see yellow. Sure, it's just the sign at the Denny's across the street. But I'm going for a theme here.
Poteet. Say it out loud. It's fun.
The University of Iowa's assistant football coaches only meet the press twice a year. Once is at the team's annual Media Day in August, and the other is the week of the Hawkeyes' bowl game.
That's unfortunate, because Ken O'Keefe and Norm Parker are bright guys who I find interesting. But they don't like doing interviews, which is probably one reason why they enjoy working for Kirk Ferentz, because he lets them stay hidden and concentrate on football.
Defensive coordinator Parker, by the way, squashes the latest annual Ferentz/NFL rumor. This one has him replacing Bill Cowher as the Pittsburgh Steelers' coach at season's end. Ferentz being a Pittsburgher and all makes this a natural. In some minds, anyhow. Ferentz flat-out said last week that he wasn't a candidate for the job, that he knew people on Cowher's staff, and strongly believes one of them will be Cowher's successor should the coach of last season's Super Bowl champions step down. Parker doesn't see Ferentz leaving Iowa for any NFL job, and Parker knows the Captain's thought processes better than you do or I do.
"I think Kirk Ferentz is more interested in where he lives,'' Parker said. "Kirkf's real value of a job is not where you're at, it's who you're around on a daily basis. That's how you judge how good a job you have.
"You can be at whatever that school is that you think is the golden school. But if you're working with a bunch of idiots or a bunch of egomaniacs, it's a miserable existence. It's who you're around on a daily basis.
"The NFL, that's the land of super-egos. I don't think that interests him one bit. He's been down that road before."
Parker, 65, has lived in Iowa for only eight years. But for those who got a little rankled about Hawkeye quarterback Drew Tate's innocuous comments about Hawkeye fans the other day, what Parker has to say is probably more up their alley.
"Just living there and being there,'' he said, "it's really a pretty well-kept secret. It's a heck of a place to live. But I think the misconception by so many people is ... if you went out east to recruit and you asked someone to point to Iowa on a map, they don't know where the hell it's at. You ask a kid in Florida 'Where's Iowa?' he thinks it's someplace near the North Pole. And they think it's just full of corn. It's not that.
"The people are great. The people that live in Iowa - honest to God, I believe this - they're farmer-based people. Either they're a farmer or they're dad was a farmer or their grandfather was a farmer, so they have a work-ethic. Iowa people are hard-working people. And they're honest people.
"We don't have mountains and we don't have an ocean. So the only thing we have is each other. Maybe not having that other stuff is really, in the end, an advantage."
I never thought of it that way. When it's 70 degrees out and cloudless in Iowa, I have heard people say they wish every day could be like that. And I say, but then there would be 10 million people living here and the place would be wrecked.
San Antonio will be around 70 degrees this afternoon, and the several thousand visiting Iowans will love it for that. This is a nice place to visit. But you know what? I wouldn't want to live here.
Our team's really excited about this opportunity.
The hospitality we've been shown here is fantastic.
We're looking forward to playing a great opponent
Were the preceding statements made by an Iowa football coach, a Texas football coach, or every coach who ever took a team to a bowl game? If you chose "every coach," you are more than qualified to write my Alamo Bowl column for Sunday's Gazette. Please keep it under 800 words, have it done by 9:30 Saturday night, and don't end any sentences with prepositions.
But seriously, folks, just once I'd like to hear a coach somewhere preface his press conference remarks at a bowl by saying "We're not too thrilled about being here. We had higher hopes, so this is kind of a drag. Everyone knows our opponent isn't worthy of being on the same field with us. Plus, the people here are mean and dirty, and the lobster bisque at our hotel was subpar." I guess when bowls offer seven-figure payouts, you're going to feel happy and welcomed.
Wednesday morning, the acting defensive coordinator and five defensive players from Texas met the press, followed by four offensive players and the offensive coordinator from Iiowa. They're happy to be here, looking forward to the game, have great respect for their opponents, and the hospitality bestowed upon them has been tremendous. Thursday, offensive personnel from Texas and defensive personnel from Iowa will say the same things. It'll be pretty dull, as always.
However, we tend to rip people when they do speak candidly -- not that anyone here has any reason to say unkind things about San Antonio or the Alamo Bowl. The Papajohns.com Bowl of last weekend was another matter. Though sponsored by a pizza chain, it didn't have pizza for sale at its concession stands. If you're going to go to Birmingham to see East Carolina play South Florida, you should at least get pizza. And maybe a Tylenol.
As for speaking freely, Iowa quarterback Drew Tate apparently has taken a bit of guff from the folks back in the Tall Corn State for comments he made to reporters here Tuesday. Asked about criticism he’s received in Iowa this fall, Tate replied “That’s just the way the state is. There’s nothing really going on there, no pro teams or anything like that.
“The big news in the media is how the corn stock is doing, or something like that.
“When there’s no teams except for Iowa football,” he said, “then everyone gets involved, thinks they have the right to judge somebody or something like that.
“That’s just the way life is.”
Some Iowans have taken offense. Others have probably laughed it off. But the fact that people are talking about it, and that I’m writing about it, proves one thing: Tate was right.
But that “corn stock’’ stuff, what in the name of John Deere is he talking about? Did he mean “corn stalk?” Is the Iowa media’s biggest news really about corn stock? What's Michael Gartner's role in this corn stock controversy? Has Tate borrowed John Kerry’s joke-writer?
