Ricky Stanzi doesn’t read newspapers, or watch television, or the look up the latest BCS standings.

The Iowa junior starting quarterback doesn’t much care about his team’s rapid rise from being unranked a month ago to sitting at No. 6 in the first BCS standings.

He doesn’t care partly because he didn’t notice and partly because his mind is on other things — mainly a road trip to East Lansing, Mich., to play Michigan State on Saturday.

“I didn’t even know we were at No. 6. You just told me,” Stanzi said about the Hawkeyes’ ranking. “We don’t look at that kind of stuff. It’s just a number. It’s not really important right now. There’s too much football left in the season to start worrying about those kinds of things.

“I’m not trying to avoid it. I just don’t do those kinds of things. It’s just not part of my habit.”

Kirk Ferentz has been a little more vigilant about the Hawkeyes’ national standing, but not much.

The Iowa head coach acknowledged on Tuesday that he had seen the rankings but refused to put too much stock in them at this point in the season, saying simply, “It’s Oct. 20, so I’m not too worried about any of that stuff right now.”

To put things in perspective, Ferentz mentioned Ohio State’s 26-18 road loss to a one-win Purdue team and previously undefeated Kansas’ 34-30 defeat to one-win Colorado this weekend.

Because of these results and his own one-game-at-a-time, cliché-ridden mantras, the 11-year head coach won’t let his team think it’s invincible simply because it débuted in the top 10 of the BCS rankings.

“The other thing all of us need to remember, we’re not even halfway through our conference play yet as a team,” Ferentz said at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. “We have such a long road ahead of us right now. It’s natural for people to talk about it and think about it, but the best way for us to get anywhere is just try to take care of this week.”

The one perplexing part to come out of the year’s first BCS standings is that the Hawkeyes sit as the lowest-ranked unbeaten team from the power conferences. Florida, Alabama, Texas, Boise State, and Cincinnati — all of which are undefeated, like the 7-0 Hawkeyes — are currently ranked higher than Ferentz’s squad.

Since the ranking’s release on Sunday, many have attributed this to Iowa’s lack of “style points,” only winning one game by more than 11 points. The computer polls loved the Hawkeyes, ranking them No. 3 overall.

But Iowa lagged in the human polls, voted No. 7 by the AP and No. 8 by the coaches.

“The style points and all of that — we’re not exactly the most flashy ball club,” Stanzi said.

“Everybody knows that. We didn’t think we’d be winning any style points anyway.”

Wegher is fine, Brinson still injured

Almost instantly after Iowa’s 20-10 win over Wisconsin on Oct. 17, rumors began circulating that true freshman running back Brandon Wegher had broken his hand in the game.

Ferentz quickly squashed any possibility that Wegher, who has given the Hawkeyes a reliable No. 2 back behind fellow freshman Adam Robinson, would miss any time because of a hand injury.

“Apparently, it’s one of the Internet phenoms. I haven’t had a chance to catch up this week,” Ferentz said in a tongue-and-cheek manner. “We expect him to have a better than fair chance to play Saturday without any cast or other things.”

Redshirt freshman running back Jeff Brinson, however, is still in a boot with an ankle injury, Ferentz said.

“It’s perplexing right now,” he said. “We’re just trying to work through a series of things.”