Iowa’s rise in the second College Football Playoff rankings came with the kind of boost that makes a season feel a little bigger in real time. The Hawkeyes moved from No. 19 in the opening poll to No. 15 on Tuesday night, a jump that tracks with the national mood after their 24-10 win over Northwestern and the chaos in front of them.
That climb lines up with the rest of the landscape. AP voters pushed Iowa up five spots to No. 16 on Sunday, while the Coaches Poll had the Hawkeyes at No. 15, up six places from the previous week.
The numbers models are on the same page, too: ESPN’s FPI moved Iowa to No. 18, nearly doubled its playoff odds from 11.0% to 20.3%, and shifted the strength-of-record ranking from No. 23 to No. 18.
SP+ has Iowa at No. 16.
The betting market has moved just as decisively. FanDuel Sportsbook lists Iowa with the 16th-best odds to make the CFP at +220, which works out to a little over 31%, up from +500 and roughly 16.7% a week ago. The Hawkeyes’ national title price has also shortened, from +15000 in August to +10000 this week.
A lot of the help came from elsewhere. Six of the 18 teams ranked ahead of Iowa lost over the weekend, including No.
1 Miami falling 31-24 to Notre Dame, No. 6 Kentucky getting beaten 34-6 at Tennessee, No.
10 Ole Miss losing 42-7 at home to Georgia, No. 12 Ohio State allowing 41 points to Oregon, and No.
14 LSU and No. 18 Missouri both going down to Alabama and Texas.
Iowa did its part with the win at Northwestern, and now the road ahead is clear enough to see: Purdue at Kinnick on Saturday night, a trip to Illinois, and Nebraska on Black Friday.
ESPN gives the Hawkeyes a 31.2% chance to win out, and that matters in a playoff race where two-loss teams have to keep stacking results.
There’s also a pattern here. In the first two seasons of the 12-team era, teams ranked No. 13 through No. 25 in the opening CFP rankings won their next game 11 times out of 12, and 10 of those teams moved up, usually by two or three spots.
The biggest jump came when Ole Miss upset the No. 3 team in the country in 2024, and the only winner who slipped fell by one spot because Ole Miss jumped over it. No team in that range has won and dropped more than one spot.
Iowa’s own history in this spot fits the same script. The 2015 team won and moved from No. 9 to No.
- The 2021 team won as No. 22 and climbed to No. 20, the only other time a ranked Iowa team has sat in that 13-25 window and waited for the committee after a win.
When the Hawkeyes have fallen, there was a reason: a loss to Wisconsin dropped the 2019 team two spots, and last season’s loss to Oregon cost one. In 2023, Iowa wasn’t in the opening rankings at all before showing up at No. 22 a week later.
The bigger picture still matters, too. Over the last two seasons, 20 of the 30 teams that were in the top 15 of the second CFP rankings ended up making the playoff.
Of the 10 that missed, seven lost again late and three were passed by teams that picked up major wins. There has been just one case of a three-loss team jumping in over a two-loss team, when 10-3 Alabama got in over 2-loss Notre Dame and BYU, along with Vanderbilt and USC.
The rankings also landed one day after the sport officially changed its future. On Monday, the CFP approved a 24-team expansion starting in 2027, with unanimous support from all ten FBS conferences and Notre Dame. ESPN will carry the new games through 2031-32.
The new format is a full overhaul: 19 at-large bids, automatic spots for the four power-conference champions and the top-ranked Group of Six team, byes for seeds 1-8, and campus games for seeds 9-16 against seeds 17-24 in the first round. The top eight would also host the round of 16, meaning 16 of the 23 playoff games would be played in campus stadiums. Conference championship games disappear to make the calendar work.
Tuesday’s top 25 includes nine SEC teams, six from the Big Ten, six from the Big 12, two from the ACC, Notre Dame and Boise State as the Group of Six representative. Florida’s loss to Oklahoma knocked the SEC down by one from last week, while Oklahoma State slid in at No. 25 to give the Big 12 a sixth team.
For the Big Ten, the group is unchanged from the first rankings: UCLA, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon, USC and Ohio State. That matches the league’s finish in last season’s final CFP rankings, and Iowa’s move means four Big Ten teams are now inside the top 16. The AP poll told a similar story, with eight SEC teams and the same six Big Ten teams in its top 25.
If the 2027 format were in place right now, Iowa would be sitting in a very different spot. At No. 15, the Hawkeyes would host No.
18 USC in the first round at Kinnick in December, with the winner headed to No. 2 Utah.
Every Big Ten team in Tuesday’s top 25 would make the field, and No. 25 Oklahoma State would be the first team left out.
That doesn’t change anything for 2026, since this season is still operating under the 12-team setup. But it does change the value of a ranking like this one.
Right now, being in the top 16 means something concrete: a home playoff game in front of your own crowd. For Iowa, the task is simple enough from here - keep winning and hope the teams above keep stumbling.
In Other News...
Iowas Latest Depth Chart Hints At Two Key Changes Vs Purdue
Iowas Week 11 depth chart offered a couple of notable clues ahead of the Purdue matchup, starting with the interior of the offensive line. Cael Winter was absent for the second straight week, and Michael Myslinski is again listed as the starter at center, a development that keeps the Hawkeyes protection and run-game setup in focus as they prepare for another Big Ten test.
There was also a welcome update on the defensive side, where Jaylen Watson reappeared on the depth chart after missing time in the previous game. The full release covered offense, defense and special teams, but those two changes stood out most for a Hawkeyes team still sorting through its weekly lineup and trying to settle into the right combinations before facing Purdue. [Read more 🡒]
Iowa's New Backfield Picture Changes Everything Against Purdue
A week after Kamari Moultons season-ending injury, Iowas backfield picture has already shifted for Saturdays home game against Purdue. L.J. Phillips is now listed as the starting running back, a move that comes on the heels of his busiest outing yet, when he led the Hawkeyes with 21 carries for 128 yards against Northwestern.
The changes do not stop there, either, as Michael Myslinski is expected to start on the offensive line in place of Cael Winter, who may be sidelined again. For an Iowa offense that has leaned so heavily on stability up front and in the run game, the updated Week 11 depth chart makes this a notable test of how quickly the Hawkeyes can absorb another personnel shakeup and still keep their ground game on track. [Read more 🡒]
Virginia Tech's Fast Start Faces Its First Real Test Against Iowa
Virginia Techs opening-night win over Mercer offered an early glimpse of a team that can push the pace and protect the ball, with Amani Hansberry delivering a career-best 23 points and Ben Hammond and Jaylen Curry helping steady the offense. The Hokies looked sharp enough to make that first result feel convincing, but the next step comes quickly enough, and it comes against a Big Ten opponent that will be far less forgiving of mistakes.
Iowa enters the neutral-site matchup with a different kind of storyline, hoping to get center Andrew McKeever on the floor after he has been dealing with back issues. For the Hawkeyes, his availability matters not just for depth but for what it could mean inside against a Virginia Tech team that already showed it can score in bunches and keep turnovers down. [Read more 🡒]