In my green 17 years of existence, I have already felt the pain of loss in rooting for my favorite team, the Iowa Hawkeyes. The ups and downs have been more like deep valleys and tiny hills, with brief periods of hope before the darkness wipes out my little candle of fandom again. Older sports fans, like those of the Cubs, Cleveland, or Philadelphia for example, might scoff at my apparent suffering with indifference, showing me the scars of a century's worth of losing. I still feel like I know what this pain feels like, that I experienced the swirling emotional whirlpool of rooting for MY team with a fervent passion and knowledge of my team that rivals even the ultimate fan. This losing has had some positive effects on me; it's caused me to meticulously pour over every detail of my teams, making sure I know the scoop on every player, every coach, every signing and every new recruit. I'm there for every single game, pushing homework and friends to the side so I can focus my energies on the game at end. The least my team can do for me is win a few right?? I begin to think, and find hope that every team has to win and have a great season once in awhile. But then my mind wonders to those Cubs fans, those victory-starved bleacher-creatures, and I think of all the other suffering fans in their 60s and 70s and 80s, and suddenly that long life of fandom waiting ahead of me doesn't sound so joyous.

Anyone familar with the Iowa Hawkeyes knows they have had as inconsistent a history and tradition as any program in the nation. They have been around forever, one of the oldest football playing schools in the country, but they sure haven't always been good. But the depression definitely started early for my Hawkeyes, who have the disadvantage of playing in the smallest state in the Big Ten, with a fairly small recruiting base to work with, crappy weather, nothing but boring farmlands outside Iowa City, and a pretty average athletic budget to work with. Iowa City does have its share of unique perks and charms, a quaint little college town that is just quintessential Midwest, a great/fun place to be with incredible people who live there. The Iowa people are some of the most kind, honest, and down-to-earth that you are going to meet anywhere in the world, and they are known for supporting the Hawkeyes through thick and thin. Kinnick is always full, even in those losing decades of the 60s and 70s, and it just is a great feeling to see these great people of Iowa rewarded for their loyalty with some success. But I'm digressing talking about the place I love so much. Iowa's depression started early, where after churning out some fantastic championship teams in the early 1920s, our coach left for USC, where he turned them into a power and made a name for himself. We weren't very good for awhile after that, until the legendary Ironmen team of 1939 came along. This team led the people of Iowa out of the Great Depression (how ironic), inspiring them with their tough play and huge upsets over Knute Rockne's famous Notre Dame team and Big Ten powerhouse Minnesota. We were led by a fearsome offensive line and our do-it-all Heisman winner, Nile Kinnick himself, our stadium's namesake. Kinnick scored touchdowns with his passing and running, along with playing some defense, kicking our field goals and extra points, and even punting. A lot of punting in fact, including 8 beauties in the win over Notre Dame. Other Hawkeyes have gotten close, but Kinnick is still the only Heisman winner in school history. Soon after graduating, Kinnick enlisted in the Air Force. His plane crashed into the ocean on a training mission, a great man lost but a great legend just beginning. Keep in mind I wasn't born until 1991, so we have a ways to go here before we can fully appreciate my depression; we are merely tracing the roots. The 1950s were a fabulous time for the Iowa Hawkeyes, perhaps the best decade ever next to the 1980s, but of course with these highs would come the stunning lows of the next 2 decades. In the 50s, we would have two Rose Bowl winning teams under Forest Evashevski, including one national championship in 1956, the only Hawkeye coach to garner such an honor even though the only way of deciding it back then was the vote of a magazine. Evashevski departed in stunning fashion at the end of the decade, choosing instead to take the AD position. This changed Iowa's fortunes for 20 years, and everyone wonders what could have happened or how different Iowa's tradition would have been if Evashevski had remained coach while he was on top of the world. It might have even affected Iowa's tradition to this day. It just seems like throughout Hawkeye history, as soon as taste the top, we are cruelly brought back down to earth. Two decades and no winning seasons, with Iowa becoming one of the worst programs in the nation and a coaching graveyard. People questioned whether it was even possible to win at Iowa. But then a smooth-talking Texan from football-crazed Odessa came wondering in from North Texas, wondering how a team with such crappy performance on the field could grab such loyal fan support. Fry fell in love with the program, the state, and the people, and vowed to rebuild the program back