Not all states are created equal when it comes to producing Division I football talent. And, unfortunately, the state of Iowa is not a top producer. Of the 8 states in which Big Ten schools inhabit, only Wisconsin ranks worse in terms of producing BCS-conferences football players (Minnesota is tied with Iowa). For this reason, recruiting the talent that is in-state is vitally important to the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Top Iowa Talent - 2010:
The good news is, Iowa's coaching staff is doing a great job recruiting the best instate talent for the class of 2010. The Hawkeyes have already picked up verbal commitments from James Morris, Matt Hoch, Brandon Scherff, and Austin Vier. That is 4 of the top 10 Iowa prospects as rated by Rivals.com. Iowa also has a good shot with Andre Dawson and an okay chance with A.J. Derby. Only one in the top 10, Kirby Van Der Kamp, a kicker, has committed elsewhere. Scout features a similar top 10 in Iowa list in which the Hawkeyes have commitments from 3 of the 10.

Rank	Rivals	Scout
1	A.J. Derby	Andre Dawson
2	James Morris	A.J. Derby
3	Andre Dawson	Brandon Sherff
4	Matt Hoch	James Morris
5	Brandon Scherff	Matt Hoch
6	James Kohler	James Kohler
7	Austin Vier	Zach McCabe
8	Jacob Gannon	Cole Heissel
9	Jake Farley	Brock Massner
10	Kirby Van Der Kamp	Jake Farley

Iowans on the Roster:
This is definitely not the first year that Kirk Ferentz and his staff have been successful recruiting in state. In the past 3 years, 50% of the total in-state BCS-conference talents have ended up Hawkeyes. On the current roster there are 52 players from the state of Iowa (out of 114...that's 45.6%). Of the current projected starter for the first game of the year (so Vandervelde and Calloway are not in there), 5 are Iowans: Daniel Murray, Jordan Bernstine, Tyler Sash, Brett Greenwood, and Pat Angerer.

Considering the lack of football that come out of Iowa, I'd say Kirk Ferentz has done a great job getting the guys to join the Hawkeyes and he's certainly developed their talent. I'm also excited about the 4 in-state guys that have committed for 2010. I'm hopeful about Derby and Dawson as well. Go state of Iowa!

There's a new link in the navigation menu for Fight For Iowa - Mobile. The mobile site is nothing fancy, but you can at least check for new blog posts. I'm working on adding more features. So far I just have the 2009 Iowa Football Schedule but I plan on adding the depth chart and maybe a few other things. Anyway, if you're big on browsing the web from your phone be sure to save this link: http://fightforiowa.mofuse.mobi/

The water tower adjacent to Kinnick Stadium is iconic. It is conspicuously viewable from in and around the stadium and most college football fans know it from seeing it on TV, in the background in video games, and in countless Kinnick photos. Though the topic is a favorite amoung Hawkeye fans, little often comes of the painting discussions. Last year, one fan sent a letter to University President Sally Mason requesting the tower be painted with a large Tigerhawk. Mason apparently had better things to do and nothing came of his attempts…that is until now. On Monday, Iowa's Athletic Direction Gary Barta announced that he was in favor of painting the water tower adjacent to Kinnick Stadium with a Hawkeye logo. He also said, "If a petition gets signed, I may join the fans."

Petition:
Well, it didn't take long for fans to catch wind of Barta's painting endorsement and there is now an online petition. The petition already has about 1,000 e-signatures and the number keeps growing as many fans are putting links up on FaceBook, sending emails to friends and family, and sharing it on mulitple threads on the Hawkeye messages boards. Browsing through some of the signatures, most look legitimate and most are in favor of a Tigerhawk being painted upon the water tower in some combination of black and gold. There are however, a few e-sigs out there that are suspicious. They are doing a pretty good job of removing the obvious jokes (and I saved a few!), but there are still some out there if you go digging for them. Here's a few of the more interesting ones:

806. Stanley Hawk - Suggested Design: a nice picture of Jake Christensen (was deleted)
725. Steve Alford - Suggested Design: Steve Alford's Face (also deleted)
928. Bill Heineman - Suggested Design: Tiger Hawk, in flight, chewing on a badger, with a cyclone in one claw and a nittany lion in the other and a pile of mascot bones and remains of all the rest of the teams we destroy on the ground. As well as a monster sized GO HAWKS!!!!!!!!
379. Brett Bielema - Suggested Design: IOWA with Nike swoosh underneath (missed opportunity there with a Tigerhawk tattoo joke)
271. Jeff Stickel - Suggested Design: Iowa State Logo (boo Jeff Stickel!)

Design:
The overwhelming favorite choice for the design to be painted on the water tower is of a Tigerhawk, either gold with a black ground as pictured above, or the opposite black with a gold background. I like the idea of the Tigerhawk, but I'm not sure how well it would fit on the water tower. If you take a look at the water tower you can see that the support legs come about halfway up the tank. The cuts significantly into the space you can have a painting (and have it look good). If you want to place a picture so it is directly facing the inside of Kinnick, one of the post is right in the middle of where the pictures would go. You can see it in the picture above, the Tigerhawk goes right over that post. For that reason, I am in favor of the block "I" that you see on so many baseball caps. Take a look at the Idaho water tower to see what I'm talking about. In addition to the Tigerhawk and the block "I", there are some other creative design ideas floating around. Check out the photoshop posted in this thread. Hawk Central also has a good paint the water tower thread going with pictures of other university water tower and even has a link to a water tower painting company.

I'm very interested to watch this story grow. There would definitely be some potential for a petition to get a lot of signatures (like 70,585) at a home football game and I think that would be hard to ignore. Especially if someone can find some financial backing for this project. Anyway, I'm doing my part by adding my name to the petition and adding a link to it on this blog.

