By Blake Dowson
Well, it’s finally here. The hits, the runs, the crowds, the tailgating — the world is just better when football is played on Saturdays.
The beginning of the 2016 season has an exponentially louder buzz than the hardly audible decibel of the start of 2015.
For good reason. Mind not the losses in the Big Ten Championship and Rose Bowl — remember instead the Hawkeyes won 12 games last season for the first time in program history and return their star quarterback, award-winning cornerback, and 12 other starters.
For those reasons (and there are many more), the story lines heading into this season are basically night-and-day different from last season.
The “Kirk Ferentz needs to go” crowd has left for browner pastures, and C.J. Beathard is no longer the guy fans think is the right quarterback for the job.
Here are The Daily Iowan’s top story lines to follow this season, in no particular order.
Does Desmond King get his name on the press box?
As tradition has gone since the creation of the Kinnick Stadium Wall of Honor, Iowa players can get their name permanently on the lower ribbon of the press box in one of three ways: be a member of two college football halls of fame, be a member of one hall of fame and also once be a consensus All-American, or become a two-time consensus All-American.
King is halfway there on the last one, and his would become only the 10th name displayed.
“We just need to keep everything on the same run as last year,” King said on Tuesday.
Eight interceptions last season brought King national recognition, and his reputation as the best zone corner in the country ultimately earned him the Jim Thorpe Award and All-American status.
As it stands, King is the first Thorpe Award winner to ever return to school the year after winning the award for the nation’s top defensive back.
It remains to be seen if opposing quarterbacks will challenge King often enough to allow him to match his numbers from 2015 — yawns might outnumber passes thrown his way this season.
Will Beathard be compared with Chuck Long or, say, Drew Tate?
Beathard will forever be in the hearts of Hawkeye fans. It’s like he personally handed a rose to every single black-and-gold-bleeding Midwesterner out there.
He led Iowa to its first 12-0 regular season in school history, something neither Long nor Tate ever did.
Long is still the measuring stick for every Hawkeye quarterback, and at this point his immortality outshines Beathard.
The curly haired quarterback from Wheaton, Illinois, did it all for the Hawkeyes. He was an All-Big Ten selection his junior season and finished seventh in the Heisman Trophy voting. After deciding to return for his senior year, he led Iowa to a No. 1 ranking, a Rose Bowl appearance, and a runner-up finish (to Bo Jackson in the closest vote ever) for the Heisman.
Beathard won’t have Heisman consideration — Iowa’s offense in this age of college football doesn’t allow him to put up the numbers. But if he takes Iowa back to Indianapolis and another big-time bowl, he is mentioned in the same breath as Long.
“This is my senior year, my last go at it,” Beathard said. “I want to make the most out of it, and I’m going to do everything I can… to make it the best season we possibly can. I put that upon myself to do the best I can do.”
If Iowa goes 8-4 and plays in the Alamo Bowl, it will be harder to compare the two.
Will Iowa make the leap to true contender?
There weren’t many college football pundits who believed in Iowa before the Big Ten Championship game, but a gutsy performance against Michigan State changed most of their minds.
Then a face-first flop against Stanford put everything back into question.
Are the Hawkeyes, who seem to be building momentum with new facilities and a deep 2017 recruiting class, becoming a national program, or did they just ride a manageable schedule to the tune of seven single-digit wins last season?
“I think if you look back, there are years where we’ve handled [expectations] well,” Ferentz said at Big Ten media day in Chicago on July 26. “Like ’09 and maybe 2003 and 2004. And then in [2005 and 2010], that really gets down to just winning close games, doing little things right, those types of things.”
The answer will be there in December. If the Hawkeyes are crowned Big Ten West champions again with, say, 10 or 11 wins, a snowball effect could start rolling.
If Iowa slips again in a season with higher expectations than recent years, 2015 could seem like another 2009.