Iowa fans climb into Herby’s head

IOWA CITY - Iowa has a chance, a very good chance, to win a divisional championship trophy in its stadium this weekend. It might be a big deal, it might be a breakthrough for the Hawkeyes, who, in five years, haven't played in a Big Ten championship game.

If the Hawkeyes (10-0, 6-0 Big Ten) beat Purdue (2-8, 1-5) at Kinnick Stadium on Saturday, Iowa clinches the Big Ten West Division title, its first divisional title since the conference split that way five years ago. Iowa is a 21-point favorite over the Boilermakers.

Of course, anything can happen. This is college football.

'Anything can happen” happened again for the Hawkeyes on Tuesday night. Iowa maintained its No. 5 spot in the College Football Playoff rankings. Clemson checked in at No. 1, followed by Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame. Iowa and Oklahoma State are the first teams out of the CFP at this moment with two games and conference title games yet to be played.

Obviously, there's work to do. And that's part of the reason why Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz hasn't planned any big trophy celebrations for this weekend.

'If we win, then we're in, I guess, right?” Ferentz said Tuesday. 'Not to get cute, but that's the way it is. That's a really good thing, and that would mean we're 11-0 and that would mean we're 7-0, and, boy, that would be great, but we're not done yet, so we'll acknowledge that privately, and we're going to have to move fast toward that next game because it's going to come quick for us.

'They've already got their sights on it, so we're going to have some time to make up for it.”

The 'they” is Nebraska (5-6, 3-4), which is on bye this week. The Huskers will be playing to keep a seven-year bowl streak alive. Iowa-Nebraska will be a 2:30 p.m. kickoff on Black Friday in Lincoln.

This is the kind of team where you often find yourself getting ahead of yourself.

Part of that is the national conversation. Tuesday night, that talk was generally positive. CFB committee chairman Jeff Long was asked during the ESPN rankings show if Iowa was ahead of Oklahoma State and Oklahoma because the committee thought it was better or more deserving.

'I think better,” Long said. 'Again, we look at their resume. They've got the two wins on the road (Wisconsin and Northwestern), that has impacted us. And then they're balanced, offense and defense. They seem to be strong on both sides of the ball. Again, as we said last week, they're not a flashy team, but they're consistent on both sides of the ball.”

One thing is for sure in all of this, Iowa fans have climbed into the head of ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit. Or, really, Iowa fans have climbed all over the Herbstreit's Twitter account and have made themselves heard. Herbstreit mentioned it on the ESPN show.

'If Iowa wins out, they don't have anything to get on Twitter about and get upset (about),” Herbstreit said. 'If they win out (the next two games and the Big Ten title game), it's in front of them.”

Ferentz said it. They're not done yet.

l Comments: (319) 398-8256; marc.morehouse@thegazette.com