Iowa football: What to expect from tonight’s CFB Playoff Rankings reveal
By Andrew Wade
The first CFB rankings of the 2019 season are set to be released tonight. Here’s what to expect and where we think the Iowa football team will fall.
The Iowa football team has been ranked in every single AP Poll since the season began, but as we have made note of multiple times, that ranking really doesn’t matter. It’s just there because traditions die hard and because it gives fans a barometer of where their team currently sits in the midst of the college football chaos.
We’ve gotten deep enough into the season though that we are finally getting our first meaningful ranking tonight.
The College Football Playoff committee will be unveiling its initial 2019 rankings from 9 to 930 PM EST tonight on ESPN.
While there is a ton that can change between now and the final ranking that ultimately determines who gets to play in the playoffs, this will give teams an idea of how much ground they need to make up or what teams are currently being considered better than them.
The reason why that’s important is that with anything that is done without a 100% correlation to statistics, there are flaws and biases that play a role in determining these rankings. It’s not like Matt’s resume-based rankings that would have the Iowa football team at 23 and Alabama out of the playoffs. This finally puts the cards on the table and gives fans an inside glimpse into what is being deemed important by the committee.
With that being said, I don’t expect anything too surprising for the Iowa football team in the rankings. There won’t be a drastic ten spot jump or a complete fall out of the rankings.
However, they should be able to jump in front of Notre Dame who lost to Michigan significantly worse than the Hawks and lost to a 1-loss Georgia squad (whereas the Hawks lost to an undefeated Penn State team). I also think they’ll be ahead of Cincinnatti simply because outside of getting smoked by Ohio State, their schedule has been subpar.
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But there’s also a chance the committee looks at Kansas State’s win over Oklahoma favorably and puts them ahead of the Iowa football team, which would leave the Hawks right in the 16-18 range. With four games remaining, two of which are coming against teams ranked ahead of them, the Hawkeyes have a great opportunity ahead of them to continue moving up in the rankings as the season progresses.