up to elite levels. He sure did that, and then some. The 1980s were a golden time in all of Hawkeye athletics, with Fry taking over, the wrestling team winning championship after championship under the iconic Dan Gable, and the basketball team a resident national power under Lute Olson , George Raveling, and then Tom Davis. A Final Four, Elite 8, and other deep runs into the tournament were all dreams realized in this incredible Hawkeye heaven. But back to football. It didn't take long for Fry to live up to his promises and re-establish Iowa, taking them to an unprecedented Rose Bowl in 1981 and not slowing down after that. Fry turned Iowa into a top 25 and top 10 team every year, getting them into bowl game after bowl game and back to another Rose Bowl in 1985, where we were even ranked number 1 for a long period of time and had our QB, CHuck Long, finish runner-up in the Heisman running to Bo Jackson in the closest race ever. Bowl game after bowl game, year after year, including a 55-10 butt-kicking of Texas in the Freedom Bowl and a victory over Tennessee in the Peach Bowl. Under Fry, we could do no long. Only one bowl-less season in the entire decade. 1990 came, and another Rose Bowl in the books. Keep in mind, Fry didn't win any of these Rose Bowls, laying more foundation for my depression. 1991 was anothr amazing season, with ten wins and one loss that was enough to keep the Big Ten title out of our paws. There was a tiny stretch where it appeared Fry lost it, and Iowa had a string of average losing or .500 win seasons, but then in the mid-90s (1995-97) Fry got some fantastic players such as running backs Sedrick Shaw and Tavian Banks, defensive lineman Jared DeVries, offensive lineman Mike Goff, and of course, legendary speedster Tim Dwight, and the team got back to national prominence and playing in important bowl games once again. This is when I really started going to games as a kid, and following the Iowa Hawkeyes as much as I could. I had posters and Tim Dwight trading cards, jerseys and leftover programs scattered throughout. I loved watching Dwight take back all those punts for touchdowns, even if I couldn't fully appreciate it at those times. The sad thing is though, we never fully took advantage of Dwight and put together the great seasons experts thought we would have during this brief era of success for Coach Fry. A few puzzling losses would always place us firmly in average territory or take us out of championship contention, a trend that has plagued Iowa for a long time. Recruiting got tougher for Fry, and he couldn't get the players that he used to, as Iowa was slipping out of the ranks of the elite and other programs were rising to the top as national powerhouses. Fry eventually retired gracefully at the end of the 1998 season, a bittersweet day for all Hawkeye fans as we were ready to move on but we didn't know if we could ever get a coach as amazing as Hayden Fry. It is fitting to my depression in this story to tell you that Fry's last game was a loss to Minnesota. There were a lot of potential replacements for Fry, as he left behind him a tree of top-notch assistants that makes up a large portion of the elite coaches at the D1 level today. Most Hawkeye fans wanted Bob Stoops, a former player in the 1980s and assistant as well. Instead we hired Kirk Ferentz; most fans were disappointed with the hire even before Stoops led Oklahoma to the 2000 national championship while Ferentz went 1-10 and 3-9 in his 1st two years on the job. To be fair, the cupboard was left totally bare from Fry's lazy last few recruiting years at the University, and Ferentz had almost nothing to work with. Those who really payed attention could see the signs of improvement in 2000, as the Hawks pulled out upset victories over Michigan State and Big Ten champion Northwestern. But that was still pretty weak in comparison to the big shiny championship being won over in Norman. Iowa continued to show steady signs of progress, however, and went 7-5 in 2001 with an exciting Alamo Bowl victory over Texas Tech. This was my 1st bowl game to go to, and I was excited to be a Hawkeye. I guess that's in my black and gold blood to get excited over a 7-5 season. Nothing could prepare Hawkeye fans for the amazing 3-year run about to begin, starting with the shocking 2002 undefeated Big Ten championship. After an early loss to Iowa State (again) after being up big, Hawkeye fans got mentally prepared for another average year. What nobody expected was an 8-0 Big Ten campaign with thrilling victory after thrilling victory, fueled by fantastic offensive/defensive balance. We had a mammoth offensive line, a speedy running threat in Fred Russell, and Heisman runner-up Brad Banks throwing to John Mackey Award winner Dallas Clark, perhaps the best tight end ever at the school. The defense was full of legends as well, everyone from Bob Sanders to Matt Roth to that linebacking corp of Chad Greenway, Abdul Hodge, and Howard Hodges. And there was that kicker too, Lou Groza award winner Nate Kaeding, who didn't miss a kick all season. Just a phenomenally talented team, and gave me some of my greatest Hawkeye memories. Of course, it had to end in a 38-17 drubbing at the hands of USC, even after we took the opening kick back for a touchdown, but that still couldn;t take the shine off the season. Next year we went 10-3 with a big play offense and near-flawless defense/special teams, destroying a favored Florida team in the Outback Bowl. And the next year we lost all of our running backs to injury and had a brand new, scrawny little QB from Texas named Drew Tate to lead us. Nobody expected great or even good things, but thanks to a lot of heart along with a little defense and Tate magic thrown in there we ended up getting exactly what we didn't expect. We started the year at 2-2 with a blowout loss to Arizona State and a tough defeat at the hands of Michgian, but rebounded to win 7 in a row, making us Big Ten champs again and getting us a trip to Florida for the Capital One Bowl to play LSU. A back and forth game, it looked like we were going to end up on the losing side as the Hawks looked confused and distraught with the ball at midfield and only seconds to play. Then Tate made perhaps the biggest play in Hawkeye history, a 50-yard bomb of a Hail Mary pass to little used senior wideout Warren Holloway for the game-winning touchdown, the 1st of his career. This vaulted Tate to superstardom and Iowa to another top 8 season at 10-2. Most old sports suffering curdmudgeons would scoff at me in disbelief, wondering how I could be depressed after witnessing the best 3 year stretch in Hawkeye history. Unfortunately I didn't even fully appreciate this time; I was a young kid and thought that this would go on forever, that this was the way things were in Iowa City. Oh, how I was mistaken. When something this good is ripped away from you so fast, it makes it harder than never having it at all.

2005 began with monstrously high expectations, with almost all our players coming back from the Big Ten championship team of a year ago. We were a consensus top 8 squad, with Athlon magazine even predicting a national championship. It seemed as if the Hawkeyes were legit contenders for the 1st time in a very long time, and the fans sure deserved it. Unfortunately, we didn't get what we expected. After Tate was knocked out of the game with a head-rocking concussion, we lost a horribly played offensive game to our in-state rivals, Iowa State, and then got absolutely crushed at The Horseshoe by Ohio State, exacting a large measure of revenge for our historic victory over them at Kinnick the year before. The fans accepted the fact that our championship dreams were probably out of the picture at this point, but there was still hope that if Tate could stay healthy than a Big Ten title wasn't out of the question. Close losses to Michigan and Northwestern made sure it was. Both games were fairly well played by our guys, we just got incredibly unlucky and each defeat was equally painful for its own reasons. We lost to Michigan at Kinnick, our 1st loss there in more than 3 years, in overtime with a raucous Blackout crowd behind us, and then lost to Northwestern after having a two touchdown lead with barely 2-minutes left, thanks to a stunning onside kick recovery. We ended the year at 7-4, 3rd place in the Big Ten, with the taste still lingering for much more. No one in Hawkeye land was panicking just yet, however, as half of our losses were close and things could have turned out much differently. The program was still in the great hands of Kirk Ferentz. Keep in mind the summer of 2005, before the season began, Ferentz had signed an extremly lucrative extension all the way into 2012, so expectations were championship worthy for the old coach, as NFL teams came knocking for him every offseason and the university wanted to make sure he stuck around. That year we played in the Outback Bowl again, a rematch against Florida. This one turned out much differently. Florida got a big lead on us early, but Tate played brilliantly and led the comeback charge, getting us back in the game down by only a touchdown. After an onside kick attempt was recovered by Chad Greenway, we controlled the momentum and it looked like we had a chance to win this thing. Not so fast, according to the stunningly incompetent fuck-up of a referee who called offsides on Greenway after the recovery. Multiple viewings of the replay since then have occured, and still I can't find any semblance of offsides from Greenway. Not even close. This was a complete phantom call and one seemingly made for dubious reasons; I have no other explanation for how such a call could be made when it wasn't even close to being offsides. We shouldn't have put ourselves in such a situation in the 1st place, but then again we shouldn't have these horrible refs participating in any sport either. Hopefully he's been fired and relegated to YMCA by now. Of course we lost the game, finishing the year at a disappointing 7-5. Well 2006 began with renewed hope, as Tate was back for his senior season, the offensive line looked tough and senior laden, Albert Young was coming back after a fabulous Big Ten campaign, and finally our young defensive line that had shown so much progress as the 2005 season wore on returned fully intact, led by All-Big Ten performer Kenny Iwebema. The year started off just as Hawkeye fans had hoped, 4-0 with