While gazing at a football schedule hanging on the wall of a store yesterday, I noticed that Nebraska plays Iowa as the last game of the regular college football season, on Friday, November 25.
Yeah, yeah, I already knew this, but never
thought about it until seeing that schedule.
There's something about this that concerns me very much.
The final games of a regular season usually--not always, but usually--involve a rivalry.
And I'd feel much more comfortable playing someone else in the Big 10 as that last game.
Doesn't Iowa have any rivalries, rather than hoping to have Nebraska as a rival?
I don't like it.
I mean, even wikipedia says:
The Hawkeyes play three annual rivalry trophy games. Iowa's oldest rivalry trophy is Floyd of Rosedale, which has been awarded to the winner of the Iowa-Minnesota game every season since 1935.
Iowa plays Iowa State for the Cy-Hawk Trophy, which was created when the Iowa-Iowa State series resumed in 1977.
Iowa has played Wisconsin for the Heartland Trophy since 2004. Starting in 2011, the Hawkeyes and Badgers will no longer compete every year since they are in opposite divisions.
Although many erroneously say Iowa's new rival is the Nebraska Cornhuskers, most self-respecting Iowa fans would acknowledge that Iowa must first win a couple, three or four national titles before they can even start calling Nebraska a "rival."
These two teams will compete in the Heroes game which is the final regular-season game each season on the Friday after Thanksgiving, yet most knowledgable college football fans would inform readers that Nebraska now stoops to Iowa's level, having for decades played Oklahoma the day after Thanksgiving, the way College Football Was Meant To Be.
I can see exactly what happened, when the eastern establishment elites were trying to straighten out things in the new Big 10--the ivy-covered ivory towers looked at a map and immediately thought, "Oh, Iowa and Nebraska are right next door to each other, and so they're natural rivals."
Uh, no.
There are no similarities, no similarities at all, between Nebraska and Iowa.
We're talking penguins and oranges here, two different things.
Iowa is more than a generation older than Nebraska, having been settled, and congested with people, villages, towns, and cities from the Mississippi to the Missouri before civilization advanced even six inches west of the Missouri River into Nebraska.
Iowa's, uh, considerably bigger than Nebraska.
And the people--well, Iowa was the origin of all those corny old "hayseed" and "hick farmer" and "country rube" jokes of yore, whereas Nebraska's had different, more flattering, sorts of stereotypes associated with it.
And to be bluntly honest, even if hurtful (but the truth sometimes hurts), Nebraskans still even today consider people from Iowa hicks, hayseeds, dumb farmers, country rubes. It's a hurtful stereotype yes, but at the same time it's an accurate stereotype.
To be kind, Iowa is not in Nebraska's class.
The Big 10 is an ancient conference; surely Iowa's got more suitable rivals elsewhere in it, than us.