Today was the second and final day of the 2009 Big Ten Media Days. I was going to try to post last night with yesterday's information, but that didn't happen, so I'll try to get to everything in this one post. Kirk Ferentz actually provided a lot of information in some of the side interviews. His main press conference (which you can see here) was not spectacular, however. Anyway, to start things off check out the 3 videos posted on On Iowa of Kirk Ferentz at media days.

Suspensions:
Kyle Calloway - 1 game
James Ferentz - 1 game
Shaun Prater - 2 games

I don't think that will hurt the team too much. The offensive line should be fine without Calloway or Ferentz for the first game against UNI. It would be nice to have Prater back for Iowa State just to have some more depth in the defensive backfield, but it should still be okay. Ferentz said there's still a battle between Prater and Berstine that's "wide open," so we'll see what happens week 3. I'm guessing Bernstine will be the the #1 but we'll still see Prater in some of the nickle or dime packages.

Center:
It sounds like there is going to be quite the position battle at center. However, one name not in the mix is Julian Vandervelde. Vandervelde will not move to center, even though they experimented with that in the spring. I wonder if that has something to do with his injury. Also, apparently Josh Koeppel is one to watch for this fall. Rafeal Eubanks is currently the #1 guy, but Coach Ferentz said that Koeppel has looked good. That'll probably make a lot of the Eubanks haters happy. Eubanks definitely had his bad moments as Iowa struggled in 2007, but he does bring a lot of experience. I'm also interested to see how James Ferentz fits into the battle. I think the 1 game suspension definitely hurts his chances of earning the starting job. He probably would have at least seen some action in clean up time against UNI. But now, he'll likely have to earn his time during practice. I think there is still an outside chance that he'll end up the starter mid-season or so depending on how the offensive line is gelling.

Jewel Hampton:
We know the whole Jewel Hampton injury thing has been a "circus" (Ferentz's word). And, I think for now the story will finally be laid to rest. Kirk Ferentz said on Monday that Hampton will be full speed by next week. That sounds like perfect timing to me as practice for the 2009 season begins on August 5 (that's also Iowa's Media Day). Hampton's health was also confirmed by the man himself on FaceBook, saying his latest MRI was clean and he's "GOOD-TO-GO!!"

Angerer, Moeaki, Edds Videos:

• Angerer talking defense
• Another Angerer video
• Moeaki's video
• Edds on being at Media Days

Preseason Picks:
Preseason Favorites: 1. Ohio State, 2. Penn State, 3. Michigan State (the media likes those state school apparently) OSU's Terrel Pryor is Preseason Offensive Player of the Year and MSU's Greg Jones is the Defensive Player of the Year. I still don't get why people would put MSU at #3 over Iowa (at least Rittenberg got it right). I know it's just the preseason and I should take an example from Kirk Ferentz and not care, but it still think these people got it wrong. Anyway, on to more wrongness...Pryor as the POPOTY? I guess the media likes his potential, but there are much more proven players to choose from in the Big Ten…Royster, Benn, Clark, throw in Stanzi for a homer pick, etc…

Lots of links today...

Rivals - Iowa #18
Rivals.com has placed the Iowa Hawkeyes #18 in its preseason top 120 countdown. The site has a good and accurate, though brief, breakdown of the team. To summarize, Stanzi needs to hold onto the ball, Bulaga is really good, Keenan Davis has a chance to be a play maker, look for Jewel Hampton and Tony Moeaki to emerge, the receivers are a strength on offense (okay...I'm not sure I totally agree with that), the center position is the biggest question on offense, Iowa plays a straight forward 4-3, Spievey is a stud, Mycah Hyde and Steve Bigach are newcomers to watch, Klug could emerge as a good player on the line, the linebackers are a very good unit, and King and Kroul leave a void in the middle.

CFN - Big Ten Preview
College Football News has a decent preview of the Big Ten for 2009. What is absolutely crazy though, it is picks for the year's schedule. Illinois, Michigan State, Ohio State, and Penn State are all predicted to go 10-2. Are you kidding me? I know Illinois has everyone back on offense, but they were 5-7 last year. And Michigan State...how are they going to win 1 more game than last year when 87% of their total offense (Ringer and Hoyer) aren't on the team any more. Anyway, maybe I'm completely wrong and my endless rant on MSU being overrated will come back to haunt me, so I'll move on for now. Iowa is predicted to go 8-4, losing all of the conference road games. I don't really have a problem with that prediction, though I think it's more likely Iowa will split the road games and maybe lose one we shouldn't...9-3 sound more like it to me.

Barta is pro paint the water tower
For all you out there that are passionate about getting the iconic water tower outside of Kinnick paint black and gold, Iowa's Athletic Director Gary Barta is right there with you. Barta said, "I’ve been a proponent of putting a logo on the water tower for some time." He's also willing to sign a petition. Somebody better get on that.

On Iowa - Kirk Ferentz Interview
Before the Media Days extravaganza (I still have more to post...hopefully soon) Marc Morehouse had a long and in depth phone interview with Kirk Ferentz. Coach offers his insight on Twitter (he hates it), recruiting, the NFL, parenting, and more in this excellent interview. This is a must read and probably doesn't deserve to be buried deep in this post.

Princeton Review - Top Party Schools
The University of Iowa comes in a #12 on the annual top party schools list by the Princeton Review. Our friends out east, Penn State come in at #1, Wisconsin is #8, and also in the top 20 is Indiana at #14. Just don't remind any of the football players of this ranking. They can party after the season is over.