Iowa bested Illinois State, 31-14, on Sept. 5.

By Danny Payne
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Proceed with cautious optimism, Hawkeye fans.

Your team’s win over Illinois State on Sept. 5 was exactly what the program needed. Iowa set the tone early, murdered the Redbirds, and fun was had by all. The Kinnick Stadium crowd even gave a failed fake field-goal attempt a standing ovation.

Put simply, Iowa did everything it needed to do against an Football Championship Subdivision opponent.

Just don’t forget it was an lower-division opponent. Yes, a good opponent, but a lower-division opponent.

All Hawkeye fans would love to be swept off their feet by the new Kirk Ferentz, whose team played an entertaining brand of football and asserted its will all afternoon. They’d love to watch the quartet of C.J. Beathard, Drew Ott, Jordan Canzeri, and LeShun Daniels Jr. battle it out all season to see who the odd-man out will be on the plane ride to New York City for the Heisman Trophy presentation at the end of the year.

(Hey, anything is possible if they play as they did in the opener.)

Now, Iowa needs to do play that way the rest of the season — especially against Iowa State — to truly get rid of the lingering bad vibes surrounding the program. Right now, Iowa City is jumping for joy after the performance against the Redbirds, which is good. Enjoy it, you should.

But as is the case with any fan base around the country, negative juju could be back in full force if the Hawks lose in Ames Saturday. People could be calling for Ferentz’s head. All good things could be quickly forgotten.

But if they play as they did Sept. 5, which they should, against Iowa State on Saturday, Kinnick could be rocking for the first night game, which will come against Pittsburgh.

We’ll need to see if Beathard’s cannon can be as effective against a real team (real-ish, perhaps, in Iowa State’s case) as it was against the Redbirds. We’ll need to see if Ott can continue his budding career as a real-estate developer behind the line of scrimmage. We’ll need to see if Daniels continues to run over people and Canzeri continues to do a little bit of everything out of the backfield. Others who aren’t mentioned here have to do their jobs, too.

If things do happen that way, then we can start talking about how great Kirk Ferentz is and how this program is turning around. Just give it a few games, because in the grand scheme of things, one win is one win. It’s going to take 12 more of those types of performances to change the tides.

The Illinois State game was a good start and very encouraging. If you can look yourself in the mirror and say you truly expected that, I want to shake your hand.

But for now, let’s wait to truly judge this squad, because Iowa did nothing more than beat an lower-division team.

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