Ramblings from a mind that is often irrationally upset about things

 Alright, we know what happened last week and we are moving on. New game this week. Iowa returns to Kinnick to play Northwestern. The Wildcats are coming off a monster 43-3 win over Maryland and will be riding that high all the way to Iowa City. A dominant opening game for Northwestern, but it was against Maryland. It is pretty hard to lose when your defenses forces 4 turnovers and your offense doesn't turn the ball over. This is a hard game to judge Northwestern by because they should win this game 22 out of 20 times. That being said, Let's break it down. Wildcat Offense The offense put up 512 yards (212 passing/325 rushing) for an impressive 6.5 yard per play average. These stats were definitely helped by winning the time of possession battle, 37 minutes to 22 minutes, and only 5 penalties all game. QB Peyton Ramsey was efficient completing 23/30 for 212 yards, 1 TD, and no interceptions. The rushing attack was led by Drake Anderson with 103 yards on only 10 carries and a TD.

 Saturday was a day full of joyous anticipation at 7 AM and disappointed reflection at 8 PM. Purdue 24, Iowa 20 final score. This was a game that many, myself included, expected Iowa to win and now we are faced with contemplating the future of Iowa's season. Can the team improve in an 8 week, 8 game, no bye season? I think they can, but let's break it down first. Iowa started slow with back to back 3 and outs and then started to play like Iowa. The offense moved the ball and the defense did enough to give Iowa a 17-14 lead at half. This was despite a costly fumble by Tyler Goodson. Petras showed flashes of brilliance and incompetence throughout, but came up big when it mattered. He led the Hawkeyes to a field goal to take the lead as time expired in the first half.  The second half started slow for both teams and the score remained 17-14 at the end of 3 quarters. Iowa and Purdue both scored field goals in the first half of the fourth quarter and Iowa got the ball with a little

 This was a much better debate from both candidates. The interrupting from the candidates was minimal and we actually heard some policy instead of name calling and talking over each other. Biden opened up strong with several good points regarding Trump's tax returns and good one liners. "Blue state and Red states are all the United States." was a great line and should be in a campaign commercial by tonight. Aftet that, Trump stole the show and dragged Biden all over the stage. Biden can't get out of his own way. He reference the Russia Bounty report from the New York Times that has been retracted due to being false. He blamed Hunter's laptop on the Russians, despite the FBI and DNI stating that there is no evidence it is a Russian plant. He flat out denied that Hunter received money from China or Russia, both are documented as fact. Now, I'm not saying that there was anything improper occurred because it's possible that it was all legal and had nothing to

 There seems to be a feeling of victory in the air for the Biden camp and it seems to center around this idea that no one can be dumb enough to vote for Trump. I see the internet full of people who I know are intelligent, smart people, fully capable of logical thought abandon all pretense of intelligence and logic when it comes to Trump. It truly confuses me. This also goes the other way at times, people blindly supporting everything Trump does and refusing to consider that anything he does maybe questionable or wrong. I'm not going to pretend the die hard Trumpsters aren't out there, but this blog isn't about them. This blog is for the people that can't understand why people would vote the bad orange man. (Disclaimer: I am not voting for Trump and do not necessarily believe all the following takes to be correct, but simply trying to explain the other side for all the confused people out there.) Reasons people vote for Trump 1. They are sick and tired of biased reportin

  Ok, so now that we are less than 7 days out, let's address the 2020 Hawkeyes season. I am fairly optimistic and definitely see the opportunity for a great year. I will break down who we have by position groups and then go over the schedule. QB Spencer Petras, a redshirt sophmore, is out starter. He has seen limited play at Iowa with only 25 passing yards in clean up duty behind Nate Stanley last year. He won the spring training battle for the starting spot and showed promise in high school. His senior year in high school he threw for over 4,000 yards and 50 TDs. Iowa has been a revolving door of good QBs recently and I don't see that changing. RB Tyler Goodson gets the 1 spot, but expect to see more RB by committee this year. Goodson leads the way coming off a 638 yard 2019 season with a healthy 4.8 YPC. He is joined by Mekhi Sargent and Ivory Kelly-Martin. Sargent is coming off a 563 yard year and also a healthy YPC at 4.7. Kelly-Martin only had 6 carries last ye

