Question of the Week: Will the Hawkeyes win their bowl game?

By DUANE NOLLEN
The Oskaloosa Herald

December 05, 2005 11:09 pm

— Thirty-five people responded to the Question of the Week posed last Monday on the community forum at oskaloosaherald.com
I posed the question: “Do you plan to give to charity this holiday season? Yes or No.”
Of the 35 voters, 74.29 percent — 26 — said “Yes”; and 25.71 percent — 9 — said “No.”
The Question of the Week poll is not scientific and only reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The Question of the Week is just another way the Herald’s readers can voice their opinions about issues that affect them.
This week’s Question of the Week deals with college football bowl games.
The Iowa Hawkeyes and the Iowa State Cyclones gave their fans a rollercoster ride throughout the 2005 college football season. Both teams are 7-4, having suffered some heartbreaking losses.
The Hawkeyes began the season with a lot of of promise and that promise seemed to go away with the Hawks losing to Iowa State and Ohio State. Not to mention that overtime loss to Michigan to end the streak at Kinnick and losing in Evanston to Northwestern.
Hopes of a January bowl, after the Northwestern game seemed a distant, if not an impossible goal. They hadn’t even qualified for the bowl season. For all they knew, they could’ve went down as one of the most disappointing Iowa teams in the history of the black and gold.
However, they pulled it together winning out at an extremely tough Camp Randall Stadium. Barry Alvarez’s last game at the famed “house that Barry built,” no less.
Then they came back to the friendly confines of Iowa City and beat the Gophers soundly to keep ‘Floyd of Rosedale’ in the Hawk’s hallowed halls.
People were scratching their heads about this year’s team and wondering in what bowl game they would eventually play.
The possibilities were many, depending on if the BCS decided to take Ohio State as an at-large team. They could have ended up in the Music City Bowl, the Alamo Bowl or the Outback Bowl, which would be yet another January game under the reign of Captain Kirk.
Ohio State was picked to go against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, so this made everything else fall into place.
Wisconsin took the top Big Ten spot outside the BCS in going to the Capital One Bowl.
Iowa then took the second spot allotted the conference in going to the Outback Bowl, with Michigan landing in the Alamo bowl playing Nebraska.
The question for this week is, how well do you think Iowa will do against the Urban Meyer-coached Florida Gators.
The possibilities are: “They’re gonna blow ‘em out,” “It’ll be a close game, but they’ll pull it out. Remember LSU?,” “It’ll be a close game, but they’ll take this one on the chin,” or “They’ll get blown out.”
People can vote on the community forum at The Herald’s Web site, oskaloosaherald.com, from Monday to noon on Friday. Then, the votes will be tabulated and published next Monday.
Herald staff writer Jared McNeill contribuated to this column.

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