From the Cheap Seats: Clunker

I’ve always had trouble falling asleep, as least for as long as I can remember. I don’t have insomnia so much as I struggle to shut my brain off. I’m sure you’ve all seen the meme of the person laying in bed telling their brain to shut up and their brain responds by putting some complex question or observation that will, assuredly, keep them awake for hours. I live that meme almost every night. I’ve tried everything from melatonin to edibles, meditation to “binaural brainwave” audio (that is just super weird tbh), from watching tv to listening to audiobooks. The one that works the best for me is audiobooks, though I’ll admit that it has to be a book that I’ve read more than once.

Of late I’ve been listening to the full-cast audiobook of Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”, a book that I’ve read at least 4 times (not counting reading the comic book adaptations and watching the very good, but too brief, tv adaptation that ran on Starz! a few years back). At present I’m being lulled to sleep in the section of the book where the main character, Shadow, is hiding out in a small town in Norther Wisconsin called Lakeside. One of the plot points that features heavily in this section is a lottery, of sorts, to pick the time when a broken down “clunker” of a car that has been dragged out onto the ice that covers the titular lake will fall through the ice. None of this has anything to do with Iowa football, aside from the fact that I don’t think there is a better word to describe the game that we watched last Saturday afternoon/evening. It was a massive clunker, and somehow the Hawkeyes managed to win that lottery and pull out a win over Sparty.

3rd Man In

I’ve also, today at least, been working my way back through the complete discography of the Dropkick Murphys, a band that I have loved for nearly 30 years (man I’m old) since the first time I heard “Boys on the Docks” from their EP of the same name, sometime in early 1997. If you’re not familiar with their catalog, the song you have assuredly heard is “Shipping up to Boston” from the Departed soundtrack, which has become a stadium anthem of it’s own in recent years. Their debut album “Do or Die” (released in 1998 on Hellcat Records) features a little diddie called “3rd Man In”, which features the line “3rd man in is how you show you care, nothing else matters but the fight”, and I’d say that line describes the mentality of this Iowa team pretty well.

After consecutive losses to Oregon and USC this team didn’t have much left to play for. Any outside chance of sneaking in to the CFP evaporated when they lost to Oregon, but the USC loss likely killed their chance to finish the season in the polls top 15 (which would have at least proven that they belonged with the other upper echelon teams in the country). They came back to Kinnick a little battered, a little beat up, with little to play for other than pride and each other. It’s not all that often that punk rock anthems align with the goals of a college football team but this one does.The MSU game saw many Iowa players on the sideline from the first series (with Logan Jones coming off after the first play), it saw their backups coming in and performing admirably. From Kade Kalarik to Mike Myslinski, every 2nd stringer that found their way onto the field Saturday pulled their weight and kept Iowa in the game long enough for the offense to finally work their sh*t out and start scoring some points.

Don’t Carry it All

I’ve also recently been revisiting the catalog of a band called The Decembrists, who first attracted my attention about 15 years ago. I’m not sure what you’d call them, but their lead singer once described their oeuvre as “post-apocalyptic punk-folk”, so make of that what you will.

The opening track of their 2011 album “The King is Dead” is a song called Don’t Carry it All, which is, ostensibly, about the various things that we all carry, whether that is the “yoke” of labor, the burdens of friends, family, or neighbors, or other various weights of the world, and remembering that we all carry some of that weight for eachother. None of us can “carry it all”, nor should we.

I’ll grant you that this is probably the weakest of my allusions so far (though the “clunker” from American Gods is definitely a stretch), but if nothing else, there is not one unit on this team that has carried it all this season. At times the offense has picked up the burden and pulled the team to victory, times when the defense has held up a struggling offense until it could figure itself out, and on Saturday it was special teams giving the other two units the shot in the arm it needed and dragging them across the finish line.

I know that I’ve spilled plenty of ink writing about Kaden Wetjen this season, but if there was any doubt left about how important his contribution to this team is, after Saturday it is fully eliminated. That the most important player on the field Saturday was the punt returner is a rare thing, but his 147 return yards (which equaled Mark Gronowski’s passing yardage) and punt return TD propelled this team to victory without a doubt. He was the MVP of that game, even if it was Drew Stevens’ leg that got those last three points.

We’ve had many stars, even many unlikely stars, rise on the field at Kinnick Stadium, but I’m not sure there are any as unlikely as Kaden Wetjen, and few who have flown as high as he has the last two years. Just ftr, it’s not impossible for him to reach the single-season NCAA punt return yardage record, though he’d have to put together two more performances like what we got Saturday to reach the 771 that Steve Suter put up for the Illini back in ‘02, but those would be the 233 hardest return yards he’s gained to date (mainly because anyone that kicks to him at this point should be fired on the spot).

One More Hill…

I don’t have a book or music tie-in for this one, there just aren’t that many songs about Nebraska that aren’t really freaking depressing. I mean feel free to go listen to Springsteen’s album, or any number of other songs about the flattest state in the union and you’ll see what I mean. If you want a laugh you could always pull up Tech N9ne’s “R.K. Husker”, but checking out Alonzo Bodden’s bit about performing in Iowa and Nebraska is actually funny, and not just sort of sad funny.

Nebraska, in Lincoln, is this teams’ final hill to climb (yeah, I’m done counting meaningless exhibition games with diminshed rosters in, hopefully, warm locales as part of a season). There’s only one thing at the top of it, an ugly trophy (that isn’t as ugly as the original version) that signifies victory over a state full of folks that still think they’re corn is better than Iowa’s.

The Bugeaters are coming off an absolute beatdown at the hands of Penn State (I really hope they give Terry Smith that job, but I doubt they will), with a backup QB making his 3rd start, a good running back, and a defense that is trying to prove that they still belong in the top 25. They’ve locked down Matt Rhule for at least this round of the coaching carousel, but they’ve lost one Raiola to injury and another to, indecision (I have to imagine that Dayton Raiola’s decommitment is an indicator that his big brother is looking elsewhere, but who knows). They’re 7-4 (which is one win better than where they were last year when they came to Kinnick) and are looking get Matt Rhule that 8th win that can be pointed to as growth in his 3rd year. Not unlike the Hawkeyes, the Huskers don’t have much to play for on Friday, just respect and the aforementioned ugly trophy.

I’ll be watching, as always, from my couch with Jr., likely finishing up the last box of fried cheese curds purchased for the season and snacking on a variety of leftover pie and stuffing, and while I’m thankful that we’ve got one more game to watch before this season ends, my heart is likely better off for this being a game without particularly high stakes. If nothing else, I’d really like to see the seniors get to notch one more win over the Huskers.

As always, GO HAWKS!!!