Alex Kanellis's career is over

We mentioned last week that Alex Kanellis would be hanging up the cleats for the year. As it turns out, the concussions are forcing Alex off the field for good.

Eric Page over at the QC Times' Hawkmania.com (the site that should have replaced HawkCentral in your bookmarks long ago) has a writeup about Kanellis, and it's predictably depressing.

“You have to be smart,” Ferentz said. “Everybody’s career is going to end at some point. We all have a picture of when it’s going to end, and when it doesn’t end that way, it’s tough. It’s just not worth taking any unnecessary chances.”

And to be sure, by "unnecessary chances," Ferentz is referring to the vastly increased likelihood that Kanellis's brain would leak out of his ears the next time he concussed himself.

It's always a shame to see a young player's opportunity cut short for medical reasons, and this scenario is no exception. The good news is that Kanellis will probably stick around the program and help the S&C program, much the same way fellow medical casualties Vernon Jackson and Alex Wilcox are doing so.

Happy Monday, folks

We spent the weekend working on a shocking expose of Illinois head coach Ron Zook. We'll be bringing that to you throughout the week, depending on how quickly our lawyers tell us we can print certain parts.

Past that, the Harty Party wants you to not talk about certain things anymore, days after it's all his paper talked about. Thanks Pat, you lovable syrup-covered hack.

The QC Times, of course, opted to run a real article instead, this one a great profile on redshirt freshman Julian Vandervelde, a 6'3", 295 pound teddy bear.

There is a reason Vandervelde is the way he is — why he didn’t hesitate before standing up and singing Phantom of the Opera’s “All I Ask of You” in front of teammates and their families and Texas players and their families at a talent show leading up to the Alamo Bowl last December, why he felt totally comfortable offering his rendition of the National Anthem to thousands of rallying democrats at a Hillary Clinton campaign stop this summer in Iowa City.

BO-RING! Wake me up when he's a champion yodeler. The Stars 'n Bars are so played out these days; I'll be impressed when someone walks up to a microphone and belts out the theme from the Price is Right's Cliff Hangers game.

He garnered all-state honors as a member of the debate team, excelled in forensics, authored award-winning poems and short stories, was the lead in the school play and continued to sing in the choir and play in the band — all while maintaining a 3.75 grade-point average.

Still not a fucking yodeler.

The article contains an unusual amount of trepidation when it comes to his actual playing ability--a strange sight indeed, when you're doing a puff piece during the summer. It even contains the cryptic threat of "don't call him a football player." Eric, don't pull a Nancy Clark on us. The guy's on scholarship for football, not poetry. He's penciled in as the starting left guard. He's a football player. He's not only a football player, but who's going to make that argument in the first place?

You don't have to hack your way through a profile, Eric. Don't bring yourself down to the level of every other sportswriter in the entire state.

That's the least of what you are.

If you haven't been to HawkMania.com recently, you ought to

The state of Iowa, while a good source of writers, is far from an attractive destination. It is, no doubt, frustrating for parents to try to encourage their young children to read the newspaper, only to find out that their easily impressionable minds are subjected to hacks like Nancy Clark and Pat Harty (or even worse, us).

Child: "Daddy, daddy! I read the newspaper like you told me to, and I learned from Nancy Clark that the Hawkeyes start white receivers because Kirk Ferentz is racist!"
Father: "There is no hope for this world." (commits suicide)

That's why it's been refreshing to read Eric Page's comprehensive coverage of the Hawkeyes from the Big 10 media conference for the QC Sun-Times. His July 31 article on Jake Christensen, while drenched in unnecessary second-person perspective ("Curious now, you moved a little bit closer." is just creepy), is nonetheless the clear-cut best player profile to be written this season. Then there's the thankless task of providing analysis of an online poll that only about 200 people bothered voting in:

With Christensen, it’s obvious — as the quarterback goes, the team goes, right? But the guy is a first-year starter, and first-year starters — especially at quarterback — take time to develop in the Big Ten. So I can see a scenario where Christensen doesn’t have that great of a year, but Iowa still is able to have success. If the offensive line can gel and the running game can dominate and if the defense can shut down opponents and create turnovers, all the quarterback is going to have to do is not make mistakes, which wouldn’t necessarily make him a huge impact guy.

Sounds logical enough, right? Okay, but where has anything as sane as that been anywhere else in the state? Let's take a look at some gems from the DM Register's Sean Keeler and the ICPC's Pat Harty.

Harty's last article was about listening to Bryan Mattison. Naturally, the first quote doesn't come until 10 grafs in--and it's from linebacker Mike Klinkenborg. Even in that instance, though, the notion that Harty is a blithering retard is merely implicit. Never one for subtlety, though, Harty removes all doubt later in the same article:

Bryan also became agitated when I told him that some fans have asked me whether Ferentz has lost some of the magic that helped him rebuild the football program.

"I wouldn't even answer that question if I was you," Bryan said. "Coach Ferentz is one of the best coaches in the nation.

"If I knew what a magic touch was, I don't think he's lost it. Those people that ask that question don't know anything about football."

Good move, Harty. Ask a classy player to toss his coach under the team bus. The worst part is that Harty fucking enjoys doing that. He worded his question quite purposefully and carefully, characterizing the skeptics as "some fans," when a much more accurate description would be "some fans named Pat Harty." If he thought it was a terrible, baseless question, he wouldn't have asked it. He can explain it away with the notion that he's just "stirring the pot," but that's just a nice euphemism for "being a little shit."

Then there's Keeler, cramming football metaphors into a cable story with all the grace and nuance of a 32-DD breast enhancement surgery. From the story titled "Big Ten Network Needs To Punt":

Delany, the Big Ten’s commissioner, downplayed media concerns Tuesday at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, declaring that negotiations between the Big Ten Network and major cable providers were simply “at halftime.”

Actually, there’s 6 minutes left in the fourth quarter, he’s down about three touchdowns, and the clock is ticking. If somebody doesn’t throw a Hail Mary, Iowa fans are going to be left in the dark.

So they have to punt, then throw a Hail Mary, then they'll be down by 14 late in the fourth quarter? What does that even mean?

At the very least, we've got Marc Morehouse up at the Gazette giving us what we really need to read over coffee and eggs:

However, a locker room sprint at the end of the first half against Ohio State in mid-September was more alarming to Paterno's ego.

"I didn't get sick. I got diarrhea,'' the 80-year-old Paterno said.

God bless you, Morehouse. You've put me in a good enough mood to spare everyone the Pat Harty Avalanche.

Here's a puppy instead. You're all so lucky.