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With Iowa enjoying a bye this weekend as 10 Big Ten teams open conference play, James Vandenberg isn’t quite sure how he is going to make the most of rare weekend off.
“It’s going to be a little strange,” the Iowa quarterback said. “I’ll probably watch some football, watch some Big Ten teams. This will be the first time in a long time that I’ve had a Saturday where I can do that, just sit around and watch TV.”
He suspects he’ll watch a few upcoming opponents, but he is already watching game tape of Penn State, Iowa’s next opponent.
“It will be different just to sit there and watch. I don’t get that chance very often,” he said.
Vandenberg will likely get the chance to watch his younger brother, Gabe, quarterback the Keokuk High School team on Friday and he may actually get a bit of a break with the books as well.
“I had three exams last week so everything hit at once. I do have a paper to get done, but I don’t have much else to get caught up on this week,” Vandenberg said. “It’s a bit of a break, which isn’t all bad.”

Fans weren’t the only ones thinking about Brett Greenwood today at Kinnick Stadium.
Hawkeye players, many teammates of the former defensive back who has been hospitalized at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for two weeks, wore green patches on the back of their helmets to show support for the medical battle Greenwood faces on a daily basis after collapsing while working out on the field at his prep alma mater, Pleasant Valley, on Sept. 9.
Around 20,000 fans among the announced sellout crowd of 70,585 wore green along with their black and gold attire to today’s game with Louisiana-Monroe.
“I thought it was a nice way to let Brett know that we are thinking about him and his family,” Ferentz said.
Greenwood’s parents joined Iowa players in the locker room following the game.
“That was a real good thing and in some ways I guess it represents our team, he’s making progress slowly right now,” Ferentz said. “That’s probably about all I can say about that, and I’ll let the family handle the rest of it. Going to be a long road, certainly. I think it’s safe to say that, but also for our team if it he displays their determination, the hardmindedness that Brett has, he’ll by OK and I’m confident that we’ll be OK but it’s going to take some time.”
Several Iowa players showed up for postgame interviews wearing green dress shirts to show their support.
“Brett’s a fighter and if anybody can come through this, he can,” defensvie back Tanner Miller said. “All we can do is hope and pray for the best, but I know this, he won’t back down. That’s not who he is. He’ll continue to fight.”

Shaun Prater is thinking steak.
Micah Hyde has thoughts more of something along the line of a place with a drive-through window.
Either way, the Iowa defensive backs are challenging and motivating each other with a friendly wager on who make the most any interceptions they have this season.
Hyde leads Iowa with a pair of interceptions, both in last week’s win over Pittsburgh.
Prater is counting on bonus points for returning his one interception so far 89 yards to the end zone.
“He says those are worth more. We’ll see,” Hyde said. “I’m just looking forward to him having to pick up the tab for dinner.”
Defensive lineman Mike Daniels doesn’t want any part of the action, although he says that hopes Prater and Hyde have a high-scoring and very competitive season.
“I’ll leave that all up to them, though. They can have the interceptions. My job is to pound the guy in front of me,” Daniels said.

Playing Pittsburgh this weekend provides Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz with a trip down Memory Lane.
He grew up in western Pennsylvania, attending Upper St. Clair High School in the Pittsburgh area.
After earning his degree from Connecticut and coaching two seasons at the Worcester Academy, Ferentz returned to Pittsburgh in 1980 to work as a graduate assistant on a staff headed by Jackie Sherrill.
The Panthers finished 11-1 that year and finished with a No. 2 national ranking.
Ferentz, who had a chance to visit with Sherrill last Friday before a walk through at Iowa State, recalled Tuesday the eye-opening experience he had at Pitt as a first-time coach at the Division I level.
“That was my first exposure to Division I football. I had been at Worcester Academy for two years, played at Connecticut, which was more like a Division II program quite frankly at that time, so I had seen teams like that on television but had never been up close to them first hand,” Ferentz said.
He worked with a team that had 11 players drafted the following spring.
“That didn’t even include Marino, Covert, first rounders who were sophomores. One thing I saw was, boy it’s a good idea to recruit well,” Ferentz said. “That was good. It was a great experience for me being the first time I was around Division I football and it was a well-run program.”
Ferentz also discovered something else while working at Pitt.
“Their parking at that time was up on the hill, now they’re across on the south side, but in those days it was worse than the parking here,” Ferentz said. “They towed my car one game. When you’re a GA, you don’t have a parking spot.”

