In the end, the New York Jets traded away a few draft choices to get the first pick of the 3rd round to make sure they could draft Shonne Greene.

I think Greene is going to be an outstanding player. Our seats are in the front row right behind where the offense sits. I watched Greene when he was on the sidelines. He is all business, all the time. He is extremely strong. He might not end up breaking many 50+ yard runs but he will get quite a few 6-15 yard runs over his career. He is very patient waiting for the offensive line to do their thing and create a hole and once he runs through it, he is very hard to tackle.

So, I’m excited the he made it to the NFL, but I’m also a little excited that Shonn Greene will be playing for the New York Jets.

Reasons Why I’m Excited Shonn Greene is a New York Jet

• Coach wants to do a little “ground-and-pound on people.” Shonn Greene should fit right in on a team looking for running between the tackles.
• Mike Greenberg is a Jets groupie. Mike and Mike in the Morning are constantly talking about the New York Jets during their show which means I’ll get to hear about Greene a lot if he does good things.
• The team is already green. Iowa did a Gang Greene t-shirt thing last year. If Greene turns into a solid pro what could be better for t-shirt sales the playing for a green team.

Congrats to Shonn not giving up when his grades slipped and pushing through to meet the big goal of all football players.

Now we learn that Anthony Tucker is done for the rest of the year because he is not academically eligible.  Kind of makes you wonder how much of that was suspected when Tucker seemed to have trouble getting back on the floor during that awkward period before the mono became public.

Oh well.  Hopefully Tucker will learn from all of these setbacks.  I know getting sick isn’t his fault but he can still use the time away from the game to motivate himself in the off season.  Hopefully Tucker will be like Shonn Greene, get his academics in order, and come back meanier and better.

In other bad news, Cyrus Tate missed today’s game against Wisconsin and will probably miss the Saturday game against Penn State.  The ankle just doesn’t want to get better.

Fortunately, the Hawks still managed to beat the Badgers in overtime tonight.  David Palmer is taking to the playing time quiet well.  21 points, 7 rebounds and only 1 foul will go a long way to making sure he finds his way back onto the court.

As a Hawkeye fan, I always root for all of the Big 10 teams in the bowl games.  This season was a major let down for the Big 10.  Outside of the Hawkeyes, the Big 10 teams sucked pretty badly and I really hate Ohio State except when they play outside of the conference.

But Ohio State was playing very well against an extremely good Texas team and as the teams went back and forth over the final minutes I was torn between wanting another Big 10 victory and wanting Iowa to be the only Big 10 team to win a bowl game.

When Ohio State finally scored with 2 minutes left, I was geniuinely excited but knew that 2 minutes is a lot of time especially when the other team has time outs left.  For some reason, it seems like teams just march down the field anymore when they go into their 2 minute drill.  I think it is all of the prevent defense because coaches are so afraid of losing because of a blown coverage.  I hate prevent defense at the end of games from teams that have great defenses.

I will give Ohio State credit for trying to play real defense.  They blitzed and gambled.  And they ended up getting burned and losing the game.

But at least the game was exciting and Ohio State played competitively enough to indicate they were good enough to belong in a BCS game.

So the Hawkeyes end the season as the hottest team in the Big 10 and the only Big 10 team to win a bowl game.  Congrats, Hawks.

I want Shonn Greene to get 30+ carries.  He’s averaging over 6 yards a carry with his “worst game” being against PSU where he “only” had 4.2 yards a carry.

I don’t want to get fancy.  I don’t want to use the pass to establish the run.

Shonn Greene deserves to have a highlight game before he heads off to the NFL next year (assuming that he goes to the NFL like he should).  The Iowa offensive line deserves a game where they just focus on blocking for the guy that carried the team all year.  The Iowa wide receivers deserve a game where they keep blocking downfield like crazy like they’ve been doing all year.

I want to watch Shonn Greene crushing linebackers, doing the quick spin move and plowing towards the end zone.

Then we can start worrying about getting Stanzi and Hampton ready to take over the offense as the primary options next year.

Anyway, the Hawkeyes will play their 2008 Blackout Saturday game will be on September 13th against Iowa State.  Be sure to buy your official event shirts early.  The proceeds will go straight to somebody’s pockets.

