If Iowa wants to support UNI's athletic department, just cut them a check for $700,000 or whatever and play an actual D1 team. It doesn't matter that UNI is better at football than some D1 teams. Iowa has NO business playing UNI in football. Now basketball, hell yes. Iowa should be playing basketball against UNI every season. But it doesn't. So why is it that Iowa needs to play UNI to support them in football but not in basketball? There's just no way to spin that. It's insanely ludicrous Barta logic.
Northern Illinois and UNI . . . wow. Can't wait for those scintillating 2026 matchups. KF still goin' after the big boys. Then again, as noted, KF has lost to Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, and North Dakota State and whipped UNI by a single point after blocking not one but TWO game-ending field goals.
Most of Hayden's career, by contrast, Iowa's nonconference schedule was littered with top twenty, hell--top ten--opponents. I looked it up a while back and posted it, but Hayden played something like 18 top twenty nonconference teams in 20 years while KF has played THREE in 23 years. Go ahead, look it up. Meanwhile, count me not surprised but tremendously disappointed in this continuation of feeble scheduling.
Had looked this up some time ago. By my count I had Hayden playing 13 non-conference opponents in his career (excluding bowl games). Could be different based on whether the team was ranked at time they played or end of season.
Context is always important in anything. Hayden played 8 ranked non-conference games in his first 6 years, as those schedules were in place when he took the job. 1979, 11 game season, 8 conference games. Iowa's OOC was Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa State. Truly idiotic scheduling for a team with 20 years of non-winning seasons. Nebraska and Oklahoma were both Top 10.
1980 - Iowa played #6 Nebraska, ISU and Arizona.
1981 - Iowa played #7 Nebraska, #6 UCLA, ISU. Magical year where Iowa beat UCLA and Nebraska, and of course lost to ISU.
1982 - #3 Nebraska, ISU, Arizona
1983 - 9 game conference season for 1 season only. Iowa played ISU, #16 Penn State in non-con.
1984 - ISU, #12 PSU and Hawaii.
Then starting in 1985, Hayden got control of the schedule (actually starting many years prior as schedules are made in advance). Iowa played Drake, NIU, ISU with Hayden's best team in 1985. 1986, Iowa plays ISU, NIU, UTEP.
Then there was pressure to improve the non-conference schedule so Iowa added Tennessee in the pre-season game in 1987, added home and away games with Colorado, Oregon, Miami, and played NC State in another pre-season game.
And if you want to go down the road of bad losses, that is not unique to KF. I researched a post several years ago, and the data would show much worse losses in Hayden's tenure, especially in the last 5-6 years of his tenure. The number of .500 or below teams Hayden lost to was large and staggering. Seasons wrecked by losses to bad Minnesota teams, or Tulsa anyone? Both Hayden and KF are/were fantastic, and both were fantastic for their time. Hayden was a program reviver, and what he did at Iowa was great. Will always be the man as far as I'm concerned. What KF has done in taking over to maintain that level has been tremendous as well. If KF has another 3 good/great years, he will put together a decade from 2015-2024 that will be truly remarkable given his age and stage of career.
Iowa's non-con scheduling under KF was generally fine in my opinion until the Big 10 went to the 9-game conference slate. There is currently zero incentive to schedule tough OOC games.