Ricky Stanzi Has Surgery And Won’t Be Back Before Bowl Game

Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi underwent surgery earlier this week on his severly sprained right ankle suffered during Iowa’s loss to Northwestern on Saturday.  The surgery was confirmed by head coach Kirk Ferentz on Tuesday, and he also confirmed the news that Iowa fans were crossing their fingers would somehow not end up being the case.

As miraculous as Stanzi has seemed at the end of some games this season, he does not have the super-human ability to heal faster at the last minute just like the rest of us, and as a result he’s not going to be playing in either of Iowa’s final two games of the regular season.

“It is correct that he had surgery,” Ferentz said. “We think he’s going to be just fine. It’s very, very doubtful that he’ll play the next two weeks, but we’re very, very confident that he’ll return shortly thereafter.”

Which would be for Iowa’s bowl game, though the odds of that game being a BCS bowl are greatly diminished by Stanzi’s injury.  This definitely isn’t the first big blow that the Hawkeyes have had to take this year, but it may be the one that they feel more than any other.

It’s not just the Hawkeyes who are suffering either, as the injury to Stanzi hurts the Big Ten as a whole as well.

The undefeated season is gone, and with it are Iowa’s chances of playing for a national title.  In my opinion, this is a direct result of Stanzi’s injury.  I’m of the opinion that had he not gotten hurt when Corey Wootton sacked him on Saturday that the Hawkeyes would have emerged from the Northwestern game 10-0.  They didn’t score a single point after Stanzi was forced to leave the game, and while I’m not trying to pin the blame on Dawson Leery James Vandenberg in anyway, it was evident that it just wasn’t the same Iowa offense.

Now with Vandenberg at the helm, combined with injuries along the offensive line and to the running backs, I don’t think the Hawkeyes have much of a chance at going into the Horseshoe next week and beating Ohio State.  Had Stanzi been healthy, it could have been done.  It wouldn’t have been easy, but it surely would have been a lot less difficult with Stanzi around.

Which is why Stanzi’s injury affects the Big Ten just as much as it does the Hawkeyes.  Whether we expected them to be here or not, Iowa was the conference’s best chance to bring home a national title.  Ohio State is not going to get that chance, though if they do win the conference and take care of Oregon (or whoever they end up facing) in the Rose Bowl, that would surely help the conference’s reputation a bit.

Still, given the Buckeyes history in bowl games the last few years, who knows if that’s possible?

The Hawkeyes on the other hand were the only Big Ten team to pick up a bowl win last year, and though they’d likely be 10-14 point underdogs against Alabama, Florida, Texas or whoever they’d end up facing in the title game, I’d take my chances with them to pull off the impossible.

Imagine how nice it would have been to throw an Iowa national championship into the face of all the Big Ten haters out there.  We’ll never know how it would have felt now.