By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The days leading up to an Iowa bowl game are always filled with hope and optimism and with stories that highlight the star seniors on the team and how they have persevered to reach this milestone moment.

Iowa’s 2017 senior class certainly has its share of feel-good stories, most notably linebacker Josey Jewell, who defied the odds by growing from a two-star recruit into one the greatest defensive players in school history, and senior running back Akrum Wadley, who overcame adversity on and off the field to become just the second player under Kirk Ferentz to rush for a least 1,000 yards in back-to-back seasons.

There is also senior Nathan Bazata, who as an undersized and under-recruited defensive tackle told Iowa strength coach Chris Doyle as a true freshman that his goal was to be a three-year starter, and then he went out and did it.

Senior linebackers Ben Niemann and Bo Bower also will leave as three-year starters, while junior cornerback Josh Jackson has to decide if he wants to leave early for the NFL after achieving mega-stardom in his only season as a starter.

Offensive lineman Sean Welsh is another three year starter who will make his final appearance as a Hawkeye in the Pinstripe Bowl, but his story goes so far beyond anything he has accomplished in the trenches. Welsh had the courage to tell the world that he suffers from depression, and was motivated to do so because he wanted to help others by sharing his story.

There is so much to like about the 2017 Iowa football team, and for fans to gush over that you almost forget that it finished 4-5 in Big Ten play and is 7-5 overall.

The 55-24 victory over Ohio State on Nov. 4 at Kinnick Stadium is something fans will talk about forever because nobody saw it coming and because there is no simple explanation for why it happened.

The 56-14 beat-down at Nebraska in the regular-season finale was another milestone moment that helped to create a slight buzz heading into the bowl preparation.

And then, of course, the 2017 season also will be remembered for the start of the Wave, which is now called the greatest tradition in sports when after the first quarter fans inside Kinnick Stadium, along with both teams, turn and wave to the patients on the top floor of the University of Iowa Stead Children’s Hospital.

The entire nation has rallied behind the Wave and the Iowa football team is a huge part of the story.

Enough good stuff has happened to where it is easy to lose sight of the big picture. It’s easy to forget that a loss to Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl this coming Wednesday at Yankee Stadium in New York City would be Iowa’s sixth consecutive bowl loss and would give Iowa six losses in a season for the fourth time since the 2011 season.

A sixth consecutive bowl loss would rip open a festering wound that some fans are just waiting to pick.

Another bowl loss wouldn’t tarnish what Jewell, Wadley and Jackson have accomplished from an individual standpoint, but would fuel apathy and the belief that Iowa is destined to be just slightly better than average at this stage under Kirk Ferentz.

Iowa has a 15-10 record, including 10-8 in the Big Ten, since playing in the Rose Bowl after the 2015 season.

That hardly is a disaster, but no reason to stick your chest out, either.

One game doesn’t make or break a season, but the difference between finishing 7-6 or 8-5 can’t be measured just by numbers.

“This is a business trip,” Wadley said of the Pinstripe Bowl. “It’s fun to be in New York, but it isn’t fun losing in New York.”

Wadley grew up not far from the Big Apple in Newark, N.J. He obviously didn’t dream about his celebrated Hawkeye career ending in the Pinstripe Bowl of all places, but as Kirk Ferentz likes to say, you get what you deserve and that is true with his team.

Iowa wouldn’t be in the Pinstripe Bowl if it had just one more victory. But the 24-15 loss to Purdue on Senior Day sealed Iowa’s fate.

And say what you want about the Pinstripe Bowl, but it has Iowa matched against a Boston College squad that is capable of beating on a good day, and maybe even an average day should Iowa lay an egg.

The fact that Iowa has lost five bowl games in a row and been outscored 108-10 in the first half of those games is embarrassing and inexcusable.

“It’s eating at all of us,” Wadley said. “The seniors, especially.”

One explanation for Iowa’s bowl woes is that it often gets invited to a bowl that it probably doesn’t deserve because the bowls are attracted to teams with fans that travel in abundance to bowl games, and few travel better than Iowa fans.

Maybe so, but that isn’t the circumstance this season.

The Pinstripe Bowl won't get anything close to Iowa's best shot in terms of how many fans attend the game. The game is a tough sell for lots of reasons, including weather, expenses, status, timing and Iowa's up-and-down season in which the offense has looked incredible at times and inept at other times. 

Nothing against the Pinstripe Bowl, but it isn’t where Hawkeye fans envisioned this season ending, especially after Iowa crushed Ohio State.

The Pinstripe Bowl is for teams that don’t achieve what they had hoped to achieve, but without unraveling, or for teams on the way up in a rebuilding phase, which hardly describes Iowa in year 19 under Ferentz.

The bowl has a cool concept with the connection to arguably the most storied franchise in sports, but the Yankees don’t play in December for a reason. Because it’s cold.

You also could argue that a loss in the Pinstripe Bowl would look even worse because, well, it’s the Pinstripe Bowl.

And for those who say that Iowa has lived up to expectations by already winning seven games, that just seems too tolerant at this stage under Ferentz.

This isn’t an attempt to rain on the postseason parade, but a reminder that Iowa really needs to win a bowl game for a change.

The fans need an offseason in which their last image of the team is the players celebrating a bowl victory rather trying to explain yet another bowl beat-down in which the outcome was decided by halftime.

The phrase must-win is sort of dramatic, but it almost fits in this case because Iowa really needs to end its bowl misery on Wednesday at yankee Stadium.

And as I was reminded by a reader, Ferentz with a victory in the Pinstripe Bowl also would tie his predecessor and former boss, Hayden Fry, as Iowa's all-time winningest footballl coach with 143 victories.

That's even more incentive to win on Wednesday.

 

Iowa's bowl woes

2017 Outback Bowl, Florida 30, Iowa 3; Florida led 10-3 at halftime.

2016 Rose Bowl, Stanford 45, Iowa 16; Stanford led 35-0 at halftime.

2015 TaxSlayer Bowl, Tennessee 45, Iowa 28; Tennessee led 35-7 at halftime.

2014 Outback Bowl, Louisiana State 21, Iowa 14; LSU led 14-0 at halftime.

2011 Insight Bowl, Oklahoma 31, Iowa 14; Oklahoma led 14-0 at halftime.