There are going to be a lot of corn jokes tomorrow on ESPN, some of them deserved (ok, ok, the trophy was a bad idea), some of them ignorant and/or mean. And to the ignorant/mean ones, I would like to say:
What were they supposed to do, jump on beans?
Really, we should be impressed that the state of Iowa has successfully claimed corn as such a big part of its identity. Illinois and Nebraska and Minnesota and Kansas and South Dakota and Ohio and Missouri and Wisconsin produce a lot of corn too, but Iowa’s got that locked down brand-wise. Nebraska tried. Nebraska’s the Cornhuskers. Yet College Gameday tomorrow will be about corn in a way it wouldn’t be in a hypothetical world in which Nebraska wasn’t such a sad entity in the realm of football. So in one sense, Iowa did it.
In the other…it was corn or soybeans, guys.
Those are the two things Iowa grows a ton of. Top two in each. Wheat? Way down on that list. Wheat’s a western man’s game. Corn? Soybeans? We grow those in the heartland, friends. That is where you get your ethanol and your tofu. Libs.
Anyway, you’d be a lot more ruthless if the state of Iowa was big into soy as its brand. Even if Kirk Herbstreit probably does put the stuff in his coffee.
