Pat Harty just published a post on Hawk Central titled "Pat Harty: Landing in-state recruits not as easy as it used to be" (yeah, his name is in the title...) about Iowa only holding 3 commitments (Jon Winsnieski, Trevon Young and Ike Boettger) from the 9 in-state players that currently hold Iowa offers. Sure, 3 for 9 sounds bad, but 4 of those players are part of the 2014 class, so still probably about a year away from making their college choices. I have no idea why they were included. So anyway, the real number we should be worrying about here is 3 of 5. Now, 3 of 5 doesn't sound so bad. 60%. Is recruiting in-state really any harder than it used to be?

I'm not sure what time frame Harty is using when he says, "All I’m saying is that I can’t remember when so many in-state recruits held Iowa offers without committing." He does mention Hayden Fry at one point, but I'm going to use the past 12 years since that is the data that's available on Rivals.com. In that time, Iowa has offered a scholarship to 76 in-state players and 56 of them committed to the Hawkeyes. So that's about 74%. Not too shabby.

Yesterday Jon Wisnieski became the 16th verbal commitment in Iowa's 2012 recruiting class. He's the third instate kid to commit in the past 2 weeks joining Trevon Young and Ike Boettger.

Wisnieski is a tight end from West Des Moines, IA. He grew up an Iowa State fan and his dad played baseball for the Cyclones. But Iowa was the first to offer and has a rock solid reputation for developing TEs into NFL talent under Kirk Ferentz. Plus, who really wants to go to Ames, right?

High School

Wisnieski attends Dowling High School. Last year he shared the spotlight with receiver Amara Darboh, who picked Michigan over Iowa last winter. Dowling went 9-3 last year and made it to the Iowa 4A quarter finals where they lost to eventual champs and crosstown rivals, Valley.

Wisnieski played both sides of the ball last year: TE on offense, and LB on defense. His number don't jump off the page. He had just 8 catches last year, but those were for 119 yards and 2 TDs. On defense he had 36 tackles and an interception returned for a TD.

We're finally getting to the point in summer where we're actually talking about football. FOOTBALL!! Woo. And with actual football still 51 days, 8 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds away from kickoff...right now there are just a bunch of previews and predictions. I've done my best to compile Iowa previews from a variety of sources. It is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you find some more good ones out there, let me know.

SBNation (Bill Connelly)

Link: The Preview
Prediction: 7/8 wins
National Rank: 43 (not in article, but Connelly's rankings on Football Study Hall)

Summary: This article focuses on Kirk Ferentz success, but also the cyclical nature of Iowa Football. Iowa may be in a down cycle, but has an easy enough schedule to win 8 games.

With so much turnover, both on the field and on the coaching staff, this will almost certainly be a bit of a rebuilding year for Ferentz, and one shouldn't entirely assume that the Hawkeyes will produce at a Top 45-50 level. Still, they would have to play quite poorly not to at least win six games and reach another bowl game.