What Is This Sorcery?

For the uninitiated, I started blogging about Iowa athletics from my two-bedroom apartment in 2006 at a site called Hawkeye State. Along with a couple of other wary souls, I founded Black Heart Gold Pants in 2007, then the now-defunct Go Iowa Awesome in 2016. I retired from blogging for a couple of years. And now I’m back to running a solo operation.

This version of Hawkeye State is a charity site. We offer free subscriptions, where you’ll get a bit more than half of the content, and that’s completely fine. If you do choose a paid subscription ($5 per month or $50 per year), you’ll get everything that gets posted. All profits from those paid subscriptions are donated to UI Children’s Hospital, that spaceship-looking thing we wave at seven times every fall. So while the content might be mediocre, at least it’s for a good cause.

Through the first 14 months of existence, Hawkeye State has donated $4300 to UICH. We’ve earmarked donations for books in the hospital library and therapy dogs, and we’ve made general donations as well.

What Makes You An Expert?

Nothing, really, besides a quarter-century spent obsessing over the minutiae of this athletic department and program. I’m a two-time graduate of the University of Iowa, and my first week on campus coincided with Kirk Ferentz’s first game as coach, so I’ve been around for pretty much the entire era. What I’m not: A reporter, a former coach, or a college sports analyst of any merit. I simply have a lot of experience, and a neverending well of curiosity, with this subject.

I do a lot of “this thing has parallels with this completely unrelated other thing” posts. In the first year, we discussed World War I, Mad Men, Vonnegut, modern chess theory, and the made-for-TV 80s movie Mac and Me. If that’s not your thing, I totally get it. Again, this isn’t necessarily built for mass consumption. But if you’d like to read one other guy’s ramblings about Iowa and help some kids in the process, feel free to subscribe. Thanks.