I’ve complained about the Blackout games in the past and appear to have been ignored by the university.

Let’s take a second to consider the event this year.  September 13th at 11am will probably still be insanely sunny and hot.  Black shirts tend to attract heat and make the wearer hot, tired and miserable.  In addition, we will be playing the Cyclones which seems to also be Hawkeye the official Drink-As-Many-Beers-As-Possible-Before-Kickoff.  Hot, sweaty, drunk, tired, lethargic Hawkeye fans.  Sounds perfect for a game against one of our most hated rivals.

I will not be wearing black if the weather is above about 65 degrees, which it will be.

Also, there is going to be a Be Bold Wear, Gold game against Wisconsin on October 18th.  I’m a much bigger fan of the gold one because it is brighter and louder and more energetic.  But that gives us two games out of the 7 at home where we have recommended outfits.  Couldn’t we just theme up the other 5 games and maybe get some kind of media coverage on TLC.  Maybe get the What Not To Where team to come and recommend the best t-shirt for each game.  I think they are really missing some opportunities in the headband and ballroom gown/tuxes motifs.

Nothing says rowdy football fan more than a dress code and avoiding fashion faux pas.

• Size doesn’t matter for Big 12 QBs - I’m very happy to hear that the Big 12 QBs have learned to be comfortable with their size and work with what God gave them.  Openly talking about these issues should help all the fans who have always been uncomfortable with their own size.
• Sun Belt signs with 3 bowl games - kinda. They get first dibs for the St. Petersburg Bowl, the Papajohns.com Bowl and the PetroSun Independence Bowl as long as the conferences that are not currently committed to those bowls are not able to qualify enough teams for the post season.  I always feel like I should be getting paid some kind of commission everytime I say these bowl names anymore with all of the product tie ins with their names.
• Miles faces questions about Alabama joke - He made fun of Alabama for losing to both LSU and Louisiana Monroe last year.  Good for him and who cares.  I made fun of Michigan for losing to Appalachian State and Iowa for loosing to all kinds of teams last year.  Half the teams win a game and the other half get made fun of.
• Appalachian’s Edwards OK with flying now - The Appalachian State QB is afraid of flying but managed to survive the flight to beat Michigan (Ha ha) and is now heading to LSU to try another upset.  If that happens, I promise to make fun of Miles and LSU.  On a sidenote, have the players in the former Div 1-AA always been eligible for the Heisman?  How about Div 2 and 3?
• UCLA RB Ramirez ineligible for season - I’m not even going to talk about it because the Pac 10 gets way to much time in the media spotlight.
• Vols’ Fulmer denies being subpoenaed - Seems like Fulmer doesn’t want to talk to the legal system about some sketchy boosters and is trying to dodge receiving the paperwork.  In this day and age, shouldn’t the lawyers just give it to the University Complaince Office and they could just drop it in Fulmer’s inbox.
• Iowa Sexual Assault Case Reopened - This one pisses me off.  The school needs to do whatever they are supposed to do to let the legal system do what they have to do.  Anything less than that is inexcusable.  But, I’m sure the school officials are greatly limited in what they can say about the details so I will wait until it is all sorted out and if anybody at Iowa knowingly did something wrong, I want them gone.  Plus, I want Hawkeye news about how great our players are or how easy our schedule is or how bad the restroom situation is at the stadium.  I’m tired of legal stuff.  The program needs to get its act in order because the problems just seem to get bigger and bigger since Beutjer got beat up for now paying his share of the cable bill.

The article has the Cubs as the runaway favorites in the NL.  They have the best record in baseball so that seems fine.  Here’s my beef.  For the Cubs they list their weakness as:

They’re bad: At pinch-hitting. In 126 at-bats, Cubs pinch-hitters have only 22 hits, and their .175 average is worst in the NL.

Sure that sounds pretty sucky.  But I think the Cubs have a bigger issue that is completely overlooked in the article.  The Cubs have a losing record on the road.  They are 21-28 away from Wrigley.  The Cardinals, who are just a couple games back from them are 27-22.  The Brewers who are only 3 games back from the Cubs are 24-26.

