Hawkeye fans know, Iowa has rarely enjoyed positive media attention for any sustained period. Part of the Kirk Ferentz approach to program building has been flying under the radar.
“We’re not sexy.”
The narrative has long been, and for good reason, that you don’t really need to pay attention to the players, the games or anything with Iowa. Just put your head down, wait until the end of the season then look up and they’re 8-4 with a good defense, solid run game and no passing attack. Rinse, repeat.
Then Kirk hired his son as offensive coordinator and the media attention ramped up for all the wrong reasons.
Nepotism, sure, but more than anything it was the offensive ineptitude. There was no passing game, which led to no running game. No offense, no excitement, just historically bad performances that Hawkeye fans were forced to watch week after week, wondering how good the team could be with even a mediocre offense. We became a punch line.
Enter: Tim Lester.
In two seasons at the helm of Iowa’s offense, OC Tim Lester has turned the Hawkeye rushing attack into a juggernaut with just enough passing to keep the offense humming. And I do mean humming.
Lazy media members, Twitter trolls and the Nowledgeable folks to our west will continue the trope that Iowa hasn’t found the forward pass and has no offense because it’s in their nature, but for anyone paying attention, the Hawkeye offense has gone from laughingstock to a real problem if you’re an Iowa opponent.
The passing numbers aren’t going to wow anyone, but they’ve been good enough for the Hawkeyes to put together one of the most efficient offenses in the country. You read that right, and it’s not hyperbole. Iowa is top-20 in scoring offense per play and redzone efficiency. They’re top half in the country in EPA (Expected Points Added) per play and third down conversion percentage.
The defense is still what we have come to know and love from Phil Parker and the result is a season where entering November, Iowa is still in the mix for a College Football Playoff spot and potential a trip to Indianapolis for the Big Ten Championship Game (yes, those odds are slim, but they are not gone).
So when Iowa was unranked in last week’s AP top-25, there was some discussion to be had.
And for the first time in a while, it wasn’t just Iowa fans shouting at the clouds. No, the Hawkeyes are quietly becoming a minor media darling, at least within the sphere of the Big Tens’ media alignment (ESPN is going to prop up the SEC until the cows come home, but the Big Ten has positioned itself with virtually every other media partner out there).
Almost immediately, Jake Butt of the Big Ten Network jumped in to make the case that Iowa deserved to be in the mix. His argument was pretty clear, well put together and if you’re from north of the Mason-Dixon line, makes a lot of sense.
Butt wasn’t alone. Joel Klatt flatly put it the way Iowa and Big Ten fans have been seeing it for a while now, calling out the inherent bias derived from preseason rankings.
The Hawkeyes entered the year unranked and barring a win against a top-25 team will struggle to be ranked. But The SEC is perennially loaded up with ranked teams that are ranked before they play anyone, only to find out they’re no good. But when another SEC team beats them? Oh baby do they shoot up the ranks. And the losing team? They don’t dare fall far, after all, they lost to a now ranked SEC team!
FOX’s Joel Klatt has caught on and makes his case for Iowa.
But at the end of the day, where should Iowa be ranked, putting aside the pre-season bias, the early rankings and all the media coverage? Nobody is out here saying this is a top-10 team (that is, unless they knock off #6 Oregon, perhaps), but we wanted to know where exactly the fanbase felt this team deserved to be entering that matchup with Oregon next week.
The answer is perhaps a bit surprising given the media pushback to Iowa being left out of the lates polls.
On average, the fanbase thinks Iowa should be right around 22 in the nation, which seems about right. But the most common response we received was that Iowa should NOT be ranked. A full 17% of respondents felt Iowa should be on the outside looking in, more than any other options.
Next most common answer? #22 with just under 14% of the vote.
While the most common answer was for Iowa to be unranked, more than half of respondents felt Iowa should be in that 21-25 range where there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of distinction between the teams currently ranked.
Here’s a look at the full results from this week’s Reacts poll.
While this is interesting to look at and we’re all aware means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme, the stuff that does matter will come out Tuesday.
That’s when the College Football Playoff committee will release their first set of rankings for the 2025 season. With no game this week, Iowa won’t have an opportunity to impress, but also won’t be taking a loss. Where they fit in on Tuesday will be interesting to watch.
Of course, no rankings will matter if Iowa can’t keep their winning ways going next Saturday when they play host to the Oregon Ducks. Expect a kick time and TV announcement this Sunday, following the week’s action on Saturday.
