Ignorance In Polls Killing BCS Dreams

Hawkeye Football has been winning football this year. But hasn’t been sexy. The blowouts have not been there and apparently, despite the contentions of most, your ranking depends little on whom you’ve beaten but moreso on how you’ve beaten them.

So now, as one of only two teams with three wins over Top 20 teams, Iowa sits at number 13 in the latest USA Today Coaches Poll…..below two two-loss teams and several other one-loss teams who have not played nearly the strong schedule that Iowa has.

I hate to say I told you so. But clear back in week-2, after  Iowa beat UNI by two points, I said that they might just as well have lost the game because they will be fighting an uphill battle in the polls for the entire rest of the year. I was told not to worry about it. It would work itself all out if Iowa kept winning. But it simply hasn’t. Eventually Iowa climbed the ladder. They had to. They hadn’t lost. But after just one loss, not a blowout…but a very close loss , not a loss to a bad team (like Ohio State or USC)…..but to a team who is going Bowling, and not a loss with their entire cast of characters….but a loss where thier starting QB went down, not a cleanly officiated loss…..but one with two absolutely huge officials calls that completely effected the outcome of the game (no facemask on Stanzi’s fumble? And the phantom hold on Wegher’s TD run that was called back); with that one loss Iowa has tumbled seven spots.

And now the worry is that should Iowa lose this weekend in Columbus, they could fall out of the Top 20 despite all of those impressive wins.

I contended yesterday that Iowa still had a chance for a BCS Bowl with just one more win over Minnesota to end the year. A couple of national pundits have agreed in their Bowl Predictions…some even having Iowa in the Fiesta Bowl vs. TCU. There is little question that the Fiesta Bowl would like to take Iowa and all of its transplanted Arizonan fans.

But now that I look at it, I see a big problem….the human polls will most likely drop Iowa after another loss. And this time, it could be too far to allow them to get back into the BCS picture. If Iowa struggles in Columbus, plays solid defense but can’t move the football, I expect them to drop down near number 18 or 19. And a win over Minnesota the following week would do little to kick them much higher to end the year.

The computers recognize Iowa’s strength of schedule. But they are only good for about a three or four spot bump. So Iowa needs to finish the year rated somewhere around 15 by the human polls to hope to get high enough for an at-large BCS bid.

Unfortunately, the injustice/stupidity of the  human polls won’t let that happen. Unfortunately, they care about style points. Teams that win with defense are not rated as highly as teams that win with offense (see last year’s ridiculous Big 12 Conference where nobody played any defense but they had three Top 10 teams). Unfortunately, they care about when you lost. Lose two games early and you can make your way back into the Top 10 (see Ohio State). Lose two games late and you have no chance to work your way back up the ladder.

In my opinion, Iowa has been a Top 10 team this year. They had earned every inch of respect this year. They were not a Top 10 team yesterday. A rash of injuries over the last three weeks have simply been too much to overcome.  By the time they reach a Bowl Game, they should have Dace Richardson, Adam  Robinson, Ricky Stanzi, Brett Greenwood, and Collin Sandeman back. With that group, this is a much stronger football team.

Fortunately they will get to play on New Year’s Day, either in the Capital One Bowl or the Outback Bowl. Those will be great trips and will include a game against a solid SEC opponent on national TV. There is no shame in that. In fact, we’re all usually pleased with such.

But I’ve decided I was wrong. It’s Rose Bowl or bust when it comes to the BCS; a fact that is totally ignorant and unfair but something that we could probably have seen coming.

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