ROSE BOWL : A Black Day Down on Farm : Hawkeye Loss Will Hit Iowa Where It Hurts--in Morale

Let’s face it: For morale purposes alone, Iowa needed to win the Rose Bowl more than the other guys did.

The Hawkeyes are not a team as much as an obsession to their people, many of whom are feeling a pain that transcends any strip of grass.

In a time of economic strife, the Hawkeyes had become an elixir to those who swear by Black and Gold.

When the Hawkeyes played, those people didn’t think about farming so much.

UCLA? Well, it’ll probably be back in the Rose Bowl next year. So what good did Wednesday’s 45-28 pounding of the Hawkeyes do, anyway?

This was supposed to be Iowa’s season. The Hawkeyes were the ones with the 10-1 record and the No. 3 national ranking.

Why did the Hawkeyes have to pick this season to fall on their faces?

Star tailback Ronnie Harmon fumbling four times in the first half? That just doesn’t happen.

Second-string tailbacks running past All-American linebackers? You’ve got to be kidding.

“I think I could have ran through some of those holes,” Iowa Coach Hayden Fry said of some of the holes the UCLA line was opening.

Iowa supposedly did all the right things this season. The Hawkeyes swore off Disneyland and the rest and holed themselves up in their hotel rooms.

But, as a nation witnessed, it didn’t really matter.

The Hawkeyes said afterward that they had been as ready as a team could be for this game, that Fry’s decision to shield his players was the only thing to do.

When it came time to play, when pregame distractions were no longer a story, the Hawkeyes botched it up.

Iowa players swore they were loose. But they didn’t play like it.

With their performance, they left the Big Ten wondering if it will ever again beat the Pac-10 in the Rose Bowl. That’s 15 wins in the last 17 years for the “other guys,” and yes, the Big Ten is counting.

Others will wonder if this, once and for all, will stop all the talk about what a Big Ten team should do before the Rose Bowl.

“I just didn’t think this would happen today,” said Iowa linebacker George Davis, who watched as the Bruins ran up 488 yards on his beloved defense. “They just kind of shoved it down our throat.”

Still, Fry defended his Rose Bowl approach.

“Do you realize what the score would have been if we would have let them have fun, if they had been out all night long honky-tonking?” he said. “I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb.”

Fry knows that there’s probably more to it than that. A team from one conference doesn’t keep beating a team from another just because it slept better the night before.

Last time around for Iowa, in the Rose Bowl of 1982, Fry let his team have a ball and ended up losing, 28-0.

This time, he kept it under wraps and lost by 17 points.

So what’s the point in trying?

“It just wasn’t our day,” Fry said. “UCLA was the superior football team, and I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you why they had only won eight games this season, either.”

Maybe, like dropping farm prices, the agony of a conference in a particular bowl is a reality that the Big Ten must face. “We were relaxed out there,” said Chuck Long, Iowa’s All-American quarterback. “It’s not like we went out there and choked.”

A lot of people will see it differently, however. And all the people from Iowa can do is pack up and go home and wait for next year. They’ll be waiting, for sure. After all, for many, what else is there to wait for?

“The state has been so supportive,” Iowa receiver Bill Happel said. “We wanted to win for them. The fans have always stayed with us.”