Were Hawkeyes playoff players before last Saturday?

Last week, Iowa was on the radar of the chair of the College Football Playoff selection committee.

Here are passages from George Schroeder's USA TODAY story about Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long's Saturday viewing of games on television.

On Redd's viewing schedule, Long has highlighted several games. Kansas State-Oklahoma and Iowa-Maryland are in orange; 11 a.m. Central kickoffs, he'll watch at least part of those games live. In blue? Later, he hopes to watch most of Notre Dame-Florida State in the car, on the ride back to Fayetteville, and then to catch Stanford-Arizona State at home. ...

Kansas State-Oklahoma kicks off on the flat screen - and as if on cue, the picture begins flickering again. Long loads Iowa-Maryland on the iPad. For almost an hour, he watches both games simultaneously, checking scores of other games.

Iowa was 5-1 when it went to 4-2 Maryland, so the only way I can interpret Long bothering to watch part of that game was to see what the Hawkeyes were all about. Maryland, after all, was coming off a 52-24 loss to Ohio State.

Why Long felt he needed to watch that game for so long when there was still so much season left to see if Iowa was really to enter the discussion, I don't know. If the Hawkeyes had gotten to be, say, 9-1, then it makes total sense.

But there's always something good to be said about people being thorough and taking their jobs seriously.

The committee will be putting out its own Top 25 for some bizarre reason, starting next week, so maybe Long just wanted to see if he should rank the Hawkeyes next week had they beaten Maryland, which they didn't.

I'm telling you, this thing is going to end up with more controversy and angry citizens than the BCS ever knew. It's going to be great.

Archie Manning quit the committee Monday because of upcoming knee surgery. The pain the 12 remaining committee members feel will be somewhere else.