Let's take a look at the bowl scene. First off, Iowa becomes a 15-point underdog against Oklahoma in the Insight Bowl. This is Act II for Iowa in the Insight, having played there last year.

The question for this game is, with the Hawks a big underdog, will Oklahoma's athletes take this game seriously? Will they practice hard in the desert, or will the men of Bob Stoops sluff it off?

Coach Ferentz is going to approach this game with the same practice schedule and dedication that he's had in the last three bowl games in wins over South Carolina, Georgia Tech and Missouri. You might say Ferentz has the Sooners right were he wants them, because Iowa was the underdog going into those three games, which they won.

I have been with Iowa on its bowl trips and have seen double workouts with pads, workouts on Christmas Day and in general a seriousness about the game. The question will come, will the Sooners put that sort of effort into it?

Something is amiss in Sooner Nation when Oklahoma State, as good as it is, can put a whipping on Oklahoma the way they did in Stillwater in their last outing. Remember that Oklahoma was No. 1 in the country coming into the season.

So that will be part of what could be an intriguing matchup. No bowl team is as big an underdog as the Hawks are going to the desert.

THIS WEEK the Iowa-UNI basketball game ended with 9 minutes left in the contest when the Panthers were given numerous penalty shots and made all of them. And in my memory, I cannot remember a time when an Iowa coach was ejected as Fran McCaffery was for picking up two technical fouls in that match on Tuesday in Cedar Falls.

Up until the time of the technicals, the Panthers and the Hawks had put on a very competitive show. It reminded me of some of the moments of the Lute Olson era, when Iowa coaches were clever enough to get their points across, but still did not face ejection.

I am sure most Iowa fans have the memory or the knowledge of the Jim Bain affair in the Iowa-Purdue game on March 6, 1982, in West Lafayette, Ind. This occurred right at the end of the game at Mackey Arena, so there was no technical when Lute got after Bain on a phantom foul call at the end of the game that enabled Purdue to win.

Lute was restrained from bumping Bain after the game and also tried to kick in the officials' door and get to Bain after they got into the tunnel at Mackey Arena. Had that happened, it could have been the end of Lute's major college coaching career that eventually led to the basketball Hall of Fame.

Iowa fans at that time poured their venom in letters to the Big Ten commissioner at that time, Wayne Duke, an Iowan from Burlington who had his office filled with protesting missives. And Bain T-shirts were sold in Iowa City with Bain depicted in a hangman's noose. But Lute recovered and went on to his great career.

Another episode I witnessed took place in the old Iowa Fieldhouse when Johnny Orr, then the coach at Michigan, went after the officials at the end of the game. Had he been able to get to them, I'm sure that John would either have shoved them or hit them.

But the man who saved him from that attack was the former Michigan football player and then Iowa athletic director Bump Elliott, who restrained him from his attack. And Orr also went on to a Hall of Fame career.

But, no ejections.

It seems to me that the last Iowa coach before McCaffery to get ejected was Ralph Miller, who got tossed more than 40 years ago at Michigan State. That's what we'll go with until somebody writes us with a different story.

(Bob Brooks is sports director at KMRY and has been one of the leading voices of college and prep sports in Eastern Iowa for more than 65 years. He is a 10-time winner of the Iowa Sportscaster of the Year Award, and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Indiana in 2004. His sports reports can be heard weekday afternoons at 4:30 and 5:30, and Saturdays at 6:40 for the Hawkeye football wrap-up.)