Pat Harty ranked what he considers that top 10 worst losses since Iowa got hot in 2002. The good news is that Iowa has only lost 15 games during that time (including bowl games) which means that most of the losses were mentioned.
He picked Iowa’s choke job to Northwestern last year and Iowa’s choke job to Indiana this year and the top 2. While they both sucked pretty badly, I don’t see how anybody could not say that the Iowa State loss in 2002 easily topped the list. I would even go as far as saying it was the worst loss of all time. Iowa finished fifth in the final BCS standings released at the end of the regular season thatyear. The two teams ahead of them had losses. Georgia had one and USC had two. The top two teams were Miami and Ohio State, both with no losses.
If Iowa wins that Iowa State game, there would have been three teams overall and two teams from the Big 10 with no losses. Iowa and Ohio State did not play each other that year. That would have brought an interesting controversy to the BCS. It would have forced the Big 10 to consider adding a champioinship game. And if Iowa could have managed to sneak into that championship game, that would have changed recruiting at Iowa pretty significantly. It is not impossible to think of Iowa jumping OSU if they won that Iowa State game. While OSU did win the national championship, they did not really pound people enough to convince everybody that they were really as good as they ended up being.
And lets not forget, Iowa had that game pretty well under control until Iowa State got hot in the 3rd.
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