Iowa football: How the Hawks have dominated Illinois over the years

The Iowa football team looks to snap a three-game losing streak against the Fighting Illini. If history shows us anything, Iowa shouldn’t have any issues.

After a tough three game stretch that featured two tough road matches against the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Purdue Boilermakers and a home game against the always dangerous Northwestern Wildcats, the Iowa football should be embracing the opportunity ahead this weekend when they face the Illinois Fighting Illini.

The Fighting Illini are surprisingly in bowl contention still. After a few surprising wins, the Illini are currently 4-6 with two wins in the conference (granted one of them was Rutgers). If this past weekend in the Big Ten West shows us anything, however, it’s that any team can win on any given Saturday.

Fortunately for the Iowa football team, history is at least on the Hawkeyes side. Despite the Illini owning a 38-33-2 advantage of the Hawks in their 73-game history, recent history hasn’t been nearly as kind to Illinois. In the Kirk Ferentz era, the Iowa football team is 9-3 against Illinois including winning four straight games dating back to 2014.

Illinois’ head coach Lovie Smith has yet to beat the Hawks, and unless he does it this year, he’s likely to leave Springfield having never beaten the legendary Kirk Ferentz. Through almost three seasons, he has only won nine games with the program.

What some may not realize though is that Illinois’ program didn’t always use to be the dumpster-fire that is currently is. They won nine games in a season as recently as 2007 when Ron Zook was the head coach. Moreover, for about the first sixty years of the 20th century, Illinois was consistently competitive, and in that span they made claim to five national titles and 15 conference championships, with are both higher than the Iowa football program.

That’s pretty much where the winning stops for Illinois as Iowa has a better standing in pretty much ever other major historical category including All-Americans, Heisman winners, NFL draft picks, weeks in the AP Poll, and total program wins.

With the season in utter chaos as Iowa’s team has lost three straight, playing the Fighting Illini couldn’t come at a better time, and hopefully at the end of Saturday, the Hawks will move one step closer to having the winning edge in this historical matchup dating back to 1899.