The Iowa Hawkeyes are one week into spring practice and this is going to be a team that finds its way into several preseason Top 10 polls and should be a consensus Top 20 team…and for the last week, all of the focus has been on the Iowa men’s basketball coaching search.

So much for the notion that Iowa fans are apathetic and this is totally a football school…the passion is still there, as evidenced by an unprecedented March for HawkeyeNation.com in terms of traffic to the site, and I am not just talking about since the relaunch back in October; this March was the most visited March of any Hawkeye site I have been a part of, and I have been a part of nearly all of the largest sites there have ever been.  It was a lot of fun, and we certainly appreciate everyone stopping by each day, those of you that have made our message boards your home base and those new visitors that we saw this month.

With Fran McCaffery in the fold on the basketball side, the buzz about that situation will die down a bit over the next week or two and the focus will be back on Kirk Ferentz’s football team and the highly anticipated 2010 regular season.

It’s easy to say that the latest is the greatest, so I don’t want to get too far out ahead of my ski tips here, but I am guessing few seasons in the last 30 or so years will rival the buildup for this season.

There was a lot of hype in the spring and summer of 2005, and there was more hype in the months leading up to the 1985 season.  The ’05 Hawks didn’t deliver on that hype while the ’85 Hawks turned in one of the greatest seasons in Iowa football history.

It’s so important for Iowa to deliver when the eyeballs are on it, because they don’t have decades of tradition like that.  In fact, the last decade saw the prognosticators missing the Iowa bandwagon at nearly every turn.

Very few people outside the walls of Kinnick Stadium saw the 2002 season coming, and I doubt even the Iowa coaches felt they would navigate the regular season at 11-1.  When the preseason magazine consensus average came out (visit www.stassen.com to see those), the Hawkeyes were no where to be found.

Yes, they were coming off a 7-5 2001 season where their losses came by an average of less than six points and they beat Texas Tech 19-16 in the Alamo Bowl, but the experts didn’t see the train coming down the tracks; neither did I.  Iowa finished the year ranked #8 in the nation in the Associated Press poll.

That carried over into the 2003 season; Iowa was unranked in the preseason polls and wound up finishing the year ranked #8 in the nation…the experts had been fooled two years in a row.

At the start of 2004, The Hawks had a preseason magazine average ranking of 19th.  They would start a new face at quarterback for the third year in a row, but the pollsters began to believe in Ferentz’s little engine that could and they were rewarded for that faith, really one of two times that has happened during the Ferentz era.  Iowa would start out 2-2 but won their final eight games to tie for a Big Ten title and finish at 10-2, again ranked #8 in the nation.

It was the offseason of 2005 where the pundits really started to jump on Iowa’s bandwagon, even though Iowa had to replace its entire starting front four.  They had Abdul Hodge and Chad Greenway returning at linebacker and a proven returning starter at quarterback, something Iowa had not had since Matt Sherman in 1997.

Iowa was ranked #12 in the preseason magazine average, with the Los Angeles Times and a few other papers picking Iowa to play for the national championship that year against USC.

However, the Hawkeyes took a Top 10 ranking into Ames in September of 2005 and limped out of Jack Trice with a 23-3 defeat.  Iowa would lose a heartbreaker at Northwestern, surrendering a double digit fourth quarter lead and their Kinnick Stadium winning streak would get snapped in an overtime loss against Michigan.  The Hawks wound up finishing 7-5 that year, a season that could have resulted in nine wins.

At a program like Iowa’s, that is a momentum killer in the minds of the nation’s football writers.  They had been fooled about Iowa in two of the previous three years; twice being underrated…so when they went and heaped a boatload of preseason praise on the Hawks in 2005, they were fooled to the downside, and that leaves some mental scarring.

The 2006 Iowa team, the most disappointing of Ferentz’s Iowa years (he’ll tell you that), did not see Iowa rated in the preseason magazines or polls at all.  The same for 2007 and 2008.  The 2006 & 2007 teams performed as the national writers expected…again, when that happens, a program like Iowa’s gets buried pretty quickly in the minds of the football Illuminati.  Out of sight, out of mind.

The 2008 team didn’t begin the year in the rankings, but it ended the season ranked in the Top 25 with a record of 9-4, all four losses coming by a combined 12 points.

That set up last year’s preseason average ranking of 19th from the magazines and polls.  When I think back on that, Iowa probably got a little more respect than it did during Ferentz’s first go around with success; the Hawks had to prove it to the nation two years in a row that time around.

This brings us to the 2010 off season.  As I said to start this piece, the Hawks are going to be in everyone’s preseason Top 20 poll and they will make some Top Ten’s.  Some folks will overlook Iowa’s lack of experience on the offensive line and say that Kirk Ferentz is a master at developing offensive linemen; he has proven to be just that, but I am not yet ready to say ‘All is well’ along the line.

They’ll point to returning starter Rick Stanzi and that Iowa is 14-0 in their last 14 games where he has started and finished.  They’ll point to depth at running back and receiver, and one of the four best returning defensive lines in the nation, including preseason All American Adrian Clayborn.

They’ll probably overlook the losses at linebacker and talk about how Iowa returns three of four in the secondary. We know that depth at cornerback is as good right now as it has ever been during the Ferentz era.

They talk about how Iowa returns both of its kicking specialists, including punter Ryan Donahue, whom Mel Kiper ranks as the #1 punter in the senior to be class.

So the Hawks are going to get a lot of love, as the kids like to say.

Given that 2011 might be a bit of a rebuilding project on the defensive front seven, quarterback and at receiver, it’s so important for the future of the program to strike while the iron is hot, and for this year to not be anything like the 2005 season.

Momentum is so important, and while we are darn proud of the traditions of Hayden Fry and Kirk Ferentz, and while Iowa is one of the Top 25 football programs in the nation, the nation probably doesn’t see it exactly that way.

We’re fly over country, after all (sarcasm alert).

We have seen how quickly the nation can forget about is, which is why it’s so important to do well when they think we should do well.  This year’s team has less significant cracks in it than the 2005 team did…I think the Hawks can have a great year this year, or even a very good year.  Do that, and it can pay dividends in the minds of the pollsters for years to come.

That’s how a program starts to get the benefit of the doubt; make the national pundits look smart, and they’ll remember you fondly the next time around.  Make them look foolish, and they’ll forget you if you’re Iowa.

Here’s to an injury free spring and summer and the players staying focused, accepting the accolades that are going to come their way and choosing to outwork the nation, not just the guy next to them in practice.

Tags: hawkeye football, Iowa football, iowa hawkeye football