The actual football season must be drawing close, because it's PRESEASON POLL SZN, friends! The Coaches Poll released their preseason Top 25 and, yes, your beloved Iowa Hawkeyes are on it. They're ranked #18 by the coaches to start the 2021 campaign.
| RANK | TEAM | PTS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama (63) | 1621 |
| 2 | Clemson | 1508 |
| 3 | Oklahoma (2) | 1481 |
| 4 | Ohio State | 1435 |
| 5 | Georgia | 1386 |
| 6 | Texas A&M | 1286 |
| 7 | Notre Dame | 1139 |
| 8 | Iowa State | 1131 |
| 9 | North Carolina | 999 |
| 10 | Cincinnati | 979 |
| 11 | Florida | 870 |
| 12 | Oregon | 842 |
| 13 | LSU | 664 |
| 14 | USC | 655 |
| 15 | Wisconsin | 654 |
| 16 | Miami | 575 |
| 17 | Indiana | 573 |
| 18 | Iowa | 554 |
| 19 | Texas | 427 |
| 20 | Penn State | 422 |
| 21 | Washington | 404 |
| 22 | Oklahoma State | 216 |
| 23 | Louisiana | 153 |
| 24 | Coastal Carolina | 150 |
| 25 | Ole Miss | 149 |
There isn't a whole lot of difference between these rankings and the rankings from the end of the 2020; nine of the teams in the Top 10 are the same in both rankings (North Carolina replaces Northwester from the final 2020 rankings). There's certainly an argument to be made that these rankings are just copy-and-pasted from the end of last year with a little bit of reshuffling.
But the usefulness of preseason (and even early season) rankings is always in question; still, they exist to give us something to talk about and to give us a sense of who's supposed to be good this year. (Surprise! Alabama's still really good at football.)
These rankings do highlight the daunting challenge Iowa faces at the start of the season, though. Iowa is set to kick off the year against #17 Indiana in Iowa City, then travel to Ames the next week to take on an Iowa State team currently ranked eighth (!) in the nation. Assuming neither Iowa nor Iowa State stumbles in the opening week of the season (and the Cyclones have UNI, so their opening week opponent looks a bit more manageable than Iowa's date with the Hoosiers), this year's CyHawk game will feature two teams ranked in the Top 20 and ought to be one of the most hyped meetings in the series ever.
Two other opponents on Iowa's 2021 schedule are also ranked -- #15 Wisconsin and #20 Penn State. Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Penn State are four of the five Big Ten teams ranked in the preseason Top 25; #4 Ohio State is the league's final representative.
In other polling news, the Student Media Poll, comprised of 100+ sports reporters at student-run publications at universities across the nation (and representing all FBS conferences) also released their Preseason Top 25 today. Do student reporters know more than the coaches (er, sports information directors) who vote in the Coaches Poll? I mean... probably! But their preseason Top 25 isn't very dissimilar from the Coaches Poll; it has an identical Top-6 and nine of the same teams in the Top 10. Iowa also ranks #18 in their poll, although the student media was kinder to Iowa State (#7), Wisconsin (#12), and Indiana (#15).
What do you think of the preseason polls? Who's too high? Who's too low? Let me know in the comments.
