On Saturday, the Iowa Hawkeyes lost a heartbreaker in the Big Ten Championship against the East champion Michigan State Spartans. The Spartans went on a 22 play ten minute drive that covered over 80 yards, that ended with a touchdown run from freshman L.J Scott, lunging the ball over the goal line just before his knees hit the ground. That left the Hawkeyes about 20 seconds to advance into big-legged senior kicker Marshall Koehn's range. But, C.J Beathard got sacked on a three man rush, and laterals on the last play failed. It was a 16-13 Spartan victory, in typical Big Ten fashion.
Now that the Hawkeyes dreams of an undefeated season and for their first National Championship since they claimed one in 1922, with the likes of Aubrey Devine and Duke Slater on the squad, Iowa was going to be New Year's Six bowl. The thought was that the loser of the Conference Championship game would fall below Ohio State, and Ohio State would get picked over them for the berth to the Rose Bowl, while Iowa or Michigan State would play in the Peach or the Fiesta Bowl.
But, Iowa only moved down one spot to number five, which meant that they could be selected to play number six Stanford, who won the Pac12 with two losses. Again, Iowa is being heavily picked against in this game, a common theme here of late. But, I think that this a great matchup. It is a traditional Pac-12 against the Big Ten matchup, and it has two similar styles of offense, as they are both pro style.
Both offenses have a great running game, but the most noticeable player for either side is the Cardinal's running back and Heisman contender, Christian McCaffrey McCaffrey will be the most explosive player by far that this Iowa defense will have played. McCaffrey is an absolute beast He wasn't known around the nation, but he has burst on to the scene as a top three player the college football world. Alone, on Saturday's game against the Southern California Trojans, he totaled 461 total yards. He even broke Stanford's Barry Sanders record for all-purpose yards in a season in the second quarter, very easily passing the 3,250 yards Sanders gained.
But, he will be going against Iowa's sixth ranked run defense. If anybody can shut down him, it must just be the Iowa Hawkeyes. Not only do they have a great run defense, they have a kicker, Koehn, who can kick it out of the end zone, taking out the kick return component of McCaffrey's game. They have a solid secondary as well, led by FBS interception leader Desmond King.
The Committee did the right thing, putting the Hawkeyes in ahead of the Buckeyes. The Buckeyes never looked good all year, and Iowa not only won their division, they did it without taking a loss. Also, Michigan State, with their backup quarterbacks, went into Columbus and won the game. Iowa played the Spartans really well. Say what you want about the Hawkeyes and their schedule or whatever, but they proved to people, such as Paul Finebaum, who was very anti-Hawkeye the whole ride through the season. This is the first Rose Bowl trip for the Hawkeyes since 1991, even in 2002 when they were co-champions with Heisman runner-up Brad Banks, when the Orange Bowl picked the Hawkeyes when the Rose Bowl was ready to take the Hawks. In 1991, the Hawkeyes lost to Washington 46-34.
Unlike the Hawkeyes, this is a common end of season destination for the Stanford Cardinal. This will be the third time in the last four years that they will play in the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Northwestern Mutual. Even the granddaddy has a sponsor will a really long name, which is great, I guess. They beat Wisconsin 20-14, but lost in 2014 to Michigan State 24-20.
With how the Hawkeye fans took over Indy, there is no reason to believe that will be any different. I would think about 60 thousand Hawk fans would be there. Stanford fans might just have burn-out from coming to Pasadena three out of the last four times, even though it is in California. While Iowa came from the TaxSlayer Bowl last year in Florida, and weren't expected to do much. So expect a lot of Iowa fans that will come and drink Pasadena dry.
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