Maybe Iowa is the plumber’s crack of college football?

So much of this week has been about what Iowa isn't.

The No. 9 Hawkeyes showed up big and bad on the national radar with Tuesday's release of the College Football Playoff rankings. Iowa (8-0, 4-0 Big Ten) checked in at No. 9. For head coach Kirk Ferentz and the players, this was met with a great, big 'meh.' Their thoughts are firmly trained on Saturday's matchup at Indiana (4-4, 0-4).

This poll is just a start of a series of polls. The one that really matters won't come out until after the conference championship games are played Dec. 5. Still, Iowa is ninth and that has thrust the program into a whole different circle of scrutiny.

Who did the Hawkeyes beat? Where did these guys come from? Who are these guys exactly?

These things come with debate. College football will never FBS, BCS or CFP its way out of debate, and, depending on your point of view, that either makes the game great, a headache or a messageboard flame war.

So, Iowa is No. 9. Baylor is No. 6 and TCU checked in at No. 8. CFP committee chairman Jeff Long was asked why those two Big 12 programs were ahead of the Hawkeyes, who have more wins against teams with above .500 records (three).

He said, in a nutshell, that the Bears and Horned Frogs play a more exciting brand of offense.

OK, Iowa isn't that. Iowa isn't 70 points and 70-yard plays. It's not a sweet spread offense that does back flips. It's not a defense with a surefire NFL first-rounder racking up a million sacks and tackles for loss.

Iowa isn't 'eye candy.' It's not Cirque du Soleil. It's never claimed to be, and probably never will.

'Going back to summer,' quarterback C.J. Beathard said, 'we knew what we had as a team. We had confidence in ourselves. We felt like we were better than what everyone was giving us credit for. We were excited to get out and show it. That kind of shut some people up. Now, a lot more people are seeing what we have done.'

So much of this week has been about what Iowa isn't. You've watched your team, you know what Iowa is.

You've watched this team all season. You've followed head coach Kirk Ferentz for the 17 seasons he's spent building this program with a certain mentality.

You know where this is going. Iowa is a program that not only isn't afraid to do the 'dirty work,' it revels in it. The Ferentz weekly radio show has a regular caller who does part-time work fumigating hog barns.

Iowa is a football program that will happily fumigate the hog barn. Compared to the beautiful offenses ranked ahead of it in this week's CFP — hey, they are really cool and fun to watch zip down the field — Iowa's offense is a plumber's crack.

You know it when you see it and it's not pretty by any means, but you certainly don't mind it when your sink is fixed.

Iowa is . . . a concussion drill.

Don't get senior wide receiver Tevaun Smith wrong. In this day and age, concussions are a sensitive topic in football, but Iowa's wide receivers and defensive backs do call their blocking drills 'the concussion drill.'

'Guys hit pretty hard,' Smith said. 'We do that everyday in practice. We're taking pride in that, too.'

Concussion drill?

'We just call it that to make fun of it,' Smith said. 'We don't really get concussed.'

You saw what wide receivers blocking can do against Northwestern. Iowa's Jacob Hillyer angled inside and blocked a safety on running back Akrum Wadley's 35-yard TD run. With at least five games left this season, Iowa has 44 run plays of 10-plus yards and 12 20-plus run plays. Last season, Iowa finished 13 games with 60 and 19, respectively.

Wide receivers aren't generally known for blocking, but you've noticed it with the Hawkeyes this season.

Iowa is . . . displacing the line of scrimmage.

Senior center Austin Blythe made blocking sound like some sort of science. The question was what does it look like when Iowa's inside O-linemen — Blythe and guards Jordan Walsh and Sean Welsh — work their grunty magic?

'The line of scrimmage is displaced,' Blythe said. 'That's our job as offensive linemen, move those guys off the ball and set the tempo for the offense, get that running game going and that's going to continue to be our goal.'

The story of Iowa's 2015 offensive line began with two new starters at tackle, sophomores Boone Myers and Ike Boettger. They suffered injuries, so the story of Iowa's 2015 offensive line changed to tackle Nos. 3 and 4, which was junior Cole Croston and Welsh, a sophomore who made a one-game appearance at tackle for the victory at Northwestern before sliding back inside to left guard.

Now, the story of Iowa's 2015 offensive line is the three inside blockers and the imprint they've left on games.

'While the tackles were trying to get their feet on the ground, all three of them, our guys really played pretty solid inside,' Ferentz said. '. . . All three of the inside guys, be it Austin, Jordan or Sean, they're doing a really good job so far.'

In a story about 'dirty work,' the part about the inside trio of O-linemen is where the descriptors fall nicely into place.

'It's our job to go out and be nasty,' Blythe said earlier this season. 'It's our job to be bulldozers up there and set the tempo for the offense and offensive line.'

Myers on Welsh: 'You look at him and, you know, he's a football player. But then he gets out on the field and he's destroying people and it's awesome.'

Iowa is . . . fullbacks.

Iowa's offense uses fullbacks. Not all offenses do anymore, but there probably are more out there than you might think. Now, this doesn't mean Iowa runs its offense through the fullback, it just means Iowa has fullbacks who are happy to lead a running play through a hole and, inevitably, crash into a charging linebacker.

'If you're going to be successful at fullback, you've got to go out and look for contact and set the tone,' senior Macon Plewa said. 'A lot of times in practice, coaches will come up to you and say, 'Get them going.' That means committing yourself into going in there, hitting guys and setting the tone day in and day out.'

But really, Iowa is fullbacks. Plewa and fellow senior Adam Cox split snaps at the position. Iowa lines up in two-back sets maybe half of the time, but Plewa and Cox are sewn into the core of 2015 Iowa. They're seniors who've been injured (Cox missed 2014 with a torn ACL; Plewa missed a handful of games with a shoulder injury). They're self-made players who set a pace that rubs off on teammates.

'So widely respected,' Ferentz said. 'Part of it's because their stories are walk-on guys who are tough, hard-nosed, played defense, slipped over a couple of springs ago and ever since then, they've done a lot of good things to help our football team.'

Cox heard the term 'dirty work' and knew where the question was headed.

'Jake Hillyer, all of those receivers are doing a really good job sticking their heads in there, whacking people,' Cox said. 'Austin, Jordan, Sean, they're opening up holes that a lot of running backs could run through. Our running backs are really good this year, and that makes it really fun to block for them.'

Iowa is . . . not going to put a name to what it does.

Last weekend, the running backs threw out the nickname 'Four Deadly Horsemen' for their group. They probably were kidding, probably?

As you can imagine, the guys moving the guys for the Horsemen to be able to do their thing, they're not interested in nicknames.

'I think any identity of a good Iowa football team is a good offensive line and a good running game,' Blythe said. 'That's something we pride ourselves as an offensive line.'

All this dirty work, the plumber's crack, the hog barn fumigation, it just proves that it's not easy to articulate exactly what Iowa is. Right now, going into Saturday's game, it's 8-0 and that should sell itself.

Dirty work is Iowa's identity and its style. Don't look for it to start advertising now.

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