I’d Probably Retire That Rose Bowl Shirt

So I walked in to the Collins Road Hy-Vee last night, and there to greet me five steps inside the entrance was a rack of Hawkeyes Rose Bowl shirts.  I'm sorry, but any unsold Hawkeyes Rose Bowl shirts should've been incinerated around 5:30pm on New Year's Day.  That was about the time when the Hawkeyes went into halftime trailing Stanford, 35-0.

I've had to retire clothing items before, like my Patrick Kane t-shirt (see that blog here).  I never wear my Chicago Bears "NFC Champions" hat from 2007 either, because the Bears went on to play a horrible, turnover-filled dud in Super Bowl XLI.  What I'm saying is you don't want to be second place when there are only two teams.  That was the case in the Rose Bowl.  There was Stanford.  There was Iowa.  And the game was a ginormous dud for the Hawkeyes.  I'm just suggesting that it's a little on the lame side to wear a shirt displaying the runner-up in a two-team race.

Hey, don't get me wrong.  I'm a fan of the Hawkeyes (even though I went to UNI).  I wanted Iowa to win, but the game was such a crap-fest that I was on my phone looking for movie times by the second quarter.  And by the way, I really enjoyed Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight"... bailing on the game in the 3rd quarter to go catch that movie was an excellent decision in my book.

I'm not trying to incite or agitate.  I'm just calling it what it was.  I heard Iowa fans being appalled by the Stanford band's halftime performance that poked fun at us farming simpletons here in the midwest... I'm guessing maybe, just maybe, you were a little disappointed in the 5-touchdown deficit and decided to steer your anger at something.  On Facebook, I saw somebody proudly post that the Hawks were cheered off the field by their proud fans in Pasadena as they did their famous swarm after their defeat.  Ok, if that makes you feel better.  Personally, I'll trade the swarm for a Rose Bowl victory in the past half-century.  All I know is I don't want to throw on a t-shirt reminding me of that butt-kicking.

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