The second College Football Playoff rankings of the season are out, and the committee has followed the lead of the AP and Coaches poll, jumping the Hawkeyes up after their 24-10 win over Northwestern last week. Iowa moves up from #19 a week ago in the preliminary CFP rankings to #15 in the second iteration.
That seems largely fitting given the quality of the opponent (no, Northwestern wasn’t ranked but by most metrics the win was among the top-5
or so for ranked teams this week) and the losses that happened in front of the Hawkeyes.
For their part, AP voters jumped Iowa five spots to #16 on Sunday while the Coaches Poll sits a tick higher at #15, up six spots week over week. The computers agree on the direction: ESPN’s FPI climbed Iowa three spots to #18 while nearly doubling its playoff odds in the week from 11.0% to 20.3%. The strength-of-record measure moved from #23 to #18 and SP+ has the Hawkeyes up to #16 in line with the rest.
Betting markets moved the same way. FanDuel Sportsbook have the Hawkeyes with the 16th best odds to make the CFP at +220. That’s just over a 31% chance and up from +500 and a ~16.7% chance of making the playoffs a week ago. The books have also cut Iowa’s national title price from +15000 in August to +10000 this week – still deep longshot territory at a 1% implied chance, but that number has moved in one direction for a month straight.
Iowa got plenty of outside help over the weekend. Six of the 18 teams ranked ahead of the Hawkeyes lost: #1 Miami fell 31-24 to Notre Dame, #6 Kentucky got routed 34-6 at Tennessee, #10 Ole Miss lost 42-7 at home to Georgia, #12 Ohio State gave up 41 to Oregon, and #14 LSU and #18 Missouri went down to Alabama and Texas. Iowa, of course, did its own part with the 24-10 win at Northwestern and the remaining path is three very winnable games: Purdue at Kinnick on Saturday night, a trip to Illinois, and Nebraska on Black Friday. ESPN gives Iowa a 31.2% chance to win out. That’s key given the history of 2-loss teams and the playoff.
What the Second Rankings Usually Do
The second rankings have a short track record in the 12-team era, but it’s a consistent one. Across 2024 and 2025, eleven teams ranked #13-25 in the first rankings won their next game, and ten of them moved up, most by two or three spots. The lone big leap required an upset of the #3 team in the country (Ole Miss jumping five spots in 2024), and the only winner who fell at all slipped a single spot because that same Ole Miss team vaulted over it. No team in that band has won and dropped more than one.
Iowa’s own history with this move tells the same story. The 2015 team won and leapt from #9 to #5. The 2021 team won as #22 and rose to #20 – the only other time a ranked Iowa squad has sat in the committee’s 13-25 band and waited on the answer after a win. When Iowa has fallen, it earned the drop: a loss to Wisconsin cost the 2019 team two spots and last season’s Oregon loss cost one. And in 2023 the committee left Iowa out of the first rankings entirely, then let the Hawkeyes in at #22 a week later.
Over the last two seasons, 20 of the 30 teams that have found themselves in the top-15 in the second CFP rankings ultimately made the playoffs. Of the ten teams in that span that didn’t make the playoffs, seven were the result of losing a game down the home stretch while three were jumped by others getting big wins. Importantly, there is just one case of a 3-loss team jumping in over a 2-loss team. That came last year when 10-3 Alabama got in over 2-loss Notre Dame and BYU (and Vanderbilt and USC).
The Expanded 24-Team Playoff Future
The second round of rankings arrived just one day after the sport changed shape. On Monday the CFP made the 24-team expansion official – approved unanimously by all ten FBS conferences and Notre Dame, starting with the 2027 season. The expansion comes along with an ESPN deal to carry the new games through 2031-32.
The future structure is a remaking of the format: 19 at-large bids plus automatic spots for the four power-conference champions and the top-ranked Group of Six team. Seeds 1-8 get byes, seeds 9-16 host seeds 17-24 on campus in the first round, and the top eight then host the round of 16 at home as well, so 16 of the 23 playoff games will be played in campus stadiums. Conference championship games go away to make the calendar work.
Tonight’s top 25 breaks down like this: nine SEC teams, six from the Big Ten, six from the Big 12, two from the ACC, independent Notre Dame and Boise State carrying the Group of Six banner. Florida’s loss to Oklahoma knocked one off the SEC’s count from last week, and Oklahoma State slid in at #25 to hand the Big 12 a sixth spot.
For the Big Ten it’s the same six from the first rankings – UCLA, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon, USC and Ohio State – a count that also matches where the league finished in last season’s final CFP rankings. Iowa’s climb puts four Big Ten teams inside the top 16, and the humans see the leagues about the same way: Sunday’s AP ballot carried eight SEC teams and the same six from the Big Ten.
Run tonight’s rankings through next year’s format and you can see why it matters around here. At #15, Iowa would be a first-round host with #18 USC coming to Kinnick in December. The winner would then travel to #2 Utah. Every Big Ten team in tonight’s top 25 would be in the field and #25 Oklahoma State would be the first team out.
None of it helps the 2026 Hawkeyes, since this year’s field is still 12, but it changes what a season like this one is worth going forward: a top-16 ranking now buys a home playoff game in front of your own fans. Until then, Iowa simply needs to keep controlling what they can control and hope for a little bit of help.
