If you forgot over the past six weeks to notice Iowa football amid the noise blasting from other corners of the Big Ten, well, you’re forgiven.
The Hawkeyes, who went 12-2 and marched to Pasadena for the first time in 25 years -- only to get blown out by Stanford in the Rose Bowl -- quietly went about business in recruiting as a few of their competitors generated daily headlines.
Iowa signed 24 players last week. In predictable fashion, 22 of the signees earned three stars in the ESPN rankings. It means one of two things:
Either the recruiting experts and analysts made little sense of the future Hawkeyes, so they all get stamped with the average, wait-and-see label; or Iowa coaches know exactly who they are, who they want, where they want to go, and, presumably, how to get there.