The Iowa football team is in its final week of spring drills and Saturday will pull back the curtain for a few hours in an open practice at Kinnick Stadium. It’s not the traditional spring game some schools put on, where the first team takes on the second team and only the quarterbacks are free from contact. No, what Iowa does is a regular practice. The players go through position drills, then they break down into offensive and defensive groups, then they’ll go “live.” (It’s never really live, because whistles blow as soon as contact is about to be made on the ball carrier)

Last year, I kept stats on first-year starter Jake Christensen and rushing and receiving stats for others the best I could throughout the day. I haven’t decided if I’m going to take it that far again Saturday. What I keep asking myself is: Does it matter?

Is Saturday’s practice — probably in front of 15,000 to 20,000 fans — any different than today’s practice that will take place behind the covered fence that surrounds the Hawkeyes’ practice field? Is it any more important than the practice that takes place Thursday afternoon? What if Christensen or any other player has had 14 excellent practices and then has a lousy day Saturday? Then he’s not the guy? Then he will be ridiculed in newspapers and on message boards for the next five months? And what if a player has had 14 terrible practices and then comes out this weekend and goes nuts? Then he’s up for the Heisman?

Spring football, aside from National Signing Day, is the most over-hyped event on the college football calendar. Yes, it’s good for teams to get out there and work out the kinks, experiment with some new schemes and keep players focused. But do you really believe positions are won or lost in the spring? Do you really believe Kirk Ferentz when he says, as he did last year and the year before, that the depth chart is wide open, written in pencil, and so on and so forth? No.

Spring ball, more and more these days, is for the fans. It’s to keep them interested and get them excited right around the time tickets go on sale for the upcoming season. It’s to give them hope, to give them something to talk about over the summer. And it’s amazing how much people talk. I saw posts on a message board by fans looking at still photos on the Iowa athletic department Web site and getting excited about what kind of play it looked like the offense was running in the picture. And it isn’t just at Iowa. Last week, 78,000 fans turned out for Alabama’s spring game, 14,000 fewer than last year, when the Crimson Tide set a national record. Florida had 61,000 at its spring game last weekend, an event that was televised nationally. And tickets to Nebraska’s sold-out game this Saturday are going for as much as $95. For the record, tickets to Nebraska’s home game against defending Big 12 North champion Missouri next fall are going for $99.

Iowa, especially coming off a 6-6 season, won’t generate that sort of hype, or ticket gate — admission is free. But there will be those who show up Saturday and draw all sorts of conclusions about the team and its prospects for 2008 based solely on what they see in one practice. I’ll be there, but I’m withholding judgment on this team until the fall, probably Week 4 when the Hawkeyes travel to Pittsburgh. I’d advise you do to do the same. But what are you, the fans, looking for this weekend at Kinnick?        

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Hawkeyes Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.