Hawkeyes Picked 5th In Big Ten

I was reading Athlon Sports Big Ten preview magazine the other day that picked the Hawkeyes 5th in the Big Ten and I wondered if it was really possible to finish that poorly without Ohio State or Michigan on the schedule.

Here’s the Hawkeyes Big Ten Schedule

• at Wisconsin
• Indiana
• at Penn State
• Illinois
• at Purdue
• Michigan State
• at Northwestern
• Minnesota

I can understand losing at Wisconsin since they are supposed to be pretty great this year. I can see the Penn State game being a good game that Penn State could win. Purdue will probably be a pretty tough game, too. So for the sake of worst case scenario, let’s call that a potential loss.

I don’t think anybody would go out of their way to predict Iowa to lose any of the other games. That would put Iowa at 5-3 in the conference.

Last year that would have tied for 4th place. That would have been tied for 3rd place in 2005 and tied for 4th place in 2004 and 2003.

I would imagine that those loose predictions aren’t too crazy to be somewhat expected. If anything, people would probably pick Iowa to beat Purdue which would put the Hawks at 6-2.

If the O-line and D-line can stay healthy, there’s no reason that this shouldn’t be a pretty good year for the Hawks.