I waited a few days before hitting up 11W. Largely because the shock hadn't worn off, but mostly because I was driving back from Iowa yesterday and when I got home my kids wanted to hang out with dad.

My wife is an Iowa alum so we had this game circled for a while. The drive down she made a self-deprecating joke about how bad the game was going to be. I played the good husband card and said that I felt Iowa could hang around but honestly, the talent was going to win the day once the energy wore out. We hit up Iowa City on Friday night, OSU fans were there, loud, and as usual confident in the outcome of the game.

Fast forward to Saturday. I woke up and looked outside and my heart sunk. There was just this feeling. I couldn't shake it. It was foggy, cloudy, misty, and kind of gross. It had IOWA written all over it. We packed up the car and made the quick drive to my wife's favorite tailgate spot, we set up shop and the party started. I'll tell you this guys, I talked to a lot of Iowa fans. To a person, they said this was going to go the way no one expected. They all felt it, frankly, I did too. At around 12 my wife asked me what I thought. I told her the truth-this isn't going to end well for Ohio State. Kinnick has this effect on people. Bad Iowa teams forget how bad they are for 60 minutes, good opponents forget how good they are for 60 minutes. What ensued next was the sum of all fears. As we approached our seats I told my wife verbatim "First score wins. If OSU hits a big one, the crowd gets taken out of it, it's going to get ugly. If Iowa holds and keeps the fans around, we're in trouble" (I NEVER USE WE)

Then it happened. JT made an ill-advised throw, Iowa made a nice play and the crowd never sat down.

There were moments when it looked like the deep ball would keep OSU into it but honestly, after the second pick, the atmosphere was unlike anything I'd been apart of outside of the Shoe. 

Anyone been to Kinnick? It's the damned twilight zone. The fans appear to be RIGHT on top of the action, it has this weird vertical set up where the stands seem to go on endlessly, and it just feels like a really damned hard place to win a game.

Two things happened on Saturday. Iowa-first and foremost-played a near flawless game. I asked fans around me how this team lost to NU, they simply said: "That's life under Ferentz". The second thing that happened-Ohio State played its absolute worst game under Urban Meyer. Combine that with the weirdness that is Kinnick Stadium and that's what you get. A beat down from a team that simply was not scared of the things they should have been scared of.

As for the fans-Iowa fans are truly among the best I've come across. As we left the stadium, I must have heard more "Thanks for coming, hope you enjoyed it!" and "You guys have a hell of a team! Come back anytime" than anything else and none of it was sarcastic. They are some good people.

As for the season? It happens bros. Win out, get the B1G Title, end up in Pasadena. Not a terrible way to close out the campaign. Not what we wanted, not what we expected after the PSU game, but certainly a fine season. Don't forget...Urban Meyer is still chasing that elusive 10th loss as OSU head coach....that's still pretty damned awesome.