2/25/2013: State of the Big Ten, Volume 88 (premium)
Posted on 25. Feb, 2013 by admin in Iowa Basketball, Iowa Football
Every Monday, we will be running a weekly series titled “State of the Big Ten,” which will be made available to all members of HawkeyeDrive.com. This series of columns will focus on one major headline regarding the conference and go in-depth on the subject at hand.
By Brendan Stiles
HawkeyeDrive.com
This week’s edition is a follow-up on what was written last week and essentially a mea culpa. Less than 24 hours after last week’s version of State of the Big Ten was published, the conference made a joint decision along with Iowa and Nebraska to push their game scheduled for Feb. 21 back two days later to Feb. 23, which was past Saturday.
As it turned out, Winter Storm Q (as it was named) didn’t end up having quite the impact as originally expected on the Lincoln, Neb., area last week. Yet kudos needs to be given to all parties involved in pushing the game back from a Thursday night to a Saturday afternoon.
There were sacrifices made as a result of doing this. From a TV perspective, the game went from being televised nationally on ESPN2 to only being carried via BTN2Go, which isn’t necessarily accessible to everyone in the states of Iowa and Nebraska.
From a recruiting perspective, the head coaches — Iowa’s Fran McCaffery and Nebraska’s Tim Miles — probably were forced to re-arrange their travel schedules as both teams had a bye originally scheduled for that weekend and both probably had recruiting trips planned.
Iowa’s travel schedule was completely thrown out of whack. The Hawkeyes had to fly to Lincoln that Friday morning and were delayed flying home after the game.
But these sacrifices all pale in comparison to what the fans and other game day personnel would’ve had to go through on Thursday had the game gone on as scheduled and had Winter Storm Q had the effect on Lincoln that it was projected to have when the postponement was originally announced. This is why the decision to push the game back was wise and why all parties involved deserve kudos.
Even though the amount of snow accumulated wasn’t anywhere close to what was originally forecasted, the amount of wind in the area would’ve made driving a challenge for anyone, especially with snow flurries that were in the forecast. Instead, this game road crews in both Iowa and Nebraska enough time to make sure Interstate 80 — which connects both Iowa City and Lincoln — was cleared off as best as it possibly could be.
Given past precedence by the conference, the fact this move occurred is somewhat surprising. But again, both teams weren’t scheduled to play last weekend, which made the move sensical to make. It also didn’t seem to have any sort of effect on either team as far as the game itself went.
The safety of every party involved was put into account. This is far more important than making sure any sort of athletic event goes on as scheduled. It’s refreshing to see this be taken into account when the conference makes decisions such as this one.
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