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It’s College Football Playoff or bust for Iowa in 2024, and CFP is in reach
Iowa has 6th-year QB, a defense as daunting as ever, and a schedule that may be as favorable as any the program will have for a long time
Aug. 25, 2024 10:05 am
California now is in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
That’s all you really need to know about major-college football in 2024.
Conferences that made sense are now, in the words of the great Paul Simon, loose affiliations of millionaires and billionaires. Iowa plays Washington and UCLA in Big Ten games this fall, but doesn’t face Illinois.
The College Football Playoff has tripled its annual participants to 12, which actually is fine. The first-round games on campus sites should be a hoot.
Oh, for the four home teams on Dec. 20-21 to be located north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Or at least the ones in the two night games.
The expanded playoffs won’t kill the other bowls, because a lot of people watch them on TV. It simply means that those games that meant squadoosh last year now mean less than zero. Players already were opting out of them faster than most jet sweeps, and the escapees will only multiply this December.
The motto for this and every future football season for the teams of the four major conferences is “CFP or bust.” You’re either in the Divine Dozen, or your postseason uniform will consist of sackcloth and ashes.
The Mayonnaise-Flavored Pop-Tarts bowls are fine for the Dukes and Purdues of the world. Iowa, though, has won enough to want to rise above such dreck. This year is as good a chance as the Hawkeyes have to get in the playoff from now until you’re, well, let’s say older. There’s no need to get morbid.
How many times does Iowa have a sixth-year senior who has quarterbacked a team to a Big Ten championship? The answer is and always will be one, and it’s now. Cade McNamara, it’s time to go big again. Right?
McNamara came to an unpleasant realization before his season was prematurely halted by injury in midseason last year. Namely, he no longer played with Michigan’s offensive linemen or receivers. His Iowa guys at those spots have to be better this year. How could they not be?
How often can you have perhaps the nation’s best defense and not get a rich reward for it? Iowa squandered its defensive wealth in ‘22 and ‘23. This year’s ‘D’ is stuffed with veteran quantity and quality. The weakest spot in the first-team defense isn’t weak at all.
Then there’s the Hawkeyes’ schedule. Michigan, Oregon, Penn State and USC are someone else’s problems. A game at Ohio State is Iowa’s only clash with a ranked foe.
Iowa opponents Minnesota, Northwestern, Michigan State and Maryland are a collection of Pinstripe Bowl candidates. Wisconsin could be something, but that game is at Kinnick. As is Nebraska on Black Friday.
Iowa’s schedule is an outlier. The Hawkeyes meet Oregon and Penn State next year at home, USC and Wisconsin on the road. That will be the norm most years.
On top of that, Iowa isn’t likely to rise above the middle of the Big Ten pack in NIL money. So far, no millionaires or billionaires with Hawkeye ties have decided being the Hawkeyes’ sugar daddy is more important than buying a congressperson or two.
So 2024 is the basket in which you Iowa fans should put all your emotional eggs. A playoff berth isn’t the biggest ask. A 10-2 record locks it down, and Iowa went 10-2 last year with the worst offense since Custer took his team to Little Bighorn.
Yes, a football takes funny bounces. Occasionally, a team gets way more injuries than usual. Maybe you miss a chip-shot field goal. Maybe your opponent makes a walk-off 60-yarder.
Maybe a replay official will say you made an invalid fair catch signal on what would have been a punt return for a touchdown. Maybe that same official will say an opponent’s return man did no such thing.
But this Iowa roster, this schedule, this season? It looks like the Hawkeyes have been kissed by an angel as they enter Kinnick Stadium’s gates Saturday morning. Maybe they’ll get a really big smooch on their way out off that stadium’s field the night after Thanksgiving.
And, maybe they’ll get a 7 p.m. playoff home game on the first day of winter against an SEC team that will spend part of its game-week preparation time shopping for winter coats.
It’s fun to pretend.
Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com
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