Iowa football: The history of the long-standing rivalry with Purdue
By Andrew Wade
The Iowa football team is ready to start a new winning streak this Saturday against Purdue. Here is the history of this long-standing rivalry.
The Iowa football team is ready to renew their quest for a Big Ten West title Saturday after falling to Penn State Saturday. With just four games left in the season, the Hawkeyes are on the home stretch, and this weekend they travel to Indiana to face the Boilermakers in an important game that will have a lot of impact on Iowa’s season.
Oddly enough, this game has a ton of history that most Iowa football fans don’t realize. Behind Wisconsin and Minnesota, Purdue is Iowa’s third longest rivalry game in the history of the program. These two teams have played each other 88 times with their first game coming in 1910.
More oddly enough, Iowa historically hasn’t been successful in this series. They have only won 38 times compared to Purdue’s 48 wins and at one point had a 20-game losing streak against the Boilermakers from 1961-1980.
Recent history, however, has been on the Hawkeye’s side. Kirk Ferentz has coached the Iowa football team to a 10-5 record against Purdue since taking over the program, and since 2011 the Hawks are 5-2.
Most recently though, Iowa has been on the wrong side of the scoreboard as Iowa fell to Purdue 24-15 in Iowa City last year despite having the more talented team. Similar to last season, the ranked Iowa football team was coming off a disappointing lost to another ranked team before facing the Boilermakers. Last year the Hawks came out flat and got their butts whooped.
This year, let’s hope it’s a different story. For Purdue, it most certainly is. After four straight seasons of winning no more than three games, Purdue broke out last year for a 7-6 campaign. Then they went out and added a few explosive players (most notably freshman Rondale Moore) to their veteran team.
The 2018 version of Purdue is not like year’s past. They are explosive and strong and capable of beating anyone in the country on any given day, just look at what happened to Ohio State.
light. Related Story. Beating Purdue is step in right direction for Hawks to win the West
Regardless of Purdue actually being decent this year, I do believe the Iowa football team has the better team this season and hopefully Saturday they can notch win #39 in this series history.