Cal vs Texas Tech will be interesting.

McCallan Castles, former Cal and UCD TE who transferred to Tennessee at the end of last season, scored a coup de grace TD on an 18 yard pass with under 5 minutes left in the game in the Volunteers' Citrus Bowl rout of Iowa.

(Long day and poor start to 2024 for this Hawkeye fan....)

Rocky Top shredded them in all phases

"Rocky Top shredded them in all phases"

Except punting. Iowa had more yards punting in the game (and in the season, I think,) than total yards of offense.

As one social media commenter put it, anyone who lost to Iowa this season should have to count it as two losses.

Iowa's punter set the record for most punting yards this year.

Their offense was hilariously bad. Prior to the year the OC (who is the HC's son) had his contract amended to say that if Iowa didn't average 25 ppg this year, he'd get fired. Midway through the year they weren't close to that and the school announced he wouldn't be back in 2024. Iowa managed to win games this year where they scored 15, 10, 15 and 13 points. In 10 of their 14 games they scored 20 points or less. They were shutout 3 times.

Despite that, Iowa still managed to win the Big 10 West which meant they got to play Michigan. The betting line for Iowa's team total in that game was 6.5, meaning the bookmakers weren't sure they'd get a TD. For the first half, their team total was 0.5 points. For reference, when Portland State played Oregon this year, the spread was 48 and total was 64.5. That means the projected score was 56-8. So the books expected Iowa to do as well offensively against Michigan (again, in a conference championship game) as Portland St against Oregon. To the surprise of nobody, Iowa didn't score in that game.