Iowa's at best 5th in the B10 pre-Nebraska. It's been like half a century bince we won a bowl game that mattered - sorry, but punking the ACC champion in the Orange Bowl means nothing - the Orange Bowl meant something back when it was Miami-Nebraska, etc., but now that it is represented by a terrible ACC champ or Big Least champ it means absolutely nothing. If the Orange Bowl meant something it would have been a sellout or close to it, they wouldn't have tarped over a quarter of the seats.
Sure, Iowa has a great run in prestigious bowls such as the Outback Blooming Onion Bowl and the Insight Bowl. But in terms of bowl games that matter, Northwestern has been to the Rose Bowl more recently than Iowa and their last Rose Bowl win wasn't that much further back than Iowa's last Rose Bowl win. Iowa's at best a second tier Big Ten team. Iowa regularly finds ways to lose and continually has problems against teams like Indiana, Northwestern, Minnesota, Illinois and Western Michigan. The top teams (Michigan before Rodriguez blew them up and notwithstanding the Appy State fluke), OSU and PSU simply don't consistently get punked by teams like Indiana and Northwestern. Face facts guys, Iowa's program is prolly closer to Minnesota (the bottom) than it is to Ohio State (the top). We lose O'Keefe and we prolly are Minnesota. Get a real d-coordinator who can contain powerful offenses like NU's and Minnesota's and we're prolly pretty close to OSU.