Iowa finally has to ‘pay the piper’

The Iowa Hawkeyes have been living la vida loca trailing in 7 of 8 games at half-time but still posting an undefeated 9-0 record, until today when Northwestern handed the Hawks their first loss of the year, knocking them out of the Big-10 race and BCS Championship game all at once. It was the same ol’ story for Iowa with way too many turnovers, and the huge loss of Stanzi just before half to an injury (from which he would not return) was too much to overcome. So now the game later between OSU and PSU should be for all of the marbles in the big-10, and the dream season Iowa is over.
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BCS Contenders take the afternoon off while the SEC West is decided

After three consecutive weeks of huge impact games in college football, the teams fighting for the ‘elite eight’ spots in the BCS get a breather before heading for the home stretch. Florida gets 2-7 Vandy in the swamp, Texas host 5-3 UCF, Iowa host mighty Nortwestern (5-3), and Cincinnati has a very emotionally unstable 4-4 UCONN team coming to town for a visit. So don’t expect any shakeups in those matchups even though all bets are off in any game Iowa plays, but for the most part this will be good week for the schools to fine tune, rest up, or get those pesky suspensions out of the way before the curtail holiday and rivalry games. Amidst all of our presumptions is one of the biggest games on the year in the SEC which will decide the SEC West representative in the SEC Championship game and continues the series of BCS elimination games as #9 LSU travels to #3 Alabama. The loser is surely out of the NGC race and possibly a BCS game in general. Conversely, the winner solidifies their BCS merits and is almost assured of a spot in the final eight. Even with that as a given, it means even more for the Tide, as win puts them one game away from the big prize, a birth in the National Championship Game, and will also give them an opportunity to return the favor to Texas, who “leaped frogged” them on a Saturday where both teams won. On the national scale it almost assures that the winner of the SEC will not have a loss and close the door on the chance of a non-BCS team sneaking in the back door, and thus leaving all of the pressure on Texas to walk their own path to Pasadena. The Big-10 clash between Ohio St. and Penn St. that was on everyone’s calendar has lost its luster for those outside the conference as both former BCS place holders now come in at #16 and #11 respectively, with the automatic bid the only keeping them in the mix. Who do you think will slip out of the final 8 by the end of the year? Chat live with fans from both Alabama and LSU in the live game chatroom, or in any of the quick links: