NCAA Football iowa Hawkeyes

It's 111 miles from Iowa City to Parkersburg, Iowa, but sometimes the two places seem a lot closer. Today there's no distance whatsoever. Ed Thomas, legendary coach of the Aplington-Parkersburg High School Falcons, was shot and killed by one of his former players Wednesday morning.

While Thomas sent his players to a wide variety of colleges and other walks of life, the connections between Aplington-Parkersburg and the University of Iowa go deep. Countless Falcons have gone on to become Hawkeyes; several of those players have made the leap to the NFL. The list includes Green Bay's Aaron Kampman, Detroit's Jared DeVries, and Denver's Casey Wiegmann. That's not bad for a pair of towns whose population adds up to less than 3,000 people.

As might be expected, many of Coach Thomas's former players feel a great loss. Some of Thomas's best-known players have shared their feelings -- as best as they can -- with the world.

DES MOINES, IOWA (AP) -- Iowa offensive lineman Kyle Calloway has been arrested and charged with operating a mo-ped while intoxicated.

Iowa City police say Calloway was arrested early Saturday after officers stopped him while he was driving into a barricaded area.

Police say the 22-year-old senior was given a breath test, which registered 0.106. The legal limit in Iowa is 0.08.

There's little chance it was anything more than a copy-editing oversight, but by gosh, Minnesota's 2009 spring football media guide happened to leave something out of the record--namely, the 55-0 loss to Iowa which closed the regular season. Granted, there are many reasons the Gophers might like to forget that game, but I've learned never to assume evil when plain old "durrrr" will suffice.

Of course, this is the internet age we're talking about, so naturally the matter has attracted attention. Specifically, it caught the attention of the Cedar Rapids Gazette's Mike Hlas, who notes that he remembers the game quite clearly. Also naturally, Hlas's calling attention to the matter caught the attention of the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Michael Rand, who knows it's all in jest but decides to take a swipe at the perceived one-way nature of the Iowa-Minnesota rivalry.

Read both Hlas's and Rand's posts, and you come to one conclusion.

It's barely spring here in the Midwest but spring football is well under way, and there's abundant intrigue in the Big Ten conference. Coming off what seems like the 46th consecutive disappointing bowl season, including a Rose Bowl where Penn State's Daryll Clark (right) did his best but the Nittany Lions still couldn't beat Southern Cal, nobody will be expecting much from the conference or its teams when fall rolls around. Somebody has to win it, however, and now is when the jockeying for position really begins.

Iowa football players have once again stocked the jails with warm bodies after three of them were busted early Monday morning for public intoxication. Amusingly, coach Kirk Ferentz's son, James, was among the trio. You'll remember James is no stranger to these incidents thanks to an October arrest for underage possession of alcohol.

Last year at this time, Jake Christensen was the unquestioned starter for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Even though he had his struggles in 2007, the fact that Iowa missed the postseason wasn't thrown on his shoulders.

Little did anyone know that Ricky Stanzi, a sophomore, would parlay a great offseason into an opportunity to rotate with Christensen to start the 2008 season. After just four games, the job was Stanzi's, and he didn't give it up.

The University of Iowa has had its run-ins with the law over recent years, and as a result, Kirk Ferentz has been pretty tough on any player who runs afoul of the law. Get busted for public intoxication? That's a minimum four-game suspension. Not even his seed is exempt from these rules.

So it's no surprise that Iowa receiver Shaun Prater has been suspended indefinitely following his OWI arrest early Saturday morning. What is somewhat surprising, however, was Prater's excuse to the cops upon being pulled over. Yeah, he was drunk, but it wasn't his fault. The bartender spiked his drink!

The daughter of former Iowa football player and Iowa State football coach Dan McCarney was arrested for allegedly trying to punch and kick a police officer during a weekend incident in which she reportedly asked police, "Do you know who my dad is?" and informed them that she knew her family's fame and wealth would lead to charges being dropped.

Jillian McCarney now faces up to a year in prison for assault on a police officer.

Kirk Ferentz has always done a good-to-great job at Iowa. Because of his work, he is traditionally one of the hotter names that gets thrown around every time there is an NFL vacancy.

But now that Iowa has inked him to a seven-year extension, you have to imagine that it will be at least next year a few seasons before anyone starts linking him with vacant head-coaching positions at a higher level.

Signing day has come and (nearly) gone, filled with celebration and upheaval. Sort of like life. We're here to parse what can be parsed and detail the recruiting classes that were for the major conferences.

While recruiting services Scout and Rivals differ widely in their overall assessments of this year's Big Ten recruiting classes, they're both impressed by many of the same things. Of course, they're also unimpressed by many of the same things.

But hey, you're a smart person. You can figure things out for yourself. You want to know who helped themselves. You want to know who shot themselves in the foot. You want to know if the talent-rich got richer, like Michigan did with defensive end Craig Roh (pictured). Make the jump, grasshopper; all will be revealed.