Remember when Iowa was all embarrassed by the football players flashing unholy amounts of money and gang signs? No, the other time. Well, university officials remember too, and they're determined not to let it happen again. The University of Iowa instituted a social networking policy this week, and as law professor (and policy architect) Bill Hines explains, the sole target is PR:

"What we're concerned about is creating inappropriate material on a site that the public can access and associate with the athletic program," Hines said.

Sure, the policy does nothing to address the lapses in discipline that precipitated the pictures, but it's not supposed to. That's what actual conduct codes are for. But as new avenues for PR embarrassment proliferate, it seems only in a school's best interests to curtail public access to their players. That's completely within every athletic department's modus operandi to begin with. This policy, therefore, is less a hastily applied band-aid and more the natural end result of the coexistence of Facebook and college athletics.

Personally, I'm sorry to see the policy in place, as I've mentioned elsewhere. I love discord and hilarity, and embarrassing Facebook pictures accomplish both in giant quantities. Nonetheless, the only truly remarkable aspect of Iowa's decision is that more schools haven't made it already.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

The phrase "three yards and a cloud of dust" was coined to describe Big Ten football, and it's still a fairly apt description of the conference's beefy, run-first mentality. That is not to say, however, that the forward pass is still a novelty in the Big Ten. Indeed, some pretty good quarterbacks have come out of the conference. A guy in New England comes to mind, for instance.

There was one particular day, though, when everything truly went berserk. That day was November 8, 1980. On that Saturday afternoon, the Big Ten's record for the most passing yards in a single game was broken not once but twice. In fact, not only was the conference's single-game passing record broken, so was the NCAA's. Even more improbably, two other national passing records were broken that day, though not by Big Ten quarterbacks.

Was there something in the air that day? Well, duh. Footballs were in the air. Everywhere.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

ABOVE: This plaque at Kinnick Stadium depicts Nile Kinnick's game-winning touchdown run against Notre Dame in 1939.

When Nile Kinnick graduated from the University of Iowa in 1940, he held three great distinctions. He was the student body president, he held a Phi Beta Kappa key, and he was the reigning Heisman Trophy winner. The last of these is the least relevant to understanding who Kinnick was.

It's not that he wasn't a tremendous football player. Hearing a description of his 1939 season is like reading one of those lists of Chuck Norris facts, except all this stuff actually happened. He played all but 18 minutes of the entire Hawkeye season. He was responsible for 16 of Iowa's 19 touchdowns, passing for 11 and running for 5 more. And those 11 touchdown passes came on only 31completions.

Kinnick wasn't just the Heisman winner in 1939; he was also named the AP's Male Athlete of the year. He beat Joe DiMaggio for that honor in a year Joltin' Joe hit .381. That's how good Nile Kinnick was.

For all he accomplished on the field, however, the real legacy of Nile Kinnick is found elsewhere. It's a story both inspiring and heartbreaking, one filled with what John Greenleaf Whitter called the saddest words of all: "It might have been."

Remember a few years ago, when Albert Young and sixty-six other Iowa running backs blew ligaments, sprained ankles, dislocated shoulders, and, in one memorable incident, tried to fly too close to the sun, melted the wax on his wings, and plummeted to his death? Iowa was forced to stick in some melanin-deprived farm boy who stood about yea high on a chicken and would frequently blow into the next county on particularly windy days.

That guy "led" the Hawkeyes in rushing that year with 227 yards; not surprisingly, Iowa finished second-worst nationwide in total rushing. (The 2007 Notre Dame team used its powerful suck to break the laws of physics, fininishing last that year and all other years.) Why is this relevant?

Uh...

IOWA CITY - Let's hope you weren't holding out hope for some big news from Kirk Ferentz's Wednesday news conference that would make you feel better about Iowa's running back situation.

It looks as if the starter for now might be Paki O'Meara.

Paki O'Meara is a sophomore walk-on from Cedar Washington. How confident is Kirk Ferentz in Paki O'Meara?

"If we have to go with him in the fall, we will.''

Have we mentioned that Jake Christensen was 87th in passer efficiency last year, the highlight being a game where he was 5 for 15 for 53 yards and still beat Michigan State? No? Well, consider it mentioned. Iowa: not on the way back.

But, hey, Paki's mom is named Taufau, so he's probably half-Samoan. So they've got that going for them.

Is your pension coughing up dust? Does the ATM say "You must be joking" whenever you try to make a withdrawal? Starting to wish you hadn't taken out that line of credit at First Consolidated Home Mortgage and Bait Shop? Be not afraid. There are still some tremendous bargains to be had in Big Ten football ... and some dangerous pitfalls for the unwary investor. It's still five months until the start of football season, but now is the time for you to do your due diligence on the opportunities available in Big Ten football this fall. Here's my list of buys, sells, and holds for 2008.

BUY: Minnesota. Now, let's get one thing clear. I'm not saying you should buy them as a potential 2008 Big Ten champion. I'm not even saying you should buy them as a bowl team. What I am saying is that they're bound to improve over their 1-11 record in 2007. The Gophers were a very young team last year who endured a lot of blowout losses but seemed to get better as the season went on. Too, they were in their share of really close games that just didn't go their way. But there's an X factor at work in 2008.

It's time for more college football news, and in the month of March, the news is always, always, always bad. It's never like "star quarterback now good at throwing with either hand" or "LaDainian Tomlinson granted extra year of NCAA eligibility"; no, someone's either getting arrested, injured, or thrown into a woodchipper (Kirby Freeman, you will be missed).

