Iowa football: Latest AP Poll causes outrage, Hawks stay stagnant

In the Week 2 AP Poll, the Iowa football team stayed put at 20th, but fans are still upset over how the other results shook out.

I’ll first start off by saying, at the end of the day, the AP Poll doesn’t really matter. It’s certainly a nice gauge for where your team will stand when the real College Football Playoff Rankings are announced, but it’s not guaranteed the two will line up. Despite a huge (margin of victory huge, not magnitude of victory huge) win over an average Group of 5 team, the Iowa football team expected to remain right around where they started out in the initial AP Poll, 20th.

And that’s exactly what they did.

But regardless of this, fans are still upset.

Thank you Nebraska and Iowa State for always giving us a reason to be mad because both teams tied for 25th in the AP Poll after disappointing opening week performances.

Nebraska’s wasn’t all bad, and although I didn’t agree with them being in the AP Poll, to begin with, if they were in there, they didn’t deserve to drop too much after their win over South Alabama. Yes, the game was entirely too close, and if there is such as a thing as a moral loss, this was it. Nebraska’s offense struggled throughout and Heisman hopeful Adrian Martinez looked like more like a walk-on true freshman than he did a Heisman candidate, but the defense (considered the weak point of the team) held strong and got the Huskers a 35-21 victory.

But how does Iowa State remain in the AP Poll after surviving three overtimes to defeat FCS opponent Northern Iowa?

They dropped four spots, but come on. Northern Iowa has some name recognition because historically they’ve been a strong FCS team, but still. That was ridiculous.

When the Iowa football team needed two blocked field goals to survive Northern Iowa back in 2009, they dropped out of the rankings entirely. It took them a month to get back in, despite winning all of their contests to that point.

That all being said, I do think Iowa State and Nebraska are better than what they showed Saturday, and with Iowa State still being ranked, there is still a chance the Cy-Hawk meeting will be between two ranked teams and possibly draw ESPN College GameDay to Ames.