Originally Posted by SouthernHawk 
Couldn't be Iowa's defense played a part in that, could it?
People fail to remember that UW almost lost to Minnesota to end the season, and Illinois did beat the #1 ranked team in the nation (at their place). Also, MSU (another quality win) also did rather well.
The same #1 team that got obliterated in the BCS championship game.
The same Illinois that got absolutely throttled in their bowl game by a team that lost to Stanford.
Minnesota was absolutely abysmal last year. There is no way to sugarcoat how bad that team was. They were one of the very VERY few BCS conference teams last year that were truly worse than
ISU (and I'm not ragging on
ISU, just being brutally honest. We were a 3 win team last year). I view UW almost losing to Minnesota as a condemnation of UW (which lost THEIR bowl game) far more than an "oh Minnesota wasn't THAT bad". Minnesota had ONE win last year, and that was over a MAC team at home by 6. Every one of
ISU's 3 wins last year was over a BCS team at least. That's like saying that Iowa wasn't THAT bad because they almost beat Western Michigan.
Michigan State was far from a quality win. If you watched that game, MSU gave the game away after completely dominating in the first half with turnovers and holding calls that just destroyed drives in the 3rd quarter. On top of that, Michigan State was far from a "quality" team last year either. They were a 7 win team that barely qualified for a bowl game (which they lost), and went 3-5 in the Big 10.
Iowa was straight up BAD last year. They had one "quality" win over Illinois, and even that was pretty much handed to them by Zooker.
Iowa beat precisely 0 teams last year that won bowl games (2 that went to bowls), and half of their wins (and one of their losses) were over teams that spent time in the ESPN Bottom 10, and were probably some of the worst D1 football teams we've seen in a LONG time (Syracuse, Northern Illinois and Minnesota).
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