Iowa football: How the Hawks can still win the Big Ten West

The Iowa football team fell to Penn State Saturday in a crucial Big Ten matchup. Despite the loss, there is still a chance for Iowa to win the Big Ten West.

Saturday sucked, let’s be honest. There was a lot of optimism and hope from Iowa football fans as our Hawkeyes prepared to take on arguably their toughest opponent of the season in a very tough environment in less than ideal weather conditions. This game was the game to put Iowa on the map and squarely in the running for the College Football Playoff.

With their second loss of the season, the small hopes for the College Football Playoff are gone, but the season is not over. The Iowa football team still has a solid chance of winning the Big Ten West and ultimately the Big Ten Conference title, but it’s going to take a little help.

As it stands right now, the Hawkeyes sit in a three-way tie for second place with Wisconsin and Purdue. Unfortunately, due to the loss to Wisconsin a month ago, Iowa doesn’t win the tiebreaker against the Badgers in this situation.

Furthermore, the Northwestern Wildcats, despite their three losses on the season are sitting at the top of the division with a 5-1 record with Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois remaining on their Big Ten slate.

This means the Wildcats control their own destiny. Win out and they will be in the Big Ten Conference Championship game in Indianapolis.

Oddly enough, the Iowa football also somewhat controls their own destiny in the Big Ten. First, they need to win out their remaining schedule which consists of an away game against a tough Purdue team, a home game against the aforementioned Northwestern, an away game against lowly Illinois, and a home game against the Cornhuskers.

This would give the Hawks the tiebreaker over Northwestern in the instance that Northwestern were to win their other two conference games against Minnesota and Illinois.

The Badgers on the other hand, are a little different story. They still need to travel to Penn State in two weeks. If they lose this, Iowa is in good shape because Wisconsin will have more division losses than Iowa. If they somehow manage to win this game and win out as well, it will create a three-way tie at the top of the Big Ten West.

A three-way tie favors the Iowa football program immensely because the first tiebreaker is head-to-head matchups. In this scenario, Wisconsin beat Iowa, Iowa beat Northwestern, and Northwestern beat Wisconsin so you move on to the next tiebreaker which is overall conference record. This is where Iowa’s undefeated non-conference record helps them out.

If Wisconsin and Iowa win out, and Northwestern wins every game except for Iowa (important to note here that they will likely lose to Notre Dame next week in non-conference), Wisconsin will be 9-3, Northwestern will be 9-3, and Iowa will be 10-2 meaning Iowa wins the tiebreaker.

There is still a lot of football to be played and as it always happens with college football, some sort of chaos will likely ensue, but at this point, the Iowa football team still has a very good shot at playing for the Big Ten Championship and attempting to punch their ticket to the Rose Bowl.