There are times when anger is appropriate.
Like when a scoop falls off your ice cream cone, or when your balloons float away in the wind, or if your dad tries to take your tuppence to stick in Dick Van Dyke's bank to accrue interest instead of letting you use it to buy birdseed.
Or, if you're Cleveland.com's Doug Lesmerises writing the article that the entire Iowa football beat would like to write but can't for fear of getting their credentials revoked:
Offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz, the oldest of Kirk’s five children, should be fired. Now.
But it won’t happen now because across 24 seasons Kirk Ferentz has built up walls of power in Iowa City while winning 181 games as easily the longest-tenured coach in major college football. He’s now crawled inside of a cave of nepotism and sealed the entrance with a $42 million buyout that makes it incredibly difficult for Iowa to fire the 67-year-old head coach.
This is both all true and funny in a sad, okay-maybe-people-who-complain-about-money-in-college-athletics-have-a-point kind of way. I will admit to having a natural inclination towards a nostalgic appreciation for the long tenured ol' ball coach, but the past several years in college football have shown exactly why shoving many millions of dollars in the face of any singular football coaching human and giving them unfettered control of their program with next to zero oversight is a terrible idea.
But lets put aside all the horrible human beings that these guys tend to surround themselves with when there's no one telling them not to for a second, and focus on the genuinely garbage offensive football being played in Iowa City.
You're already aware of how bad the Iowa offense is, because you just watched them get bullied for three hours on Saturday, but a few stats to illuminate exactly how dire things are:
- Iowa is dead last in the FBS for yards per game at 227.3, which literally almost 300 ypg less than what Ohio State is averaging
- The Iowa offensive line has given up 23 sacks this season, or 3.29 a game
- Iowa's passing offense is averaging 5.5 yards per passing attempt
- The Hawkeyes are converting 26.6% of their 3rd downs, less than half of the success rate for the Buckeyes
- Iowa has only eight red zone conversions all season, which isn't so bad when you realize they've only been in the red zone 12 times
So: Iowa is historically bad on offense, and the Ohio State defense made mincemeat out of them. That isn't news, but what I find interesting is that the Buckeyes weren't playing Iowa on Saturday so much as they were shadowboxing Michigan.
Because in lieu of actual, factual stiff competition, that's what Ohio State and the Wolverines are going to have to do until the end of November (sidenote: I've seen some chirping from Michigan fans online about Ohio State's easier-than-normal slate of games, and while that's true, the Wolverines' own schedule is still a complete laugher and will continue to be until the last two weeks of the season).
Is that a good idea? Probably not! Especially given the propensity of mediocre Big Ten teams to bite opponents with aspirations of grandeur squarely in their ass. But Michigan just had a bye week and Ohio State looked initially wobbly against a very good Hawkeye defense, so... the hell with it.
I covered Michigan's win against Iowa in the Threat Level, but the long and short of it was that Harbaugh was facing a semi-game opponent in a semi-hostile environment, and simply wanted to win in the surest way possible. The Wolverines only managed 327 total yards of offense, but leaned heavily on their running backs, who were fine enough to give Michigan a 20-0 lead after three quarters. In Iowa reckoning that might as well be 100000-0, so the two 4th quarter touchdowns they put on the board were surprising but irrelevant.
Literally the only complaints you can make about Ohio State blowing out Iowa are the running game being essentially nonexistent and early red zone struggles, but this belies the fact that none of what fans are actually worried about has anything to do with whether or not the Buckeyes were going to beat Iowa.
It's a weird situation to be in. Ohio State plays Penn State on Saturday, a game that doesn't feel significant because it's a road game against a sort-of rival, but because of the urgency of beating the Nittany Lions by a wider margin than the 41-17 beatdown that Michigan administered to Penn State.
It's been a long time since the Buckeyes looked inward at Big Ten as their measuring stick, and even longer since the team in their sights was the Michigan Wolverines. That's going to give The Game an inertia it hasn't had in a long time (even last season was more of a surprise than anything), and hopefully it adds drama to the games ahead of it as well.
