The ranks of the unbeaten unexpectedly shrunk by one this afternoon as Northwestern stunned Iowa 17-10 in Iowa City.
The Hawkeyes had lived a charm life all season, coming back from deficits time and time again, but their luck ran out today, in large part because of injury. Starting quarterback Ricky Stanzi suffered an ankle injury early on, didn't return, and the Hawkeyes were never able to muster much of a scoring threat after the injury.
Credit the Wildcats, though, as they were dealing with their own injury issues at QB.
Starter Mike Kafka injured a hamstring last week, then tweaked it in the early goings today. He was replaced by Dan Persa, who promptly banged the thumb on his throwing hand and left the game. He was replaced by a gimpy Kafka.
The win makes the Wildcats bowl eligible, while the loss dashes any hopes the Hawkeyes had of sneaking into the national championship game.
The loss leaves Florida, Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State as the remaining unbeatens. Texas and Boise State have already played and won this weekend.
After all the beneficial calls Iowa has been getting, I am surprise they somehow did not catch a few breaks this weekend. The BigTen just cost themselves millions of dollars especially with Penn State losing today too.
Yeah, Iowa had some calls go their way all year....however, they had plenty go uncalled today. They had a touchdown called back on another phantom holding call.
The Big Ten should really take a good hard look at their officials!!!! Today they S--KED!!!!
@ NTMID8R3: Just an FYI, but you can feel free to type out the word "sucked". This isn't church.
Wouldn't want to offend any of those highly trained Big Ten officials!!!