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Citing a desire to be sensitive to a family still grieving the loss of a soldier, Iowa will wait until November to salute U.S. Navy SEAL Jon Tumilson, a 35-year-old native of Rockford, Iowa, who was one of 30 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan on Aug. 6.
Tumilson will be honored along with all other soldiers who have fallen during service to their country at one of Iowa’s two November home games.
Tumilson’s personal sacrifice was pointed out to Iowa officials after his pet Labrador retriever, named Hawkeye, sat next to Tumilson’s casket and remained there through the majority of his recent funeral service.
“We wanted to be respectful of Jon’s family and friends and others who are still grieving,” Iowa director of athletics Gary Barta said. “As a fan of the Hawkeyes and UI football program, I’m certain Jon would expect a solid game plan, one that is thoughtful and thorough and respectful, and well executed on game day.”
Iowa is working with the Tumilson family to determine exactly what role “Hawkeye” may play on game day and whether the recognition will occur at a game on Nov. 5 or 12 has yet to be determined.

Photo: In this Aug. 19, 2011, television frame grab from KIMT in Mason City, Iowa, slain Navy SEAL Jon Tumilson’s dog Hawkeye lays next to his casket during funeral services in Rockford, Iowa. (AP Photo/KIMT News 3, Shane Delaney)

Iowa’s newest football recruit found a lot to love about the Hawkeye program.
Ruben Lile, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound defensive back and receiver at Cass Tech in Detroit, announced following his team’s season-opening game tonight that he had committed to the Iowa program over offers from Wisconsin, Vanderbilt, Toledo, Cincinnati, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Bowling Green, Central Michigan and Illinois State.
“I love the coaching staff. I love the atmosphere. I love the campus that I’ve seen so far. … I love the style of offense and defense they play,” Lile told Scout.com after making his announcement on the field following a game against Farmington Hills Harrison.
The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Lile joins his high school teammate, linebacker Laron Taylor, in making a verbal commitment to sign with the Hawkeyes in February.
Lile is the 10th player to publicly announce his intentions to be part of Iowa’s 2012 recruiting class.
He is ranked by Scout.com as the 28th-best safety prospect in the Class of 2012.
Lile recorded 40 tackles and intercepted one pass as a junior at Cass Tech.
He told Scout.com that he informed Iowa coaches of his decision on Thursday night and wanted to wait until after Saturday’s night game to make his choice known publicly.

Here are your Iowa-Tennessee Tech two-deeps, released this morning by Iowa:

Offense
SE – Marvin McNutt, Steven Staggs
LT – Riley Reiff, Andrew Donnal
LG – Matt Tobin or Brandon Scherff
C – James Ferentz, Conor Boffeli
RG – Adam Gettis, Woody Orne
RT – Markus Zusevics, Brett Van Sloten
TE – Brad Herman, C.J. Fiedorowicz or Zach Derby
QB – James Vandenberg, A.J. Derby or John Weinke
WR – Keenan Davis, Kevonte Martin-Manley
RB – Marcus Coker, Jason White
FB – Matt Meyers or Jonathan Gimm
PK – Mike Meyer or Trent Mossbrucker

Defense
DE – Lebron Daniel, Dominic Alvis or Joe Forgy
DT – Thomas Nardo or Dominic Alvis, Carl Davis
DT – Mike Daniels, Joe Gaglione
DE – Broderick Binns, Steve Bigach
OLB – Tyler Nielsen, Tom Donatell
MLB – James Morris, Bruce Davis
WLB – Christian Kirksey, Anthony Hitchens
CB – Shaun Prater, Jordan Bernstine
SS – Collin Sleeper, Jordan Bernstine
FS – Micah Hyde, Tanner Miller
CB – Greg Castillo, Micah Hyde
P – Eric Guthrie

The biggest changes since the preseason depth chart was released are at LG, where Tobin has shifted from LT as Nolan MacMillan continues to work his way back from a sport hernia, the emergence of redshirt freshman Matt Meyers at fullback where he shares the top spot with Jonathan Gimm, Tom Donatell’s move from strong safety to outside linebacker as a back-up to Tyler Nielsen, and Thomas Nardo sharing a top spot at defensive tackle after sharing a back-up spot with Steve Bigach preseason.
A.J. Derby has now flipped spots with John Wienke on the list, but both are still listed as the Hawkeyes’ second-team quarterbacks behind junior James Vandenberg.
B.J. Lowery, listed in the preseason as a back-up to Greg Castillo at right cornerback, does not appear on the depth chart released today.