Since hitting the I-Club circuit last spring, Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz has been willing to tell anybody who was willing to listen that there would likely be a few bumps along the way for the Hawkeyes in 2011, especially early in the season.
Iowa hit one of those bumps Saturday in its 44-41 triple overtime loss at Iowa State.
In between bites of rubber chicken and cold baked potatoes, Ferentz told fans that this season reminded him a lot of 2008.
He said fans could expect to see some moving parts throughout September, much as was the case that year as coaches worked and watched to see what players would rise to the top of the depth chart.
A relatively-easy rain-soaked victory over Tennessee Tech in the season opener provided a few hints of where this Iowa football team is.
The Hawkeyes sacked Tech quarterback Tre Lamb once, the same number of sacks they recorded in Saturday’s game at Iowa State.
The Hawkeyes have been somewhat vulnerable to the run on defense and as was the case a year ago when Northwestern’s Dan Persa left the Hawkeye defense gasping for air, Steele Jantz proved that Iowa still lacks the depth of quickness it needs to successfully defend quarterbacks who run rapid-fire attacks that spread defenses not only vertically, but laterally.
Ferentz suggested following Saturday’s game that Iowa must continue to grow its depth on the offense as well, saying that simply relying on Marcus Coker and Marvin McNutt wasn’t going to get the job done.
Coker was the only running back who touched the ball on Saturday, but the passing game did show some growth. Keenan Davis enjoyed his best game as a Hawkeye, catching five passes for 95 yards and Kevonte Martin-Manley caught the first four passes of his collegiate career.
As much as anything, the setback to the Cyclones left Iowa with an eye-opening example that plenty of work needs to be done and that as Ferentz suspected might happen, the moveable parts are still moving as the middle of September nears.
“I feel bad today, but we’ll got back to work tomorrow,” Ferentz said after the game. “It’s about as simple as that. Right now, we’ve got a lot of work to do. That became pretty evident.”

Recent replays of the events surrounding the attacks of 9/11 have brought the tragedy home to Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz 10 years after the events unfolded which led to one of the most unique weeks in Iowa football history.
“Just recently watching the footage, it probably impacts me more now, quite frankly, years later watching the footage of President (George) Bush in the classroom knowing what had happened,” Ferentz said. “We worry about third-down decisions. How would you like to be sitting in that chair? It just puts everything in perspective, you know? Big difference between what we do, what coaches do, and what people like that do.”
The attacks happened on a Tuesday morning. Iowa’s weekly news conference that day was cancelled. The Hawkeyes’ game scheduled for that weekend was postponed and played on Thanksgiving weekend in Ames.
With no game to play, Ferentz recalls traveling on the weekend following 9/11, visiting family members in the Pittsburgh area where he grew up.
“I watched a high school game that Friday night, scouted a game,” Ferentz said. “That’s kind of what I remember. Obviously, here we are, how many years later and we’re still at war. That’s a tough thing.”
Ferentz said the immediate images of that time drove home the seriousness of what had taken place.
“There was the disbelief that everybody felt,” Ferentz said. “I think every American felt that way.”

Kirk Ferentz was asked to make a fashion statement at his weekly news conference today and aside from going along with an occasional throwback jersey to honor an Iowa team from the past, don’t expect the Hawkeyes to jump on the latest trend in college football of having alternate jerseys for just about every occasion.
From Oklahoma State’s vast new wardrobe to the uniforms that covered Maryland players from head-to-toe in that state’s flag, the alternate jerseys are turning heads in college football.
They aren’t exciting the Iowa coach.
“The one thing I’ll say is that we have sharp uniforms in my opinion. I grew up in Pittsburgh, so what else would you expect?” Ferentz said.
With a high-school age son and a lockerroom full of college-age players, Ferentz understands the eye on style that many of today’s players embrace.
“I live with young people and I know how important that is sitting in front of the computer screen with all these different looks,” Ferentz said. “My kids are good kids, but they spend a lot of time looking at that stuff, so that’s important but we’re not changing our uniforms.”
Asked if had ever been approached with an alternate uniform design and if he would ever consider it, Ferentz said, “I think that’s no and no and I had to think a bit about the first one.”

