Hawkeyes are 20th in composite of early preseason football polls

It's May. We're still three months from Associated Press releasing its preseason college football Top 25.

That doesn't stop the preseason picks from flying off sportswriters' keyboards. LSUfootball.net is keeping tabs on preseason rankings it feels are from legitimate sources, college football writers and publications around the nation.

The link to it is here:

Iowa is in at 20th as of Saturday noon. Its highest rank on any of the forecasts was 11th, by Tony Barnhart of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and John Adams of the Knoxville News Sentinel.

That's not bad, a ranking so high from people in SEC country. Those two and nine others have Florida No. 1, by the way.

The Hawkeyes weren't placed in the top 25 of Andy Staples of SI.com, Matt Hayes of Sportingnews.com and the staff of Collegefootballnews.com.

Last year, Iowa was 38th in the Collegefootballnews.com preseason rankings.

CFN has Iowa 31st entering this season. It has Iowa State 82nd.

Ohio State is 9th and Penn State 12th in the LSUfootball.net composite. But Barnhart has the Nittany Lions a mere 21st.

The fourth-highest Big Ten team in the LSUfootball.net composite is Minnesota, at 32nd. The Gophers are ranked in just two of the 13 preseason top 25s, however, and no higher than 23rd in either.

Michigan State got one vote at 24th. by ESPN.com's Mark Schlabach. He has Iowa 16th. Fellow ESPN.com scribe Stewart Mandel has no Big Ten above 15th.

Northwestern, Michigan and Illinois received no Top 25 mentions. Which means one of the three is bound to have a big season.