IOWA CITY, Iowa — Nothing drags on like a long winter, which reintroduced itself to those of us in the Midwest last week.
In my Eastern Iowa community, we were pelted with 30 inches of snow with blizzard conditions that sent wind-chill temperatures plummeting to minus-35. After a week of constant snow blowing and chill, I’m a slightly grumpy 50-year-old with plenty of topics to cover.
It’s a strange environment surrounding Iowa City these days. Without a full-time athletics director and football offensive coordinator, the fan base appears waiting to exhale. The athletics department needs a permanent leader and the football program needs closure. On the other side of the spectrum, the women’s basketball program continues to fill Carver-Hawkeye Arena even with parking cut in half because of snow piles, construction projects and falling temperatures. When combined with the growing apathy in men’s basketball, these events have become an Iowa version of sports jambalaya.
Longtime Cedar Rapids Gazette sports columnist Gus Schrader often wrote “Today’s nothing but hash.” While I hesitate to compare myself to someone who enthralled readers for nearly 60 years, let’s consider this piece today an ode to Gus with a whole lotta hash.
Let’s peel the layers from a few of…
