Some doubters of the Iowa football team point to a weak schedule, but that’s not a fair argument.
By Ryan Rodriguez
Coming off of a thrilling 40-10 win against Northwestern this past weekend, the Iowa football team shot up all the way to No. 12 in the AP top 25, its highest mark since 2009.
But for many of the Hawkeyes’ skeptics, that ranking comes with one huge asterisk: strength of schedule.
Nonbelievers will point to Iowa’s slate of games, ranked in the preseason as the easiest of any Power-5 team in the country, as the main reason the Hawks have had such a historic start this season. For some, Iowa’s success has been a result of a schedule that was almost too easy to screw up.
The numbers, however, disagree.
“You can’t really pay attention to what anyone in the media is saying about you,” quarterback C.J. Beathard said. “You just have to worry about yourself and playing the best game you can.”
As it sits right now, three of the Hawkeyes’ seven wins have come against teams that are either current Top 25 squads or were the week they played Iowa.
What’s more, two of those games, Wisconsin and Northwestern, came on the road, and the Hawkeyes knocked off a more highly ranked opponent in consecutive weeks.
What is the only other Division-1 team with numerous road wins over ranked teams, you ask? Alabama.
And while both Northwestern and Wisconsin have since dropped out of the rankings, there’s a real chance they could finish the season back in the top 25.
Couple that with the team’s thrilling, last-minute win over 5-1 Pittsburgh — now ranked No. 25 — and a hard-fought victory over the Cyclones in the Cy-Hawk series at Ames, the Hawks’ seven wins look a whole lot more impressive.
“We made it this far; now we have a chance to regroup and be ready for the second surge,” head coach Kirk Ferentz told hawkeyesports.com Sunday. “We want them to relax and recharge, and we’ll get back to thinking about football later in the week.”
With Iowa now on the back nine of the season going into the bye week, the Hawks control their destiny in winning the Big Ten West.
Their remaining schedule (Maryland, at Indiana, Minnesota, Purdue, at Nebraska) will see the Hawkeyes face off against teams with a combined record of 14-20, 2-12 in the Big Ten.
It’s drawn derision from more than a few college-football pundits. Oct. 17‘s broadcast on ESPN included commentator Brian Griese taking potshots at Iowa’s remaining slate as well as its entire schedule.
True, the Hawkeyes haven’t exactly seen a murders’ row of powerhouse teams this season. But then again, nobody else has, either.
According to Sagarin, a metric used by USA Today and others to compare the 120 some-odd college football teams in America, Iowa has the 33rd highest strength of schedule in the country, higher than dozens of ranked teams, including Ohio State (74), TCU (127), Baylor (176), Michigan State (76), and Alabama (43).
How the Hawks shape up after the bye week will have a huge effect on their bid for the Big Ten West crown. It’d be hard to argue their schedule hasn’t prepared them for whatever they face.
“You watch tape the next day, and there are still a lot of things we can improve upon,” Ferentz said. “That is the challenge in sports — if our team has a good attitude and continues to work on detailing things, hopefully, we can make vast improvement in the next five games.”
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