The consensus pick for Iowa in Big Ten football 2009: 5th place

Iowa won't have the burden of huge expectations as it enters the 2009 football season. At least not from those outside Iowa.

In a collection of four well-known preseason publications and one football-specializing Web site, the cumulative pick for the Hawkeyes is fifth place in the Big Ten. The site with all this data, by the way, is here.

None of the publications actually have Iowa fifth. Three say fourth, Phil Steele (the best of the bunch) says tied for fourth, and another says sixth.

The sixth-place vote came from Lindy's magazine. That publication employs Marc Morehouse of the Gazette to write the Iowa preview. He had no input in the magazine's rankings.

(By the way, does anyone really remember these rankings like, a week after the season starts?)

Anyway, the consensus is 1. Ohio State, 2. Penn State, 3. Illinois, 4. Michigan State, 5. Iowa, 6. Wisconsin, 7. Michigan, 8. Northwestern, 9. Minnesota, 10. Purdue, 11. Indiana.

In national preseason rankings, Iowa is a consensus 25th. It was left out of the Top 25 of Lindy's and The Sporting News.

I will be voting in Associated Press' football rankings this year. The preseason ballot will be due in a few weeks. These ballots, unlike the bogus coaches' poll, are made known to the public each week.

My votes will be published here each Sunday. It is a risky ploy to get visits to the site, given that a lot of people will be irritated with them. But until it's as dangerous as, say, fighting a war or policing a rough neighborhood, I'll do my best to try to stay brave.

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