victories over Montana, Syracuse, Iowa State, and Illinois. A somewhat disturbing trend in all these wins though was how none of these teams were good at all and we all struggled at some point to pull out the victory. Tate was banged up again, sitting out the Syracuse game and struggling with an abdominal tear. Either way, we were undefeated heading into that legendary College Gameday showdown at Kinnick against Ohio State, with perhaps the best crowd ever to witness a game instead the historic stadium. Unfortunately our performance didn't live up to the hype, even with Lee Corso picking Iowa, as boneheaded plays on both sides of the ball sparked any chance of competitiveness and we lost 38-17. It just seems fitting that one of the best moments in Iowa history has to be destroyed by such poor play. But the next week we came out and just throttled Purdue for Homecoming, and it looked like we were back on track to an above-average season. Nothing could prepare Hawkeye fans for the epic collapse we were about to witness. It started with the shocking loss at Indiana, after being up 21-7. Notorious Iowa-killer James Hardy pulled down numerous clutch grabs, and Hawkeye fans were shocked. The next week was Michigan at the Big House, a defensive battle where our man Drew got knocked around like a rag doll before Mike Hart sealed the Wolverines win with some tough yardage/touchdowns. Tate sat out the next week, a home contest against Northern Illinois, and we didn't play very well once again but backup QB Jake Christensen did a nice job managing the game to lead us to the much-closer-than-the-score 24-14 victory. A brief glimpse of hope, only to be shattered by a brutal trifecta of season-ending losses. 1st we get absolutely crushed and embarassed by a below-average Northwestern team 21-7 at Kinnick, then lose on Senior Day thanks to a mistake-filled performance by Tate and the wideouts to Wisconsin 24-21. Perhaps we could get a victory at the Metrodome over a bowl-less, hapless Minnesota squad to reclaim the Floyd of Rosedale for the 5th year in a row? Nope. Tate totally lost control in this one, trying to do it all himself but instead just making himself look bad with interceptions and outbursts at whoever could take his wrath, smacking incompetent wideout Herb Grigsby on the head after a brutal drop. He was even briefly benched so that he could cool down. Tate did make some Tate-worthy plays in this one, but it wasn't enough to overcome the early mistakes and the Gophers took us out. We were lucky even to get invited to a bowl game, let alone the pretty decent Alamo Bowl for an exciting matchup against Texas. Attendance and viewer records were broken at the Alamodome and on ESPN, and the Hawks did give us something to be proud of. We jumped out to a 14 point lead thanks to stunning touchdowns by Albert Young and Andy Brodell, who juked future NFL cornerback Aaron Ross out of his shoes on a screen pass for the long score. A questionable illegal shift call took back a Scott Chandler touchdown that would have made it 21-0, and on the next play Tate threw a pick. It was all downhill from there. Texas found new energy and started playing like they should have been from the start, dominating both sides of the ball. The amazing Brodell scored again to keep us in the game, but we just ran out of gas and the 1st losing season since 2000 was upon Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa program. This year was a tough one to take, because at 1st glance we had the talent and should have been able to compete and win more games than we did, as we all showed against Texas in the Alamo Bowl when we took one of the most talented squads in the country to the brink of defeat. It was a complete mental collapse, and Tate's injuries affected him more than he let on. The whole team became a mess, a sign of things to come as Iowa would arrive at the lowest nadir of my brief time rooting for them. This is how we got to the point Iowa football is at now; 18 players arrested since April '07, that nationally top-10 ranked draft class of '05 becoming a total bust with players leaving or getting put in jail, a 6-6 season and the 1st bowl-less year since 2000. The shine has rubbed off the program, and with allegations of a cover-up being out there on this sexual assault PR nightmare, questions are all over the place about the integrity and credibility of the whole athletic department. We are no longer the bully of the Big Ten, and Kirk Ferentz is going to have a tough time still riding the coattails of that amazing 3-year stretch. I don't know what the future holds for Iowa, not even the immediate one, but there is nothing I can do but show up at my familar seat every Saturday and cheer my black and gold boys on, no matter what else is happening. Sometimes, even when you know there's going to be an immovable obstacle in the way, you just have to keep going on and perservering for something you love. And that's just Iowa football! But those brief little snippets of joy I get keep me coming back each time, even if the depression mounts and often threatens to overtake those little good times. Now, on to my favorite, the Steve Alford era of Iowa basketball (cries passionately)!!