The latest participant in the cavalcade of follies is Arkansas linebacker Freddie Fairchild, a sophomore who led the team with 4.5 sacks (NOTE: not a misprint; that's four and one half, or the amount of fingers on a typical West Virginian's hand, and he led the entire team). Unfortunately, Freddie's shenanigans weren't cheeky and fun; his shenanigans were cruel and tragic. He's charged with suspicion of third-degree battery and false imprisonment.

We understand perfectly well that relationships can be contentious and unfulfilling. We know that sometimes, the man is neither the instigator nor the escalator of hostilities. That doesn't change a simple fact: hitting a woman at all is a reprehensible offense in and of itself. Causing "injuries to her head, face, extremities and pelvis" and "not [allowing] her to leave for several hours," then, is beyond the pale.

Incoming Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino has suspended Fairchild indefinitely, though we'd like to see more coaches take the same approach as Iowa's Kirk Ferentz; though his program has seen more criminal mischief than Season 2 of The Sopranos, when tailback Dana Brown was arrested for similar crimes, Brown was immediately dismissed from the program. Fairchild is merely suspended pending a review of whether or not he violated team rules. If domestic abuse isn't against team rules, now might be a good time for an amendment.

After the team's 13th and 14th arrests since April 2007, the entire Iowa football team has been arrested and placed in Guantanamo Bay, according to the Iowa City Police Department.

Citing rising administrative costs and an unwillingness to "wait for the inevitable," Iowa City Police Chief Niles Lemonparty was granted the warrant to apprehend all UI football players early Wednesday morning. The team awaits extradition at the Eastern Iowa Airport.

"Look," Lemonparty said, "we know they're going to get arrested. It's going to happen. Why sit around and wait for them to create innocent victims? This is the most proactive thing we've ever done for the city, and our citizens will appreciate it."

"Those guys are down in Gitmo now, where they can't hurt Americans anymore. That's not a violation of habeus corpus, that's a victory for national security."

Among the arrests that have plagued the Iowa football team recently:

• Public urination;
  
• Credit card fraud and fifth degree theft;
• Three counts of misdemeanor drug possession and tax stamp fraud;
• Throwing a tornado at an orphanage.

Head coach Kirk Ferentz, who was not brought into custody, was asked about the situation. "The entire team? Yeah, that sounds about right," he said. The coach said he plans to field a team of Buddhist monks, and that though they'll likely go 0-12 and set new records for futility, "[p]acifists don't get in bar fights. No question."

This is, of course, satire. If you believed anything presented in this article, you need to reevaluate your sense of reality. Please do not sue us.

The Texans need more competent players in their secondary. Iowa CB/Safety Charles Godfrey went to high school in Houston, is a huge Texans fan and wants to be drafted by them.

He loves them so much that he sports a Texans logo on his right hand. He didn't mention it to the Texans when they interviewed him.

If he becomes a Texan, maybe it is a win-win. If he goes to one of the other 31 teams in the league, well then, rookie hazing might be a little rough for a guy with a logo of another team on his hand.

For what it is worth, here's one of those internet scouting reports on Godfrey, and an interview where he says that his favorite team growing up was the Dallas Cowboys. Various reports predict that Godfrey could be drafted anywhere from the second to the fourth round.

One of the more recent trends in college football recruiting has been for coaches to bring groups of players to their homes. Those visits tend to involve leisure (time at the family pool, perhaps), recreation, dinner and time with the coach's family and maybe several assistants and their families.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz is a big practitioner of this recruiting method. Others I'm aware of doing so include Florida's Urban Meyer and Georgia's Mark Richt. The goal, perhaps, is for coach and recruits to all get to know each other a little more in a relaxed setting. It also probably helps quiet the alarm bells in concerned parents' heads who would rather their boys be staying out of trouble and in the care of adults than spending a night out on the town.

This also blends well with the more sanitized world of official visits detailed earlier. And so sometimes the most *interesting* stories emanating from formerly lurid trips is talk of a coach's prowess at . . . ping pong.

consider the wildest part of the biggest visit weekend at Georgia this recruiting season. On the night of Dec. 6, some of the nation's top players gathered at the home of Bulldogs coach Mark Richt and played ping-pong. That's right, ping-pong.

"[Richt] is pretty dominant. He didn't lose the entire night," said Bryce Ros, a Kennesaw, Ga., tight end who will officially sign next week to play for a coach who apparently is the best American table tennis player since Forrest Gump.

So there you go. Mark Richt will own you in ping pong. I'm not sure that's a good thing when trying to stroke the 17-year-old ego and encourage him to commit to your school, but it's safe and right in the wheelhouse of a sensible and decent coach and man like Richt.

Previously at FanHouse

Recruiting Tag
NCAA Recruiting Tag

It was announced today by Kirk Ferentz that three players from Iowa's football team were transferring, and will not be on the roster next season.

Dominique Douglas, Cedric Everson and Abe Satterfield will leave the University of Iowa, Ferentz said.

"Dominique Douglas, Cedric Everson and Abe Satterfield have decided to transfer from the University of Iowa and will continue their collegiate football careers elsewhere," Ferentz said in his statement. "None of the three will be on Iowa's roster when classes resume in January."

None of this should come as that big of a surprise. Satterfield and Everson haven't been in Ferentz' good graces for a while though, as he stated earlier this season, but never gave a reason for.

Douglas, however, we know his story. Dominique may have been Iowa's leading receiver as a freshman in 2006, but he never saw the field in 2007. Apparently coach Ferentz isn't a big fan of his players committing credit card fraud, which Douglas and teammate Anthony Bowman did back in May.

Douglas pled guilty to the charge earlier this month, and though he's still waiting to be sentenced, it won't likely be much after he pays Hatworld the $221.53 he owes them.