By Mike Hlas

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – For those who don’t know me, I’m Mike Hlas. I was the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s sports columnist since March 1987. That month happens to be the last time an Iowa men’s basketball team played In an NCAA tournament regional final.

It was in Seattle, and I was there to cover it. I’ve covered almost all of the Hawkeyes’ NCAA tourney games since then, and a lot of other UI athletics events to boot. Rose Bowls, a half-dozen Outback Bowls, NCAA wrestling tournaments, and the 1996 Olympics when Tom Brands won a wrestling gold medal.

Arguably, the best and biggest assignments I had in all that time were in 2023 and 2024, the Hawkeyes’ marches to and appearances in the NCAA women’s basketball national-championship game. Indelible memories, to put it mildly.

The Gazette was independently and locally owned in my entire Gazette career. I was extremely lucky. Luck always seems to have an expiration date, though. Three hours after Adams MultiMedia announced it had bought the Gazette last November, I was told I wasn’t being retained.

In the words of the philosopher Tony Soprano, whaddya gonna do?

The first thing I did was start contributing to the Iowa Writers Collaborative (mikehlas.substack.com), a terrific group of journalists and essayists who are their own bosses. They, under the leadership of founder Julie Gammack, basically have formed an outstanding Iowa digital newspaper. I’m writing sports and other things there, and those who have subscribed to me there will continue to get original material.

I’ve been thrilled with the initial response to that, and now I’m supplementing it by becoming a contributing writer to Hawk Fanatic. I’m neither a Hawk nor a fanatic, but I don’t think you’d really want either. If Iowa is doing something badly or wrong, I say so. If it is doing something terrific, amazing, or just plain good, I say so. How Ben McCollum’s men’s basketball team waved off three straight losses and dominated Indiana in Bloomington Saturday was in the “terrific” category.

How Tom Brands’ wrestling team lost 32-3 at home to Penn State Friday was not.

Besides staying busy and keeping a toe in the local major college sports water (which was frozen solid in Eastern Iowa this weekend), I like the kind of website Pat Harty is running here. One thing I haven’t missed about the Gazette was getting gripes from people about its site. I dismissed the paywall complaints. I heard about the ads embedded in the stories that annoyed readers. Whaddya gonna do?

Happily, those things aren’t issues here. Hawk Fanatic is supported by ads on the home page and by the generosity of donors. You don’t have to subscribe. You come here, click, read, and aren’t subject to intrusive commercials in the text though the site is free. Seems like a good deal to me.

I’ll have my first piece of Hawkeyes-related copy here soon, maybe a look back at Tuesday’s Rutgers-Iowa men’s basketball game, or a look ahead at Thursday’s Iowa-Maryland women’s basketball game, or thoughts about the transfer portal collection Kirk Ferentz has assembled. There’s never a lack of material.

I’ve always said this stuff is supposed to be fun. So let’s have some