I started semi-following Iowa basketball in the last years of the Tom Davis era, and I remember my dad sharing the sentiment of a lot of spoiled Hawkeye fans and encouraging the ousting of Davis and his full-court pressure, substitution-heavy style of coaching. Davis had led Iowa to consistent success, leading us to an Elite 8 in 1987 with George Raveling's talent before getting us into the tournament basically every season, but hardly ever advancing past the 2nd round or the Sweet 16. This was great, stable success, but fans wanted that elusive Big Ten championship that only Lute Olson had given us back in 1979-80, and a Final Four run. But the era of college basketball was changing, and Iowa was having a tougher time recruiting and keeping up with the big powers. Davis's last year was a brilliant Sweet 16 send off, but Hawkeye fans were ready for the Alford era to begin. Alford was a young hot-shot with slicked-back hair and a swagger earned from three point heroics and a national championship at Indiana under the legendary Bob Knight. Alford was fresh off a Sweet 16 of his own at Southwest Missouri, a shocker for the Cinderella squad, and he was considered to be one of the most sought after young coaches in the country. Iowa fans would soon discover Alford's obnoxious, pompous arrogance, and it seemed apparent that he was only using the Iowa job to step up the ladder to his dream position of Indiana. A lot of promise and hope was given, and Iowa fans thought they had the right guy at 1st, but it didn't take long to figure out that this was a bad deal. Attendance steadily declined as the team's became more average and more fans were turned off by Alford's very un-Iowa attitude and air of superiority. Carver was not a consistent bastion of sell-outs that it used to be. The Alford era ended at the end of the 2007 season with a total of 3 NCAA appearances, 2 Big Ten tournament titles, and 1 NCAA tournament win, not quite basement-worthy but definitely not the numbers fans expected and Alford contributed heavily in driving the program and fan's interest in basketball into the ground. Alford's lack of any real system and reliance on his star players contributed to some stunningly bad losses, with the occasional big win to generate hope. It was just a tough time, because hardly any of the fans respected Alford but he would give us such a glimpse of hope that it was hard to let him go. Take the 2005-06 season for example. This is one of the most beloved teams in Iowa history, filled with hometown seniors such as Greg Brunner and Jeff Horner, finishing 2nd in the Big Ten regular season and winning the conference tournament in fantastic fashion. They were hardworking and they all seemed to genuinely like each other, and there was honestly a lot of talent, even if they didn't wow you athletically. They ended up getting a 3 seed in the tournament, only to lose to Northwestern State in one of the biggest Cinderella upsets of all time. The team was up big most of the contest, before giving up a huge run at the end, missing a potentially game-sealing free throw (Brunner none the less), and letting those devils from Louisiana hit an absurd game-winning three pointer and send Hawkeye fans home from the bars literally soaked in their own tears that day. It is one of the most depressing days I can remember in my entire life, just because so much was expected of this team, and because Alford was so close to being absolved. This game in itself just proved how poor of a coach Alford was, as if the evidence wasn't already there. That team of Reggie Evans and Luke Recker from 2001 relied way too much on those two stars, but luckily the amazing hardwork of Reggie Evans led us to an improbable Big Ten tourney title and a tournament win over Creighton, amazingly the only one in Alford's tenure. That's back when Alford's teams had promise, when people still expected greatness, before all those NITs and inconsistent performances, poor nonconferences barely saved by some miracle tourney run to get us into a March Madness party we really didn't deserve to be in. Now we have arrived to this, the Lickliter era, where we only had 2 sellouts all season, barely 9,000 showing up for conference contests!! 13-19, 6-12 in the conference, worst overall record in school history. Struggling to score 50 points, star players leaving, coaches speaking of the Butler Way instead of what should be the Iowa Way. I believe in Lickliter to rebuild things more than anyone else, and I really think he can do it and win big at this level, especially with the extremly promising recruiting class he just hauled in. I didn't like his negative body language on the sidelines, his forcing out of Tony Freeman just because he didn't fit the system, his obnoxious references to this system and the Butler Way of doing things; it is time to realize that what he did at Butler is relevant to what he did at Butler, and to focus his entire energy into defining an Iowa Way. Next year is only phase two of the rebuilding process, but if improvement isn't shown, Iowa basketball may be entering another dark period under an overmatched mid-major coach. I want to believe in Lickliter, I really do, but I'm like a used up prostitute who just doesn't know who I can trust anymore. I think he's the right man for the job, but I thought Alford was too, and look where he left us. Basketball is my sport, a sport where the thumping beat of that orange globe follows the same beat of my heart. I want us to succeed to badly, and I want butts back in those seats! The time is coming for me to get out of this depression; taking off these black and gold shades might help, but I'm just not willing to do it. I love them too damn much