 So, I watched Biden live and then Trump on YouTube. I was going to get into their respective performances but it wasn't anything surprising. I have six quick takes. 1. Biden did well handling the majority of questions and outlined his plans well. 2. Shoot them in the leg is a dumb idea and not a de-escalation method. 3. Trump was not prepared for the opening questions and appeared evasive. 4. Trump recovered from a slow start well and had several very good answers throughout the debate. 5. The moderator for Trump was noticeably more hostile than the one for Biden. 6. Neither won. They didn't do anything other than repeat what the base wants to hear and did nothing to change anyone's mind. Then, Jo Jorgensen happened. She went live on Twitter with a virtual town hall and stole the show. She started with taking shots at Biden, proceeded to hammer Trump, and did it all on policy. She did not take a single shot at either candidate for being a racist, pedophile, or

 Full disclosure: I missed the first hour of the debate because work is dumb. Watching the last 40 minutes or so, it seemed like a slightly more civilized version of the Presidential debate last week. There were several attacks on records, dodging of questions, and very little policy discussed. This is going to be a short blog because I'm running over on work hours and short on sleep hours this week. A couple of quick observations.  Racial Justice The question of systemic racism was an interesting one for me. Harris was very adamant about fixing the rampant systemic racism in our system. Pence flat out denied that systemic racism exists. I don't think either of them were right. This question is a microcosm of every issue currently in front of the American people today. The flat denial that it exists from Pence was laughable. Anyone that can look at our system and claim that there is no systemic racism is an idiot. I also disagree with Harris' blanket assumption that it is r

 The big news today is that Trump has stopped negotiations on a stimulus package with Pelosi. If your not familiar with story, here are links to the  CNN story  and the  Fox News story , pick your flavor of kool aid. Now I could go into the whole he said, she said drama and whose fault is it and all that bullshit, but we are missing the bigger picture and no one is talking about it. The United States of America is bankrupt. We (the collective we) have no money. Picture this, a husband and wife are in the driveway of their house arguing. Behind them, the sheriff is changing the locks on the door and posting a foreclosure notice, the tow truck is in the driveway repossessing the cars, and the baby is crying because they have no formula. You ask the couple what they are arguing about and the husband replies "I want to donate $5,000 dollars to St. Jude, but she wants to donate $5,100." It's absolutely ridiculous. This is what our government is doing. The national debt is curr

The current odds on  Predictit.org  have Biden ahead 65 to 38 to win the election. In this blog, I will discuss pros/cons of each position as far as gambling on the Election. At the end I will also make some predictions. First, a brief explanation of how the site works. Joe Biden is currently at 65 cents a share to win the electoral college. That means for $65.00 you can buy 100 shares. Then, if he wins, each share is worth $1 netting you $100 and a profit of $35. You can also sell at any point. So, if you buy 100 shares of Trump at 38 cents it costs you $38. If his price goes up to 58 cents you can sell your hundred shares for $58 for a profit of $20. Anyone want in on this and has questions dm me before you sign up and I get you a promo code.  Joe Biden The pros for this one are fairly obvious. Predicit prices are user driven so most bettors believe he will win. He has the benefit of running against one the most hated candidates in history. I believe this will drive voter

 Welcome back folks, today I am probably going to make every single person that reads this angry and I'm okay with that. I'm gonna do a brief breakdown of how people are responding to the Presidential Debate and why they are all idiots. Some guidance to help my readers with their blood pressure, if you think Trump is the worst president ever, stop reading after the section labeled "the right". If you think Trump is the greatest president ever, skip the section labeled "the right" and read the one labeled "the left". The basic premise of this blog is that everyone is being dumb. People on both sides have seemed to adopt the belief that if their candidate did it, it must be right.  I'm going to break down specifics from each side and also offer some advice on how to win the election, so let's go. The Right Trump Derangement Syndrome has spread to the right. Slightly different symptoms than when the disease presents on the left, pe