Iowa Football: Fan Confidence Up Heading to Minnesota, Still Down vs. Preseason

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NCAA. Each week, we send out questions to the most plugged in Iowa Hawkeyes fans, and fans across the country. Sign up here to join Reacts.

After an impressive bounce-back win last week, confidence is on the rise among Iowa fans (could it really go any lower after those crushing losses?).

According to the most recent SB Nation Reacts survey, 63 percent of Hawkeyes fans are confident the team is headed in the right direction. That’s up from 52 percent two weeks ago and 22 percent last week.

We’re going to ignore for a second just how down on Iowa football everyone got after those first two weeks and just take note that the big win over Michigan State still wasn’t enough to get Hawkeye fans back to pre-Northwestern levels of confidence. That has to speak to our psyche as fans - we are inherently optimistic, but in Iowa we are at least bound by reality. And the reality right now is this team is not what we had hoped for before the season started.

The Hawkeyes travel to Minnesota tonight before heading to Penn State next weekend, both teams that had hoped at the start of the year to contend for a CFB Playoffs bid (lol at Minnesota actually believing that). But those dreams have also been dashed.

For now, fans around the country believe there is a clear-cut playoff picture. There is more than a 50 percent voting gap between the fourth seed in the playoffs and the No. 5 Florida Gators.

Notre Dame beat Clemson last week, but still sits behind the Tigers in the fan vote. That may be in part due to the belief held by more than 80 percent of fans that the two teams will face each other one more time this season, giving Clemson a chance at revenge.

The Notre Dame win last week caught much of the country off guard, but it wasn’t the most surprising thing, according to fans. 30 percent of fans said the most surprising result of last week was Penn State remaining winless on the season. Indiana beating Michigan also received more than 10 percent of the vote.

That may explain why the Big Ten received the least amount of votes when fans were asked which of the top three conferences in the country – Big Ten, ACC, SEC – is currently the best. However, despite placing two teams in the fan playoff bracket, the ACC also fell short in that vote to the SEC, which earned more than 50 percent of the vote.

To vote in the Reacts surveys and have your voice heard each week, sign up here.