I woke up this morning and looked out the window and thought, "Uh oh, is BV (Buena Vista University) going to even make it here?!" It was snowing like crazy. I wouldn't even hesitate to call it a blizzard, and of course, it would just so happen to be on the day of our first home game, plus our first game of the conference season. This morning on my way to class, a billion tiny little snowflakes pelted my face, only allowing a very small of amount of seeing capabilities out of the skinny slivers of my tightly squinted eyelids. It's like that annoying blowing rain that attacks your face, only in the form of micro sized icy darts. So with minimum sight and fighting a relentless attack to the face, I quickly was reminded about another thing involving winter weather. There's actually ice beneath the newly-fallen white blanket making every step one step closer to meeting the ground face to face. Luckily, I didn't ever come in close contact with the ground, but I'm sure it was pretty entertaining watching me as my arms were flailing about and trying to regain my footing on the ridiculously slippery snow-covered ice. Yes, I walked like a robot the rest of the way to class. Welcome to Iowa.

There's always something very exciting about playing the first home game of the year. What makes it even better is that it's our first conference game of the year, too! This is when it really starts to count. From here on out, it's ultra-serious ball. The comfort of your own gym, the roar of your own student body, the blaring warm up music that gets your blood flowing hot and that smell of popcorn as you run in the gym to get ready for warm ups is what makes playing at home so great. You get that something extra that you don't get when you're on the road that makes you want to work harder. It's the atmosphere. It's almost like getting an extra build-up of excited energy, which ends up showing in every aspect of the game. Its that drive that makes us want to grind our opponent into the ground even more. It's our turf.

'No one, and I mean no one, comes into our house and pushes us around.' -former Notre Dame head coach Dan Devine (from the movie, Rudy).

This is why they call it the home team advantage. Ahh, Home Sweet Home. Welcome to Simpson.