Shite Site Is Differently Shitty

Several years ago, I made some remarks about a site named Hawkeye Lounge.  Politically it's changed quite a bit since then.  While there are still some fascists floating around there (Coff, NLP, Coff, Serge, Coff, Rolo, Coff, Serb, Coff...), the bulk of them are gone.  In fact the folks over there refer to those days as Old Halo, as opposed to the current version, New Halo.  Unfortunately it's managed to adopt a different form of toxicity.

As late as the late 80s, Iowa was a very different place than it is now.  Perpetually locked in a race with Minnesota for best public school system in the country.  Iowa and Michigan were in another race for best university hospital.  Iowa State had a vet program to die for.  You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a first tier liberal arts college.  It was a conservative place, but there was a deep respect for research, education, and innovation.

That was then.  But the religio-fascists had been infiltrating since the 70s, and by the 90s the train started going off the tracks.  Most of the state descended into MAGAt madness, becoming an ugly, ignorant cesspool indistinguishable from Nebraska.

An example of the rot is the Iowa football program.  Kirk Ferentz, the head coach, was once a golden boy, leading Iowa to amazing heights.  But, all too predictably, the athletic department grew complacent, stopped supervising Ferentz, let him run the show any damned way he saw fit.  One of the ways he saw fit was hiring his son Brian as offensive coordinator (For those who don't know American football, a coaching staff can be quite extensive, but a head coach typically has three immediate subordinates: offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and special teams coordinator.  So offensive coordinator is kind of a big deal.).  The problem is Brian has zero skills.  He's Tommy Boy without the redemption arc.  His offenses have never been good, and for the last several years they've been reduced to punchlines.  As a condition of his returning this year, he was supposed to average 25 points per game, which these days ain't that big a deal.  He hasn't come close.  My brain-damaged cat would be a better OC (And yes, I have a brain-damaged cat.  She was electrocuted as a kitten, and it fucked up her neurological system.).  If it weren't for Defensive Coordinator Phil Parker fielding a defense year after year that was forged in Asgard, Iowa's average record each season would have been 4-8.  Brian shouldn't have been hired in the first place, and he shouldn't have been allowed to keep his position.

But.  Everybody loves Kirk.  Kirk has given us SO much.  Kirk is going to be head coach only so much longer, and he deserves to have things happen the way he wants.  We OWE Kirk that.  Baa baa.  Wet cowflop hitting the pavement with a major splat.  And other evidence you have a Turdville brain.

By some miracle, Iowa recently hired a competent athletic director, Beth Goetz.  She has bigger swinging brass cajones than the rest of the university administration combined, because she sacked Brian.  She didn't have the political suck to chuck the fuck immediately, so he still gets to fuck up the rest of the season, but still, good on ya, Beth.

Which circles us back to Hawkeye Lounge.  A number of us have been saying for years that Brian needed to go.  Some of us have been saying it was time for Kirk to go as well.  Then came today's game against Illinois.  Home game.  Win this and you win the Big 10 Western Division and go to the conference championship game.  Lots of motivation to do a job here.  But once again the offense was a rancid raft of rat shit, and Iowa barely squeaked to a come-from-behind 15-13 victory.  And unfortunately there was much rejoicing by all, including Kirk and Brian.

And given all the fuckery of the last several years, and this year, and this game, I saw that as all sorts of wrong.  And I said so on Hawkeye Lounge.  And all those who so recently had been calling for Brian's and even Kirk's heads reared up on their self-righteous high horses and asked how I dared to say such things.  The defense was fantastic.  We'd just won the division championship and were heading for the conference championship (conveniently ignoring that if this offense sucked any harder, it would be a perfect vacuum, and that our opponent in the championship, either Michigan or Ohio State, is going to go in dry on us with a Husqvarna with a 72" titanium bar and a dull chain).

Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ.  Pro tip, kids: Any pustule on a warthog's ass can learn from losing; winners learn from winning.  What I'd learned was that we'd once again won by accident and in spite of ourselves, not a good thing, and we'd gotten away with it for the umpteenth time, also not a good thing.  But the fucktards at Hawkeye Lounge wanted to party rather than learn, something they probably had in common with everyone else attached to the Iowa football program.

So nothing will be learned.  And I shall now share my predictions for what happens next:

1) Nebraska played Wisconsin very tough in Madison tonight, so I expect Iowa to blow dead bears in Lincoln next week, although I really hope not because I FUCKING HATE Nebraska;

2) The conference championship will be a rape room with Iowa as the Catholic choir boy of honor;

3) Kirk will be allowed to coach until they take him out feet first because "he deserves to go out on his own terms" (fucking Turdville bullshit).  He may try to back door Brian back into the program, but I think that ship has already sailed.  He WILL hire an OC just as bad, so within two years it will be impossible to recruit offensive talent that has other opportunities more significant than Luther College (FYI: Luther is a Division III school and so has no scholarships, and it has a bad habit of going winless, such as this season.).

4) At some point in this one-star shit parade, Parker is going to say, "Fuck it, I'm tired of breaking my balls for nothing, I'm going to barbeque, golf, and play with my my grandkids."  And since by that point Kirk will be making the Crypt Keeper look like a beamish boy, he won't be able to get even remotely like a replacement and will have to settle for deli ham of the same brand as his OC.  Then the recruitment chain stops entirely, and Iowa football turns into what it was in the 1970s.

This was my threat'ning and my message.  But since the good brethren of the Lounge elected to be asses in the world, I bring this greeting too: scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt, and any thing that may not misbecome those who fail to recognize the consequences of shitheadedness.