Iowa Football: Hawkeyes Move Up In Latest College Football Playoff Rankings

The Hawkeyes closed out the regular season last week with a 27-24 win at Nebraska to give them their fifth straight win over the Cornhuskers. While that did little to help them in the AP or Coaches polls over the weekend, Iowa got a bit more respect from the College Football Playoff Committee.

The Committee released their updated rankings on Tuesday evening - their last update before the final rankings are released for the College Football Playoff following Championship Week this weekend. In them, Iowa moves up one spot to #16 in the nation.

The improvement comes as 7 top-25 teams lost over the weekend. However, most of those losses came from teams in the bottom half of the rankings or at the hands of other ranked teams.

Michigan, for instance, took a home loss to #1 Ohio State. The Wolverines, though, weren’t overly punished for the loss as they fell just one spot to #14 this week. Minnesota, however, was blown out at home by #12 Wisconsin. As a result of that and the general weakness of their schedule to-date, the Gophers slid 10 spots all the way down to #18. That’s the only team Iowa passed up this week.

Here’s a look at the full rankings this week:

Some Observations:

• Iowa is now the third-highest rated 3-loss team behind #11 Auburn and #14 Michigan.
• The Hawkeyes’ 3 losses have come to the #8, #10 and #14 teams in the country.
• Iowa now only has one win against a ranked team as Iowa State dropped from the rankings. The line win is over #18 Minnesota.
• The Big Ten again leads all conferences with 6 teams ranked in the top-25 with the lowest being #18 Minnesota.
• The Big Ten is again tied with the SEC at 3 teams in the top-10.
• The SEC leads with two teams currently in the playoff as LSU remains at #2 and Georgia moves to #4.

The Hawkeyes await the outcome of this weekend’s championship games to learn not only their final ranking next week, but their bow destination.