The swift and overwhelming reaction to the new and now old Cy-Hawk Trophy is a sign of the times as much as anything.
Rick Klatt, the associate athletics director for external affairs at Iowa, said the instant reaction of fans illustrates the power of social media in creating public opinion and perception.
“We live in a wired country where freedom of expression is allowed and that is a good thing,” Klatt said at a news conference when it was announced that the initial new trophy was being replaced.
He suspects it would have been easier to introduce a trophy 50, 60 years ago when many of the current rivalry trophies were becoming a part of the college game.
“It would be difficult today to stand up here and introduce a wooden turtle as a traveling trophy,” Klatt said, referring ot the Illinibuck trophy which Illinois and Ohio State have competed for since 1925.
“We knew that going in. We knew there would be strong opinions because we operate in a clearly different environment today than existed decades ago.”
Fans will get a chance to submit suggestions for a new Cy-Hawk Trophy. Details will be announced in several weeks.

The folks at Iowa Corn and administrators from Iowa and Iowa State deserve some credit for making the right call today.
While it would have been easy to ignore the negative reaction the trophy received – as the Big Ten chose to do with the Legends and Leaders monikers it slapped on its football divisions – leaders of the three groups made a prudent decision to scrap the widely-criticized replacement Cy-Hawk Trophy introduced last week.
Reading between their words, it sounds as if the organizations moved too quickly to replace the original trophy.
Administrative staff members at Iowa and Iowa State signed off on the replacement, which featured a farm family of four surrounding a bushel basket full of corn.
Artistic as it was, it had absolutely nothing to do with the Iowa-Iowa State rivalry and the programs. That was at the root of the complaints that were heard loudly and clearly.
The idea was well intended, designed to celebrate hard-working, family-valued nature of Iowans, but it perhaps overthought what essentially is the prize for winning the state’s most visable collegiate football game.
Craig Floss, the CEO of game and Cy-Hawk Series sponsor Iowa Corn, simply said that the groups “missed the mark” with the new trophy.
By Monday, before Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad suggested that the group’s could come up with a better idea, they had decided to do just that.
They are taking the corporate connection out of it and will simply let fans offer suggestions, then vote on those suggestions.
The winning idea will become the new trophy.
The solution so simple, so perfect that the confines of crowded schedules probably prevented it from surfacing in the first place.
Now unincumbered by a deadline – an “interim” trophy will be used for next month’s game – it should be interesting to see what ideas surface and which one fans rally around.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the folks at Iowa Corn – the umbrella organization of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board and the Iowa Corn Growers Association – are hearing the noise that fans of Iowa and Iowa State are making following Friday’s unveiling of the trophy to be presented to the winner of the football game between the Hawkeyes and Cyclones.
After all, the folks at Iowa Corn are all about ears.
Criticism of the new trophy has come from every corner of the state including today from Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad,who said he thought they “could do better” than the trophy which was unveiled last week the Iowa State Fair.
That message may be sinking in.
The folks at Iowa Corn have scheduled a news conference for Tuesday afternoon in Des Moines to “discuss” the trophy.
If they’re smart, the discussion will involve the admission that a mistake was made and that a replacement is in the works.