I like teams that can win wherever they play and while the Cardinals are not quite as scary as the Cubs or Brewers, especially with the recent pitcher additions to both teams, the Cardinals are capable of winning on the road and at home.

Which makes me wonder at why the Cubs would have 4/5 odds of getting to the post season while the Cardinals and Brewers are 10/1 and 6/1 respectively.

Especially with the 3 teams as close as they are with so much of the season remaining.  I have no trouble giving pretty strong odds to all three teams to make the post season since currently all three teams have records quite a bit better than the 2nd place team in the other divisions, so the 2nd place team in the Central should be in good position to get the wildcard.  I’m just not sure that the Cubs are that much more likely to get to the post season than the Cardinals or Brewers.

I’m not sure if those odds are Jeff Passan’s odds or Vegas’ but it sounds like somebody might be getting a little swept away by Cubs hysteria.

The summer is a particularly bad time to write a college sports blog but I won’t let this hold me back anymore.

I just sent in my check for the football season tickets so it is probably about time to start complaining about scheduling Maine and Florida-somebody-or-other (one of those teams that will actually play for a championship instead of a BCS trophy).  It is probably time to start figuring out how many different ways Illinois and Notre Dame are going to suck (I’ve spent most of my life in Illinois getting abused by fans of those two programs so I have a health hatred for them).

But this post is more for me than you.  It is a reminder not to go months without writing something because I feel like I should be trying to cover sports like a reporter.  I’m no reporter.  I normally don’t even bother spell checking.  But I am an annoying Hawkeye fan and this is my reminder to write more about that.

Plus, he was a guy that seemed to be a good person and never seemed to have any hints of causing any trouble off the court (that I heard of at least).

So let me break out my tin foil conspiracy cap for a second. Maybe Freeman realized that Lickliter’s style doesn’t quite fit with Freeman’s skills. Or maybe Lickliter realized that Iowa was not going to turn into a power house and make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. Feel free to swap Freeman and Lickliter’s names above.

So, then let’s say Freeman and Lickliter are playing pool and drinking a couple beers and start talking about all of this out loud to each other and the subject of Freeman transferring schools comes up.

Lickliter says something along the lines of, “We’d really love it if you stuck around this year but I totally understand if you want a better chance of playing somewhere that will highlight your skills and give you a better chance of making it into the NBA.”

Freeman says something like, “I had thought about it but I really don’t like the thought of sitting out a year.”

Lickliter: Yeah, that rule blows when coaches come and go like we do these days. What you need is a hardship?

Freeman: But coach. I’ve got my shit together. My family is fine. My injury from last season is completely healed.

Lickliter: Well, I’ll make you a deal. You announce that you are going to transfer and I’ll make up some story about how I told you that you weren’t going to get any playing time during your senior season even though you were the best player on our team last year while fighting through an injury. It’s not 100% guaranteed to work. But maybe everybody will think I’m an ass and totally screwing you over and the NCAA will let you play without sitting out for a year.

Freeman: That just might work. I love you, man.

I know it is a little far fetched but I just can’t think of any reason why Lickliter would not want Freeman to be a part of the program so at least a conspiracy theory would answer that nagging question. Plus, SIU really does have a much better chance of making it to the Sweet 16. They do it way more often than Iowa these days. And Lickliter doesn’t really seem like a mean guy that would kick a guy under the bus for no good reason.

Good luck at SIU, Tony. I hope to catch you on TV a few times this winter.

I get most of my general sports news from Yahoo! Sports. One of the Headlines is an article about 2 ex-Hawkeyes accused of sexually assaulting a woman on October 14, 2007. Both players left Iowa after shortly afterward. First off, they are accused right now. As far as I know, there has been no conviction. But they are definitely not the first Hawkeyes in recent memory to at least have the cops and lawyers paying attention to them.

I miss when the big some news was whether Tate was allowed to collect the car (or was it cash) for hitting the hole in one during a charity golf outing.

I know bad things happen to sports programs across the country all the time, but maybe the players on the Iowa leadership thing should spend some time learning how to use the media over the summer to highlight all of the good, funny, and heartwarming things that the rest of the players on the team are doing. Maybe a team blog or something would be useful to help highlight the good guys that the media isn’t as quick to cover.