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Hey Iowa. How you doing, neighbor? Yeah, I hear you. It sounds like it's been a rough season. Fans are getting chippy with each other, Greg Davis' offense has been a disaster, coming in at 113th best in the nation, Phil Parker is somehow NOT the second coming of Norm Parker and Kirk Ferentz just got the dreaded vote of confidence from athletic director Gary Barta.
Hey there, don't worry! You're totally a basketball school now. Relying on freshmen at point guard and center will definitely not result in disaster this season. And that fast-paced Fran McCaffery brand of basketball is averaging 70.6 points/game! That's 152nd best in the country! Hot stuff, comin' through!
Unfortunately, before you can focus solely on basketball there's still one football game left to be played, and that means there's still business to be taken care of. Not the business of winning, of course. No one expects that, not against a 9-2 Nebraska team that's won five straight. And you're such bitter conference rivals, too! This is the completely organic, non-forced and un-focus-grouped Heroes Game! A one-game tradition unlike any other.
No, you need to get down to the business of letting your team know just how unhappy you are with their effort. You paid good money for those seats in Kinnick, dammit! You NEED to let the team know just how poorly they've performed this year.
The best way to do that? By booing the team. Sure, some say that booing a bunch of 18-22 year old kids is a classless action by a desperate fanbase, but Hawkeye fans know better. Just like pressure creates diamonds, booing creates winners. Somebody said that. Probably Socrates.
Adam Shada knows just how much booing helped him on senior day against Western Michigan in 2007. The former Academic All-American had already had a rocky career at Iowa, but those boos let him know that he needed to step his game up in his last game in a Hawkeye uniform. And he did. All the way to allowing WMU's quarterback to pass for 367 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions in a Bronco victory at Kinnick Stadium.
And don't forget Kyle McCann! The boos the Iowa faithful rained down upon him when he came back in the game after Brad Banks had performed well during the 2001 season served as extra fuel to his competitive fire. Fire that propelled his Hawkeyes all the way to a 7-5 record.
So it's not a question of if Hawkeye fans will boo their under-performing team this Friday, but when. Obviously, a question this difficult needs to be crowd-sourced, so take our poll below, and let's figure this out together.