Iowa football: A look at preseason predictions that aged quite poorly

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LINCOLN, NE – NOVEMBER 29: Wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson #1 of the Nebraska Cornhuskers sits on the field after a play against the Iowa Hawkeyes at Memorial Stadium on November 29, 2019 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images) /

Nebraska and Michigan will meet in the B1G Championship Game

I am not sure that this matchup sounded very likely when the Big Ten media voted for it in the preseason. It certainly sounds worse now.

I understand, at least to an extent, the love affair the media had with Michigan. They are consistently a 10-win team under Jim Harbaugh and their biggest obstacle was Ohio State under Urban Meyer.

At the beginning of the season, I saw the Iowa football game in Ann Arbor as a certain loss, likely by at least two scores. Despite a notably underwhelming performance, Iowa football wound up keeping the game within one score.

Michigan, while still being a good team, was not the elite team that many predicted they would be.

It turns out that Ohio State is an elite team with Ryan Day as well.

Nebraska, on the other hand, was not a good team. Many were caught up with Scott Frost’s success at UCF not recognizing that the Cornhuskers were still midway through a rebuild.

I will be honest. I thought our non-rival would be improved to the point of winning seven or eight games. I put a lot of that on what I believed to be a very talented quarterback.

Their Heisman hopeful quarterback, Adrian Martinez, was actually benched intermittently during the season. A last-second Keith Duncan field goal sealed their third consecutive season without a bowl and with a losing record.

That prediction certainly did not age well.

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