Love it or leave it, Ricky Stanzi #1

At least one site thinks Ricky Stanzi is the number one quarterback in this year's NFL draft. Fantasy Football Metrics have declared Stanzi as the top QB based on their own formula. It was Stanzi's Wonderlic scored of 30 that sealed the deal. A 30 is a very solid score for a QB on the Wonderlic. FFM says that 25 is the magic number for an NFL quarterback and that each of the past 10 Super Bowl winning QBs have had a Wonderlic score of at least 25.

Stanzi joined a rather exclusive QB list that includes only 14 other QBs of all the ones we have studied (based on advanced passing metrics, strength of competition played, key physical "measureables" and NFL Combine data). These 14 College QB's were ones that had no statistical or physical "red-flag" measurements in any category of our research that we felt were key in projecting them to the NFL based on all of our data history.

Jewel Hampton to Southern Illinois

Jewel Hampton has officially enrolled in classes at SIU and joined the football team. He has already started taking classes so will be able to participate in spring practice. Hampton decided to transfer from Iowa in December. It was a mutual decision by Hampton and the Iowa coaches as things did not go in the right direction after Hampton's impressive freshman year. He suffered two season-ending knee injuries in back-to-back years and was also arrested for public intox/under-age in a bar and served a 1-game suspension.

SIU is an FCS school, so Hampton won't have to sit out a year. The Salukis main focus with Hampton right now is making sure he knee is healthy and that he will be ready to play this fall.

I couple of weeks ago I looked into some statistics around returning players. It left a kind of bleak picture for 2011 as there is a large amount of production that Iowa must replace next year, especially on offense. One thing I noticed in the Insight Bowl, however, is that there were a lot of younger players stepping up and making big plays. It also would make sense to me that younger players have a larger potential to improve throughout the season have a bigger impact. So, I wanted to look a little bit deeper into a couple of offensive statistics to see how players returning in 2011 performed throughout the year. I didn't look at passing yards, because it was basically all Stanzi the entire year...so I just did Rushing and Receiving Yards.

A big change was announced to the Iowa football schedule yesterday. Iowa and Nebraska will square off on the Friday following Thanksgiving for the at least the next two years.

Here's the word from on high:

When the Universities of Iowa and Nebraska meet on the football field this fall as Big Ten Conference rivals for the first time, the game will take place on Friday, Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving.

The Hawkeyes and Cornhuskers announced Monday that both the 2011 contest, in Lincoln, and the 2012 game, in Iowa City, will be played on Friday. The teams will meet in Kinnick Stadium on Nov. 23, 2012.

This is somewhat of a surprise coming from the Iowa Athletic Department as under Ferentz, the football program has been very "traditional." However, given that things is the have been moving more in the non-traditional direction for the conference (and thus Iowa) it's not that surprising. There are more night games, conference games after Thanksgiving, a new conference championship game, etc... So a Friday game doesn't seem like such a far stretch.

It makes a ton of sense for Nebraska, who has been playing these Black Friday games against their rival for the past 20 years. When Nebraska-Oklahoma was a big deal, the teams faced off on Friday from 1990-1995. Then came the Big 12 and Oklahoma was replaced with Colorado, but the game remained on Friday.

With spring practice just a few weeks away I decided it was time to roll the blog forward to the 2011 season. I updated the main schedule and roster pages as well as the ones in the sidebar.

Quick Thoughts on the Schedule

This is the first year of the 12-team B1G TEN. Iowa, in the Legends, will play Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Northwestern every year. The other annual game will be against Purdue as Iowa's cross-over rival. Iowa's other two cross-over games are actually quite favorable with Penn State and Indiana (which means no Ohio State or Wisconsin).

The non-conference schedule sets up nicely and gives Iowa a good shot at a 4-0 start to the season. Tennessee Tech and Louisiana-Monroe should be easy enough. Iowa State could provide a good test in Ames...though the Cyclones have a lot of reloading to do, especially on offense. Pittsburgh has been going through a coach carousel this off-season so could still be adjusting to a new coach so early in the season.