Did it hurt us to Play Arizona as an Out of Conference game or help us. Obviously if we win it doesn't matter, but..
Given KF style of coaching it would seem the his Hawkeye squad in November is far superior to the team we see in September. That being said why would we ever want to schedule more then MAC/1-AA teams(With the exception of IA State)?
Boise State's Schedule is by far the easiest road to the NC year in and year out. The only thing they lack is getting the human Polls to rate them high enough to overcome the Computer Power Rankings for BCS and get into the NC. This year might be the year that happens. When Boise State does Schedule difficult Out of conference it seems to be sort of on their terms (First Game of the Year, so more time to prepare). The exception being this weeks matchup with Oregon State. Anyway I am talking too much about Boise State and that was not the intent.
I think that even without Arizona on the Schedule this years team would still have the starting poll ranking it does. Iowa with a very good squad starting a season as this years does should almost always get the hype that we did and thus we would not have to fight our way to the top. The computer Rankings would take care of the rest as we should have solid wins over Big Ten teams to raise us the rest of the way.
All of this probably does not mean much because we will see it anyway due to the new divisional structure of the Big Ten next year, but it was something that was on my mind.
Given KF style of coaching it would seem the his Hawkeye squad in November is far superior to the team we see in September. That being said why would we ever want to schedule more then MAC/1-AA teams(With the exception of IA State)?
Boise State's Schedule is by far the easiest road to the NC year in and year out. The only thing they lack is getting the human Polls to rate them high enough to overcome the Computer Power Rankings for BCS and get into the NC. This year might be the year that happens. When Boise State does Schedule difficult Out of conference it seems to be sort of on their terms (First Game of the Year, so more time to prepare). The exception being this weeks matchup with Oregon State. Anyway I am talking too much about Boise State and that was not the intent.
I think that even without Arizona on the Schedule this years team would still have the starting poll ranking it does. Iowa with a very good squad starting a season as this years does should almost always get the hype that we did and thus we would not have to fight our way to the top. The computer Rankings would take care of the rest as we should have solid wins over Big Ten teams to raise us the rest of the way.
All of this probably does not mean much because we will see it anyway due to the new divisional structure of the Big Ten next year, but it was something that was on my mind.