As Iowa copes with another injured running back, one former Hawkeye is off and running at his new school.
Jewel Hampton scored on touchdown runs of 1, 23 and 7 yards for Southern Illinois in its season-opening 38-10 win over Southeast Missouri State over the weekend.
“It felt great. I’ve been out of the game for almost a year now and I feel very comfortable here at SIU,” Hampton told The Southern Illinoisan, a Lee Enterprises newspaper in Carbondale, Ill.
“I was just fortunate to get out there and perform to my abilities and have a clean game.”
Hampton carried 14 times for 64 yards for the Salukis, who moved to No. 17 in this week’s FCS poll.
The game was Hampton’s first in nearly a year after an ACL tear ended his 2010 season at Iowa during a game at Arizona.
Another former Hawkeye back, Adam Robinson, is on the roster at Division II Minnesota-Duluth but did not see playing time in a 20-12 win over Augustana (S.D.) last weekend.

Saturday turned out to be a day Iowa director of athletics Gary Barta will never forget.
After all, it’s not every day that you make the call to have a college football game halted and the crowd at a 70,000-seat football stadium moved to shelter in advance of an approaching storm.
“Everywhere I’ve been over the past 25 years, you prepare for this, you have in place and you talk about the what ifs,” Barta said.
What if turned into reality shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday when it became apparent that a lightning-filled storm was headed toward Kinnick Stadium.
It had rained heavily off and on as Iowa and Tennessee Tech opened the college football season, but until the third quarter their had been no lightning in the immediate area.
Barta said Iowa’s senior athletics staff and university police were involved with communications with the National Weather Service when the decision was reached to clear the stadium.
“It was a team effort. We made the decision. Fortunately, we were able to the finish the game and everybody was safe.”
Once the decision was made, both teams left the field and then fans were told where to head to safety.
Many congregated in the concourses, which Barta said can hold up to 40,000 if the need arises.
Others were directed to nearby parking ramps, the Iowa Field House and the UI Recreation Building.
Barta said the fact that Iowa had built a 34-0 lead and that it was late in the game probably helped.
Several thousand seats, although sold, went unused Saturday and thousands of fans left at the half, easing what could have been a much more difficult process.
Fans filed down and up the narrow staircases at Kinnick for what turned into an 84-minute delay.
He said the early exits “allowed for this kind of procedure to go a little bit more smoothly.”
Barta said in his six seasons at Iowa, staff members typically have discussed plans like the one Iowa followed Saturday on a weekly basis before home games.
“We’ve had conversations leading into Thursday, Friday, Saturday where we just put everybody on alert and remind ourselves what the protocol is if we get to this point,” Barta said.
“We had those discussions (Friday) night as well as this morning just in preparation. What happened was there was a band of lightning that was very condensed, very significant.”
When it became apparent that the band was headed toward Kinnick Stadium, the decision was made to act.
Barta said no thought was given to call the game, mostly because of the time of day.
“It this would have been a late-afternoon game, it would have made the discussion whether or not we would be able to finish the game a bit more critical,” Barta said. “When we play late-afternoon games, most of the time we bring in lights.”
Barta said staff will review what transpired this afternoon and make any needed adjustments to their preparedness plan.
“We now have seen it in action,” Barta said.
Paula Jantz, associate athletics director for operations and event management, said the only previous time the stadium was cleared because of weather was at a spring game about 10 years ago.
The crowd that day was much smaller than the masses which moved in an orderly fashion to safety today.

Iowa is leaving its honorary captain responsibilities in capable hands this week.
Brad Banks is the honorary captain for Saturday’s opener with Tennessee Tech. Perfect choice with the perfect demeanor to spend time talking with a young football team this afternoon on the day before its first game.
Banks’ confident and easy-going approach led Iowa to an Orange Bowl berth. He’s the right choice to talk to one of the youngest Hawkeye teams to take the field since the year after Banks led Iowa to an 8-0 Big Ten record in 2002.
In addition to talking with the team today, Banks will be with the Hawkeyes in the locker room both before and after Saturday’s game. He will accompany the captains to mid-field for the pregame coin toss and be on the sidelines during the game.