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For the seventh time of the Kirk Ferentz era, Iowa football has finished a football season ranked in the AP’s top-25 polling.
The final Top 25 is out!
— AP Top 25 (@AP_Top25) January 8, 2019
Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Notre Dame are the top five, did voters get it right?
Full poll: https://t.co/SCbU8hBcBd pic.twitter.com/5o4VMJvaox
The Iowa football team, ending with a 9-4 record and a bowl win over then-No. 18 Mississippi state, earned 120 points from pollsters, whatever that means.
Interestingly, Iowa has landed in the top-10 in five of the seven years where Iowa has finished with an AP ranking. This is the first time Iowa has been in the end-of-season rankings since 2015, where the Hawkeyes were voted No. 9 in that poll.
Chad Leistikow of the Des Moines Register also pointed something interesting out in the rankings, because you all care so much:
The top-25 finish also kicks in some financial payouts for the Iowa coaching staff. Ferentz, under the terms of his contract extension signed in 2016, gets a $125,000 bonus for finishing in the top 25. His assistants get an extra 2-percent raise, meaning they’ll get an average salary increase of 10 percent raise (up from eight) by finishing in the poll.
Money is nice!
In his postseason preseason predictions, Stewart Mandel has Iowa ranked No. 16 going into next season, highlighting the emergence of AJ Epenesa and departure of Amani Hooker.