The Iowa Hawkeyes have quite a few intriguing options to go with at quarterback heading into the 2025 season, but none are more interesting than Mark Gronowski. None offer the high risk-high reward factor that Gronowski does, which makes him one of the pivotal players to keep an eye on this offseason.

The most important thing right now for both Gronowski and the Hawkeyes is that he gets healthy. The South Dakota State transfer quarterback underwent shoulder surgery earlier this offseason to address an issue he played through last season at SDSU.

“Mark played last season with a common football-related injury. While he could have continued to play through the injury, Mark is choosing to have a procedure to address the issue, and we support him in his decision,” Ferentz had said in a January statement regarding his new quarterback.

That was a few months ago, and now that spring ball has started up in Iowa City, Ferentz has provided another update on the super-senior quarterback. Recovery is apparently going swimmingly for Gronowski.

“I think he’ll be throwing lightly here,” Ferentz said on Wednesday, according to Tyler Tachman of The Des Moines Register. “Probably in a couple of weeks, but not with the team. The biggest area (of caution) right now is just to make sure nobody runs into him or he doesn’t fall down. So just being cautious with that with him. But the recovery’s going great. Everything’s right on schedule. He’s probably a little bit ahead, that type of deal.”

Gronowski is expected to begin on-field team workouts in June, so he’ll still have plenty of time to prepare for the 2025 season. If he’s healthy, and it sounds like he’ll be, there’s a great case to be made that he’ll be Iowa’s starting quarterback.

Here’s the high upside part of the discussion. Gronowski played four seasons for the SDSU Jackrabbits and led them to back-to-back FCS national titles in 2022 and 2023. Over the course of his career in Brookings, he threw for 10,330 yards and 93 touchdowns while also rushing for 1,767 yards and 37 touchdowns.

The kid’s a gamer, and if he’s heathy and his talent can translate to the Big Ten — and therein lies the risk for Iowa — he could end up being a big-time quarterback for the Hawkeyes in 2025.

A lawsuit brought by publishers and authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult has led to a portion of a law banning Iowa school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts being halted.

On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the measure, writing that it had been applied unconstitutionally in many schools and that books of “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” had been caught up in it, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

This is the second time that US district judge Stephen Locher, a Joe Biden appointee, has blocked the ban. The law, Senate File 496, was first approved by Iowa’s Republican-led legislature and governor Kim Reynolds in 2023, however, Locher placed an injunction on it in December 2023 after authors and publishers sued the state.

The preliminary injunction was reversed by the US Eighth Circuit appeals court last August, leading publishers and authors to file a second complaint, arguing that the ban violates free speech and “goes far beyond prohibiting books that are obscene as to minors because it prohibits books with even a brief description of a sex act for students of all ages without any evaluation of the book as a whole”.

In his decision, Locher wrote that the ban has resulted in “forced removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene”, and that unconstitutional applications of the law “far exceed” constitutional applications.

The ultimate fate of the ban still hangs in the balance, as Iowa officials could appeal this week’s ruling.

In response to Locher’s decision, Iowa attorney general Brenna Bird, a Republican, said that parents “shouldn’t have to worry about what materials their kids have access to when they’re not around.”

“This common sense law makes certain that the books kids have access to in school classrooms and libraries are age-appropriate,” she added. “I’m going to keep on fighting to uphold our law that protects schoolchildren and parental rights.”

The Iowa law is among several book banning measures enacted across the US in recent years. Publisher-led lawsuits have also been brought in Florida and Idaho.

Other books unconstitutionally caught up in the law, wrote Locher, include Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) – Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird released a statement Tuesday following the announcement that a federal judge blocked part of an Iowa book ban law.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher blocked part of the law that bans school libraries and classrooms from carrying books depicting sex acts.

“As a mom, I know how important it is to keep schools a safe place for kids to learn and grow,” says Attorney General Bird. “Parents shouldn’t have to worry about what materials their kids have access to when they’re not around. This common sense law makes certain that the books kids have access to in school classrooms and libraries are age-appropriate. I’m going to keep on fighting to uphold our law that protects schoolchildren and parental rights.”

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