The Iowa football team is 7-0 and the best team in its Big Ten division.

By Danny Payne
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EVANSTON, Illinois — Buckle up, Iowa fans, this is real.

Your team is 7-0, and controls its own destiny following a 40-10 win over then-No. 20 Northwestern on the road Oct. 17. After playing with a ragtag offensive line, playing without arguably its best defensive player, playing without a running back who carried the ball 43 times a week ago, and playing the majority of the game relying on a quarterback who at times had trouble walking, the Hawkeyes are now the nation’s No. 12 team.

Ohio State and Michigan State are the only Big Ten teams rated ahead of Iowa in the country. It’s the back end of the season. If you expected to be here, you’re lying.

In a cramped room at Ryan Field following the victory, head coach Kirk Ferentz told a host of reporters he doesn’t know what type of team he has, but he knows it “plays extremely hard and has a lot of guts.”

The latter half of that is true — Iowa survived injuries, Iowa weathered a comeback attempt from the Wildcats— and it has done so all season. Don’t let Ferentz fool you with modesty, however. His team is outstanding, to the point where no one should blame Iowa fans for looking at hotels in Indianapolis in early December.

The Hawkeyes are second in the Big Ten in rushing yards with 214.4 per game, third in the league in scoring defense at 15.3 per game, second in the conference in rushing defense (74.1), and have passed the eye test with flying colors.

It’s no longer fair to take the hype around Iowa with a grain of salt because of the last five years of mediocrity, this is a squad that has taken down the second-, third-, and fourth-place teams in its division in a convincing manner.

This is a team that doesn’t lose its poise, ever. A week after losing a captain for the season, a lot of teams around the country would have gone on the road against a top-20 opponent and lain down.

Iowa did not. Iowa set the tone early, and its offensive and defensive lines told Northwestern the Hawks were going to win the game, and there was nothing the Wildcats could do about it.

Don’t bring up the strength-of-schedule argument, either. Wisconsin is a good football team lacking a quarterback. Northwestern beat Stanford, which is the nation’s No. 10 team. Pittsburgh is ranked 25th, and we all know how that contest went.

After seven games, the Hawkeyes are past the hard part of their schedule, and there is no reason they should lose another game in the regular season. Yes, the Big Ten West is the lesser of the two divisions, but the Hawkeyes can’t be faulted for that. They have taken the hand they were dealt and been perfect so far this year.

If Ferentz wants to be modest about his team, no one can fault him for that.

Just don’t buy into it, because Iowa is at least the best team in the West, and come December, we should be able to see if it’s the best in the Big Ten, period.

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