Iowa Football: If Playoff Ranking reflected resume through Week 10

The CFP Committee has a tough job that comes with a lot of criticism. Here’s where the Iowa football team would stand if the rankings reflected the resume.

This system, released and explained last week, only takes into account if you won, if you won on the road, and if you beat a Power 5 team. After debuting at 18, where will the Iowa football team fall in the rankings now?

Perhaps the most impactful criteria of a resume are the strength of your wins.

The strength of wins is probably the best measure of how good the teams beat actually are. A lot of folks have been arguing about how many ranked wins one team has over another.

Keeping in mind that Nebraska, Syracuse, Michigan State, Stanford, and Maryland were all ranked at one point of this season, meaning a victory over one of these five ranked teams is overvalued if ranked wins are considered.

One final aspect of this system is that FBS wins are rewarded. The unintended consequence of this is that a resume of a team that has played nine games may, at this point of the season, look better than a team that has only played eight.

This will, by default, heavily favor teams that win their respective conference championship games.

While the AP Poll typically requires a loss by another team for your team to move up, the resume ranking system does not work that way.

Of course, I will outline the specific examples of this occurring.

Finally, for Iowa football, a resume becomes incredibly important when it comes to bowl selection. The Hawkeyes still have an outside chance at earning a spot in a New Year’s Six Bowl Game.