Iowa will play for more than a conference title and trip to the College Football Playoff on Saturday.

Let’s face it, the Big Ten has taken its share of fair ridicule over the last decade. Few programs have been able to cement themselves as contenders against the powers of college football’s top dogs.

But one team more than any has been such a constant that it stands as an exception even to the biggest critics of the Big Ten — and it’s not Ohio State. It’s Michigan State. And for Iowa, it stands as the ultimate divider between a team that’s damn good and one that’s elite, a litmus test, if you will.

Why? Hear me out.

Not to discredit what Ohio State has done. The Buckeyes did break the Big Ten’s 12-year national championship drought, forcing doubters to recognize one of the best programs history has seen was once again a player.

The Buckeyes set a record with 30-consecutive regular-season conference wins from the time Urban Meyer took over until just a couple of weeks ago — when the Spartans beat them on the road without their staring quarterback.

Wisconsin won the conference three years in a row from 2010-12, going to three-straight Rose Bowls. Unfortunately for the Badgers, they lost all three of those games.

Michigan State has been the Big Ten’s constant over the past five years. As the Buckeyes went through a two-year period of postseason sanctions, the Big Ten may have seen its darkest days. In 2012, the last season with sanctions and first under Meyer, the Buckeyes went 12-0, making it unblemished through an easy schedule and besting a rare downtrodden Spartan team by 1 point.

But none of that mattered, because the last three years are the ones to look at.

Wisconsin slipped out of the picture, and it became essentially a duel between the Scarlet and Dark Green. Michigan State hit first in the 2013 Big Ten Championship with a 34-24 win over the undefeated Buckeyes. The Spartans went on to win the Rose Bowl.

In 2014 Meyer and Company took care of business in East Lansing, and we know what happened from there. On Nov. 21, the Spartans regained the upper hand.

The Big Ten’s three biggest games of recent memory have been the aforementioned. The Spartans took the tie-breaker this season. Michigan State is the cream of the conference.

Add this game to that short list. The Hawkeyes are in the mix. Before the season, that in itself didn’t seem like a remote possibility.

But it is.

A conference title and trip to the College Football Playoff is not all that’s at stake. It’s legitimacy. The Hawks have done what they needed to get here. Now is the chance to prove that bad schedules don’t make bad teams.

The Colin Cowherds and Paul Finebaums of the world will pump their fists or drop to their knees in shame at the end result.

So, Iowa football, is it damn good? Or elite?

We’re about to find out.