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There's only one Hawkeye who could address every problem Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz is fretting over in advance of a winner-take-Rose-Bowl berth showdown Saturday at Ohio State.
And it would stretch even the bounds of his considerable medical talents for Dr. Hawkeye Pierce to do that.
At 9-1 overall and 5-1 in the Big Ten, Iowa has the record of a league championship contender, but the look of the 4077th M*A*S*H unit as it heads for Columbus.
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In fact, once they introduce the Buckeyes on Senior Day in Ohio Stadium, Iowa will run onto the field while the public address announcer shouts, "WOUNDED. WE'VE GOT WOUNDED HERE!"
In the last three weeks, the Hawkeyes have lost their backup punt returner (the starter was knocked out for the season in mid-October), backup tailback (the starter went down in fall camp), starting guard and starting quarterback.
None of them are likely to return until the bowl game, and even that's iffy because of nasty high-ankle sprains which felled leading rusher Adam Robinson, likely-All-Big Ten lineman Dace Richardson and QB Ricky Stanzi within the last two weeks.
And you thought H1N1 was contagious.
That leaves Ferentz with the unenviable task of taking what was already the Big Ten's ninth-ranked scoring offense into one of the league's most difficult venues with a redshirt freshman quarterback making his first career start.
Oh, yeah, the replacements at tailback and guard are freshmen, too.
There are programs built to handle such midseason upheaval — places where the talent is stacked so deep the next man in is often as good, and sometimes even better, than the one he replaces.
Unfortunately for Ferentz, Iowa is not one of those places.
And even worse for him, Ohio State is exactly that sort of place.
Just before fall camp, OSU lost starting linebacker Tyler Moeller for the year. It plugged in Brian Rolle, who's leading the team in tackles and has turned around two games with critical interceptions.
A few years back, the Buckeyes lost linebacker Bobby Carpenter to a broken leg on the first series at Michigan. It substituted freshman James Laurinaitis, who went on to become a three-time All-American and a Butkus Award winner.
Back in 2002, OSU lost starting cornerback Richard McNutt in midseason. On came Chris Gamble, who made All-American that year and went in the first round of the NFL draft.
It doesn't work that way for Ferentz, who coaches in a state which produces a fraction of the high school talent available to some of the nation's top programs.
Iowa gets only 22 percent of its players from within its borders, while 70 percent of OSU's players are native to a state that trails only Florida, California and Texas in producing Div. I talent.
Ferentz therefore must take chances on two- and three-star recruits, while Ohio State's Jim Tressel can count on an ample, never-ending supply of four- and five-star prospects who grow up wanting to play for the Buckeyes.
Tressel supplements that with the occasional heavy-hitter from beyond Ohio, like quarterback Terrelle Pryor from Pennsylvania or beastly defensive end Cameron Hayward from Georgia.
Ferentz's out-of-state gets are guys like Stanzi or receivers Derrell Johnson-Koulianos and Trey Stross. All of them are from Ohio, yet none drew even a sniff of interest from OSU.
Until Stanzi went down, Iowa started more offensive players from Ohio than from Iowa.
"Typically, if you look at our great players, and we've had a lot of great players come through here the last decade, most of them got better as their careers went on," Ferentz said. "They didn't come in as blue-chip recruits. They're guys who were self-made, who worked hard and had some upside. That is what it takes for us to be successful."
While Tressel and every other major program offered Pryor a scholarship as soon as the NCAA allows, Ferentz didn't offer Stanzi until November of his senior year.
That's ridiculously late for a starting quarterback in the Big Ten, but it took that long for Iowa to become convinced he could become a serviceable Big Ten player.