If Tate leads Iowa to an upset win over Texas, he’ll go out as Drew Tate, warrior. If he throws ill-advised passes for interceptions and has yet another temper tantrum or two during the game, he’ll go out as Drew Tate, whiner. Either way, he’s correct when he says he’ll be judged. He's the quarterback for Iowa's football team, so that’s just the way life is.
Remember, no sentences should end with prepositions.
Bowl games have events to keep teams occupied. Such events are inevitably lame.
There’s nothing like watching dozens of mildly interested 20- and 21-year-olds schlepping about a Sea World or Busch Gardens in the name of a photo opportunity when they’d rather be hanging around their hotel rooms playing video games or something equally uplifting.
A time-honored bowl event is when a team goes to a professional sporting event. It's to show the rubes a taste of big-city sports, I guess. In recent years, Iowa’s team has been the guest of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning gave the Hawkeyes a block of seats in the balcony, approximately seven city blocks from the ice. Football players pretended to be interested in hockey for as long as they could before the video games in their hotel rooms beckoned them and they left late in the first period.
Tuesday night was Alamo Bowl Team Night at the San Antonio Spurs’ home game against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Hawkeyes and the Texas Longhorns were guests, but it was hard to spot them in the crowd of almost 19,000 at the AT&T Center. When the teams were introduced late in the first quarter, whoever operated the arena video shown on the center-court scoreboard didn’t seem to have much luck locating Hawks or Horns.
A witless skit on the court during a timeout featured the Spurs’ costumed Coyote, Hawkeye scout team senior offensive lineman Bryan Ryther of Marion, and some adult who purported to represent Texas. He may have been an arena beer vendor. Ryther and the beer guy stuffed a fake coyote mascot in a garbage can, the “real” Coyote preened about, and a good time was had by all. Ryther, to his credit, played his role enthusiastically without sacrificing any dignity. He’s obviously a team player.
A note to the Coyote: Less is more. We saw more of you Tuesday than we did Tim Duncan or Tony Parker, and they have a lot more game.
Meanwhile, Saturday’s Alamo Bowl draws nearer. Upon checking into my downtown San Antonio hotel Tuesday afternoon, the hotel desk clerk breathlessly informed me that Texas freshman quarterback sensation Colt McCoy has been cleared to play in the game.
It was old news, of course. But maybe he thinks word reaches Iowa slowly. Hey, Tex, I wanted to say, I knew that about McCoy, and I also know your precious Dallas Cowboys got pounded the day before by Philadelphia.
It's fun to call Texans "Tex.'' They seem to love it, too. If you're tipping well, that is.
I've covered a lot of bowl games for the Gazette. Two-hundred and seventy-four, to be exact, though I may have counted one of the Sun Bowls twice. You try spending a week in El Paso some late December.
Some are unforgettable, like the 2002 Orange Bowl. Miami Beach, as Jackie Gleason told us, is the sun and fun capital of the world. Gleason was right. The Iowa-USC game in Miami turned out to be a giant dud, but there are far worse places to be stationed for a week in the line of duty. El Paso comes to mind. Plus, I got to interview both O.J. Simpson and Dave Barry, one of whom never committed murder.
The Drew Tate-to-Warren Holloway Capital One Bowl miracle (isn't it funny how totally blown coverages can make miracles possible?) sticks out, also. It was newsworthy enough to make up for the horrors of having to actually step foot on the grounds of Disney World to follow around the Hawkeyes for nothing more than a photo opportunity. Some people think of nothing but the Kafka-esque nightmares that are theme parks when they think of Orlando. Me, I'll always remember the store between the media hotel and the Florida Citrus Bowl that sold baby goats.
Other past bowls fade from the memory quickly. Like last season's Outback Bowl. It seems to me there was some hue and cry about a phantom offsides call on an Iowa onsides kick or something like that, but the details are sketchy. I do remember standing on a fishing pier almost a quarter-mile into the Gulf of Mexico on that trip, and looking back at Clearwater Beach. There, the Iowa marching band was performing their music on the sand. Thankfully, I have no idea what an acid trip is like. But I'm guessing that experience was close. At least it wasn't Disney World.
This is my fourth Alamo Bowl, which coincidentally, is the same number of Alamo Bowls for Iowa's football team. In 1993, California's players made the Riverwalk theirs. They downed 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor in a popular Riverwalk night spot. They shot pool. They didn't seem to have anything resembling a curfew. They attended an NBA game in the Alamodome and reportedly ran amok on one of the suites there. They didn't take the game or their opponent very seriously. Probably because they knew what was coming, their 37-3 clocking of a woefully outmatched Iowa squad.
The Hawkeyes got Texas Tech for a foe in 1996 and 2001. The '96 game was a Hawkeyes rout. After the game in the Marriott Riverwalk bar, Iowa radio commentator Ed Podolak called a first-quarter Tim Dwight tackle of a Texas Tech punt-returner the defining moment of the game. Dwight, pretty good at punt-returns himself, absolutely blew up the poor Red Raider the instant he caught the punt. "You know how in roller derby they would call off the jam?" Podolak mused while nursing a martini. "Well, Texas Tech called off the jam right then."
In 2001, Iowa nipped Texas Tech, 19-16. I have no anecdotes about that trip. Blog items aren't supposed to go on forever, anyhow, so let's just end this here.