In 1932, organizers of the Iowa State Fair strapped banners with the names “Hoover” and “Roosevelt” on the side of two locomotives and staged a trainwreck in front of cheering thousands in the grandstand.
Friday morning on the grand concourse adjacent to the fair’s grandstand, officials with Iowa Corn unveiled a trainwreck of their own – the new Cy-Hawk Trophy.
As a piece of artwork, the likeness of a father on one knee holding an ear of corn surrounded by a loving family enjoying the fruits of their hard work is a fine piece of craftsmanship.
It would look great on the front lawn of a county courthouse, as a centerpiece in a park or on a mantle. It screams heartland and Americana.
Perched on top of a trophy presented to the winner of a football game between in-state rivals Iowa and Iowa State, the figures simply look out of place and lack any relevance to the competition that the trophy is designed to celebrate.
That’s disappointing.
Fans welcomed the notion of retiring the old Cy-Hawk Trophy, which looked like something that had been cobbled together by a junior-high industrial arts student with its large bronze football sitting next to an awkwardly-placed likeness of a football player.
Sadly, the replacement isn’t an improvement and the commercial overtones only add to the disappointment of fans who were looking for something truly representative of the state’s biggest rivalry.

The folks at the Big Ten Network have teamed up with WhatIfSports.com for a simulation project which projects who would have played in Big Ten football championship games if they had existed from 1996-2010. Teams were split into their new six-team divisions, including Nebraska, and using actual team rosters and statistics, the project is now working its way through each season and the computer-generated outcomes from each season, including box scores and play by plays for everything hypothetical Big Ten title game, are being announced over the next few weeks at BTN.com.
The network has provided a few hints as to the outcomes and Iowa has its share of success.
The Hawkeyes and Nebraska tied for the most Legends Division titles with 15 apiece and Iowa joins Nebraska and Penn State in winning two championship games each. Ohio State won seven of the 15 title games, while Michigan and Wisconsin won one apiece.
The computer-generated outcomes have Leaders Division teams winning 10 of the 15 title games, but nine different Big Ten teams win division titles and appear in the championship game.
The most frequent championship match-ups? Ohio State vs. Nebraska three times and Ohio State vs. Iowa three times.

The first shot in the developing Iowa-Nebraska football rivalry has been fired by an unlikely source.
Craig Lang, the president of the Iowa Farm Bureau and a recent appointee to the Iowa Board of Regents, was sitting beside former Iowa football coach Hayden Fry on Friday when a partnership was announced supporting the America Needs Farmers program was announced.
Fry was asked about the Cornhuskers joining the Big Ten and he said all the right things, saying he saw Nebraska as a good fit for the league.
Lang then added his thoughts, rattling off a list of areas where Iowa leads the nation in agricultural production.
“Iowa is No. 1 in all these things in agriculture and Nebraska is not No. 1 in anything in agriculture even though they’re an agriculture state,” Lang said.
Fry, still displaying the quick wit which he was known for, didn’t waste a second.
“Note that he said that, not me,” Fry said.

Hayden Fry always had a way with words.
The former Iowa football coach could spin a tale with the best of them and during a visit to Iowa City today, the 82-year-old hall of famer showed that he hasn’t lost his touch.
Fry attended a press conference to help Iowa introduce a partnership with the Iowa Farm Bureau which grew out of the America Needs Farmers program that Fry initiated in the mid-1980s to bring attention to the farm crisis which American farmers and farming communities were dealing with at that time.
Fry – who entertained reporters with homespun tales of how he taught Roy Orbison to sing and how his great, great uncle Benjamin Franklin Fry helped win the Alamo during his coaching days at Iowa – maintains a sharp wit that he put on display during the news conference.
Fry talked about being “horse whipped” by his father as a youth growing up on a farm, and shared that his family lived so far out in the country that anybody with a “two-holer” had to be considered wealthy.
A two-holer, for you urban dwellers, is a reference to an high-brow outhouse.
Fry also explained about how the America Needs Farmers program helped draw attention to plight of families who were struggling with the economy of the time and how the idea originated.
Never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, Fry talked about how he received congratulatory calls from Bob Hope, John Wayne and Willie Nelson for bringing attention to the cause.
Hope and Nelson, whose Farm Aid concerts have continued to help farm families today, could have and probably did reach out to Fry.
John Wayne? Not so likely. Wayne died in 1979, six years before Fry introduced the ANF decals to Hawkeye headgear and three months before Fry coached his first game at Iowa.
Nobody seemed to mind, though, on a day when Fry seemed genuinely humbled that the ANF initiative he started has led to creation of an ANF Plaza on the northwest corner of Kinnick Stadium which will recognize the contributions Fry and his players made to bring attention to farmers in their time of need.