It's A Brand New World

Eighteen years ago — good lord — a few bloggers took a look around Iowa's corner of the internet and didn't really see anywhere that fans were talking about the Hawkeyes the way we wanted to: with fervor, jokes, and room for everyone. That idea begat The Hawkeye Compulsion, which quickly became Black Heart Gold Pants, which morphed into Go Iowa Awesome and now this last, final iteration.

Every step required not only hard work on our part, but support from people who saw our vision the same way we did — a true blessing in this increasingly profit-driven media landscape. I still vividly remember staring at the referral links on StatCounter the first time Brian Cook linked us on MGoBlog: was this seriously a hundred pageviews? In an hour? From one dude?!

Happily, our standards of success grew, and by 2010 we weren't just stacking pageviews, we were coordinating nearly $100,000 of donations to the UI Children's Hospital through Touchdowns for Kids. None of that happens without our robust, generous, and (presumably) breathtakingly attractive community of likeminded fans.

We've gotten to do so many incredible things since then. We've seen women's basketball put over 50,000 fans in a football stadium on a random spring morning. We've podcasted with a WWE Superstar. We've witnessed a White Out at Penn State.

Eighteen years is an eternity, in both the NCAA and in publishing. And now, in true college football fashion, our magical run ends... with a buyout. Presumably Charlie Weis will be inviting us to the group chat soon.

As publisher of this website, I have got to thank my fellow owner, managing editor and absolute rock Ross Binder first and foremost. Ross started as a FanPoster covering Hawkeye wrestling, and it was quickly apparent that his voice fit perfectly with ours, and has ever since. Nobody around here has done more to earn a break this fall than Ross, and he has my undying professional and personal respect.

We wish Eliot Clough a fond farewell and the best of luck at his new opportunity, which he should be able to announce soon. Hawkeye Beacon also wouldn't have run without him, and we look forward to his coverage for years to come.

Another one of my sincerely proudest moments as a publisher over the last few years has been providing a home for Mark Hasty and Pickin' on the Big Ten. "Great [X], even better human being" is the type of sentiment that gets thrown around a lot, probably too much, but I don't know a better way to describe Mark.

I will pound the table for Bobby Loesch — anyone can write in stream of consciousness, but few streams are better to stick your (metaphorical) feet in than his. I'll take one writer who expresses their passions as enthusiastically as Bobby does than a hundred Stephens A. Smith and his ilk of hot-take blowhards.

Braydon Roberts has been one of my favorite writers to work with and see grow, full stop. Our women's basketball coverage was better because of him, and seeing him at the Cleveland Final Four, you'd never know it was his first big event or that he wasn't doing this for a living.

It would have been easy for Eric Ruttenberg to half-ass an unsexy assignment like olympic sports, but every sport is important to the athletes and coaches involved and we never once had to impress that fact on Eric. That may not sound like much — "nothing bad happened!" is the sort of praise normally reserved for old cars and sketchy in-laws — but gosh, I hope I get to read Eric's stuff somewhere else, sometime soon.

There's so many more people to thank. We could spend another couple thousand words on that part alone. But in the interest of keeping this thing moving, on behalf of everyone who has written for us over the years, we owe a gigantic thank-you to every coach, athlete, parent and staff member who took time out of their days to help us tell the fullest, most exciting, most accurate stories possible.

One of our overarching editorial planks was to write as if the athletes' family members would be reading — because, in all likelihood, they were. And as our run on Rivals comes to an end, I am proud to say that we never had to retract any news, correct any record or justify an editorial stance to any athlete or their family.

As journalists, we publish verifiable truths, but as message board owners we also trade in secrets. And since we're handing over our keys, here's a free secret about the media world, one we didn't expect to learn when we took the Rivals contract in 2023: it's nicer than you think.

To be clear, the coaches rarely thought highly of us — we've gotten death stares from just about every Iowa coach at a presser some point — but if there was ever an adversarial atmosphere among the media, it never made our way to us, not even in passing.

Thanks to veterans like Scott Dochterman, Mike Hlas and Chad Leistikow — all worth every ounce of respect they command — the staff rarely needed to lift a finger to enforce standards of press box etiquette at any Iowa game. Those guys won't be around forever — hopefully they all eventually do something cool like retire to the Driftless — but even as the guard ever changes, I am certain the standards will remain the same.

Before we sign off, though, one little bit about the Hawkeye sports landscape laid out for all of you: this could all work.

Iowa's not a Texas, or Ohio State, or Alabama, or Oregon. There's no oil money here, no local pipeline of five-star talent, no oceanfront or mountain views to sell to starry-eyed prospects. Despite all this, the Iowa athletic department punches well above its weight class, but that's a pleasant admission that Iowa's not a heavyweight — and in this new era of college sports, budget sizes matter more than ever.

But still: this. could. all. work.

Kirk Ferentz has his best coaching staff since the early days, even after the departure of Ladell Betts to the NFL, and he has his best quarterback since CJ Beathard in South Dakota State transfer Mark Gronowski. The offensive line is the question mark, and that's not a great question to be awaiting an answer, but a situation like this is where we find out if fourth-year offensive line coach George Barnett is worth the esteem his players and fellow staff members have in him. He's coaching His Guys, and there's enough experience left that 2025 shouldn't be a repeat of the early 2020s.

Women's basketball in Iowa City has never had the ear of elite prep talent the way Jan Jensen has. Yes, Caitlin Clark was a once-in-lots-of-lifetimes talent, but incoming five-star guard Addie Deal is the sort of player Jensen can build her dynasty around. Women's college basketball is exploding nationwide, and the University of Iowa was its proof of concept as a mainstream draw. Jensen knows that as well as her mentor Lisa Bluder did, and as long as Carver-Hawkeye Arena remains a loud, proud home of great basketball, its status as a destination venue in women's basketball will continue unabated.

Ben McCollum has the steepest hill to climb among the "revenue" sports — fans grew tired of Fran McCaffery (and vice versa), and Drake's head coach was the needed reset-button hire. The last time Iowa made a reactionary hire in MBB, it double-flushed Steve Alford and sprayed the poo-pourri for Todd Lickliter, and the less said about that era the better. McCollum is not Lickliter, and he's definitely not Alford; if anything, he's the next Tom Davis taking over for George Raveling. From here it'll be about attracting talent, and that's enough of a financial matter these days that Darian DeVries opted for the lighter lift in Bloomington. Which is to say, success is up to the big-bag donors as much as butts in seats or whatever.

Tom Brands and Clarissa Chen are still the stewards to trust on the mat. Fans expect to compete for national championships on both sides, and Iowa is still a national championship contender. That hasn't changed in decades, and it doesn't stand to change now.

Rick Heller still has Iowa baseball on the cusp of national relevance, all while long-overdue renovations continue to churn.

Track is doing great things. Field hockey's still a beast. Gymnastics and volleyball are finding their footing as fan-friendly sports.

This could all work.

Indeed, it's a brand new era of college sports, and for all the things that'll look different going forward, some things never change: the squeak of sneakers on the court, the smell of charcoal on a fall Saturday morning, and — crucially — the relentless optimism of every offseason.

It's a brand new year, a brand new world. Everyone's undefeated and the future is bright. Iowa 0-0: what's more exciting than that?

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