By Mike Hlas

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Iowa football fans were up to their hips in hoopla for a week. Then their team found itself up to its eyeballs in Buckeyes.

Ohio State brought the Woodshed on its first trip to Kinnick Stadium since it got scalded 55-24 here in 2017. The Buckeyes’ 31-14 win Saturday was more of a methodical beatdown than a firestorm, but there was plenty of raging inferno in the form of OSU wide receiver Jeremiah Smith.

Smith did a Heisman Trophy pose after his 57-yard touchdown catch in the third quarter opened the Buckeyes’ lead to 24-6, and why not? He had a Heisman-ish day with 206 yards on 11 catches, one for every NFL scout in the Kinnick press box. One assumes they were here to see other draft prospects, because they’re terrible talent-assessors if they hadn’t already pegged Smith as elite on top of golden.

Smith had more total yardage in the first three quarters than Iowa’s entire team. See you in another 20 years, ESPN College GameDay, It was understandable why guest-picker Caitlin Clark did the only thing she could or would do by tabbing her alma mater to win at that television extravaganza on the Pentacrest, but panelist Pat McAfee knew what he was doing with his end-of-show heel-turn by emphatically going with the Buckeyes.

This is life in college football for the non-Ohio States of the world. You can steal a win at Michigan, but beating the Wolverines and Buckeyes in the same season is something Iowa hadn’t done since 1962. Maybe the Hawkeyes still can pull it off with an upset of the Buckeyes in the Big Ten championship or the College Football Playoff.

Or maybe Kirk Ferentz’s postgame hope is the right one.

“With a little bit of luck,” Ferentz said, “we won’t see him again during my career. That’d be OK.”

You need a reasonable facsimile of a big-time quarterback to be part of the national-title discussion. Ohio State has that. Julian Sayin Jr,, can throw the ball around a bit. Sayin completed 20 of 27 passes for 324 yards and three scores. Iowa starter Hank Brown, who made the Hawkeyes’ Pass of the Decade the week before at Michigan, shed his role as mythic Iowa figure in the game’s first minute when he fumbled the ball away after getting sacked, leaving Ohio State with just 14 yards for a touchdown. Three plays later, that touchdown was on the board and OSU led the rest of the way.

Brown went 12 of 27 for a meager 132 yards and an interception. Iowa didn’t invest any NIL funds on a quarterback last offseason. For four games, it didn’t look like it mattered. In the fifth, it did.

Laying this loss at Brown’s feet, of course, would be unjust. This was a talent mismatch, starting with Smith.

There are 2.4 million Smiths in the U.S., making it America’s most-common surname. Jeremiah, however, is the least-common receiver in the college game. He’s been called Ohio State’s all-time best player by some, which seems like enormous hyperbole given Archie Griffin has two Heismans and six other Buckeyes got one. The man, however, has 817 receiving yards and nine touchdowns in five games after 2,558 yards and 27 TDs over his first two seasons.

“He’s got great size, great competitiveness, and just great ability for a receiver,” Ferentz said.

The 54-yard catch Smith made in traffic on the second quarter’s first play didn’t lead to points, but it made a clear statement about what was what on this day. Sayin did his job, OSU’s blockers did theirs, its defense didn’t let the Hawkeyes past the Buckeyes 20 until midway through the fourth quarter, and there was no Iowa special teams magic to rescue Iowa or at least keep it within striking distance.

It was a week of smiling and dreaming in Hawkeye World after the Michigan game and with the anticipation of GameDay giving an anticipated game here all the more juice. A good time was had by all on the Iowa campus. Ferentz even broke from his Game Day Eve routine by showing up for the telecast of Pat McAfee’s ESPN show Friday in Iowa City. When you have the chance for such national attention, you seize it.

“We’re getting better with each week and each opportunity,” Ferentz told McAfee. Until the day that followed.

Early Saturday evening, Ferentz said “We usually get better if we’re doing things right. That’s something I’ve always banked on. As long as the attitude’s there, the work ethic’s there, and you have to have talent, too. I think we have that, we just need a little more experience.”

Look, this was Ohio State. The 2017 game here was the outlier of outliers. We all know what Ohio State is and has long been compared to the rest of the Big Ten and almost the entirety of all other college programs. The Buckeyes blew a 20-point lead and lost 24-23 at Texas last month. The Bucks didn’t stop there. It’s a program that hasn’t lost more than twice in a season since 2011, an incredible statistic. Ryan Day’s Big Ten record as OSU’s coach is 57-5, which is ridiculous and at the same time expected in Columbus.

Meanwhile, Iowa’s wins over Iowa State and Michigan were exhibitions of resiliency and fortitude, but weren’t necessarily displays of technical superiority.

That said, the Hawkeyes haven’t tumbled off any cliffs because of this loss. Although some of their future opponents — Minnesota, Wisconsin and Northwestern leap immediately to mind — are doing very good and surprising things. Never mind the old Big Ten West brothers for now, though. Flying to Seattle for Friday night’s game against Washington is an abnormal scenario for Iowa, and may not be the best one for a big bounce-back.

There are only so many games at Kinnick with this kind of build-up and potential significance. Ferentz’s teams rose to the occasion in many. This wasn’t among them and wasn’t even close.

Iowa was a big somebody Friday afternoon and Saturday morning on ESPN. The network’s cameras, sets and performers were loaded up and long gone by the time this game kicked off. GameDay heads off to another campus next week with Iowa City in the rear-view mirror. The 2026 Hawkeyes will be known as a one-week wonder unless they regroup and knock off a lot of competent opponents between now and Black Friday.

It’s possible. But easy, it will not be.