Like a lot of Iowa fans, I didn’t like last week’s performance against Ohio State but I totally expected the Hawkeyes to get blown out. Memories of 55-24 notwithstanding, the game has evolved since 2017 and the Ohio States of the world are just on a completely different level.

So why can’t Iowa be there too?

One of my axioms of college football is that advancing from one level to another -- like, say, going from a 6-7 win team on average to an 8-9 win team on average -- requires roughly doubling all previous inputs. And I do mean “all.” It doesn’t just require the players to work harder, or more. It doesn’t just require more and better coaching. It takes more recruiting, more raw talent, more developed skills, more money, and more plain ol’ luck, in roughly double the amount you had before. And it keeps accumulating.

8-9 wins is a level, and that’s where Iowa has been for the vast majority of Kirk Ferentz’s tenure. It’s not a bad place to be, if only because it’s so easy for things to get much, much worse.

10 wins is its own level, and it requires a doubling of all inputs from 8-9 wins.

11 wins is also its own level, and ditto the above.

12 wins is yet another level, and the inputs required are so astronomical that only Alabama and Georgia have been able to maintain it for brief periods. There are synthetic elements that have longer half-lives than 12-win college football teams.

That’s why it’s important to remember 55-24, because it’s not anything Iowa fans can consistently count on. And speaking of short-lived, unreliable events …

MICHIGAN STATE AT OREGON: I said Oregon 48, Michigan State 14; actual score, Oregon 31, Michigan State 10

I feel bad for Michigan State, they have to rebuild now in a more competitive league.

UCLA AT PENN STATE: I said Penn State 41, UCLA 17; actual score, Penn State 27, UCLA 11

Waiting to see how Penn State’s season immolates this year. The score suggests it’s coming.

PURDUE AT WISCONSIN: I said Wisconsin 23, Purdue 13; actual score, Wisconsin 52, Purdue 6

Eh, close enough.

INDIANA AT NORTHWESTERN: I said Indiana 52, Northwestern 20; actual score, Indiana 41, Northwestern 24

In case you were wondering, yes, I got my deck stained. It looks pretty good!

RUTGERS AT NEBRASKA: I said Nebraska 30, Rutgers 23; actual score, Nebraska 14, Rutgers 7

I might have told you this would be a good game. I’m dreadfully sorry.

MICHIGAN AT WASHINGTON: I said Michigan 44, Washington 24; actual score, Washington 27, Michigan 17

Someone pointed out that Michigan no longer does something it once did. I forgot about that.

USC AT MINNESOTA: I said Minnesota 28, USC 27; actual score, Minnesota 24, USC 17

Honestly, this one was pretty easy to see coming.

IOWA AT OHIO STATE: I said Ohio State 40, Iowa 24; actual score, Ohio State 35, Iowa 7

I predicted Iowa would lose and I was right. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

That’s a solid 7-1 on the week, though of course I would have preferred 8-0. I’m not going to sneeze at my 62-11 (.849) season record, because it’ll be gone as swiftly as seasonal allergies (or at least I hope my allergies get better soon).

*: all times in this column are Central, as they should be.

If ever there was a game that belonged on Friday night, it’s this one. 3-2 Maryland versus 2-3 Northwestern. A group of Terrapins that slayed their previous reputation of being red-hot in September up against the distinctly non-Wildcats, in a show with everything but Yul Brynner.

*bzDZZT*

Dang it, I set off the Outdated Obscure Pop Culture Reference Alarm again. It’s a drag, it’s a bore, it’s really such a pity to be looking at this game and not … watching a documentary about the history of crab cakes or something.

Maryland 31, Northwestern 20

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As Barry Alvarez is my witness, I haven’t a clue how to pick this game. Based on season-to-date performances, Rutgers is clearly a better team than Wisconsin, and no, I don’t think that’s a funny thing to say the week after Rutgers only put up seven points while Wisconsin won 52-6. I mean, it was against Purdue. Purdue!

Wisconsin is probably better than it has looked in the first half of the season; certainly last week’s performance was red meat for the Bucky backers. And while Rutgers has a very impressive win over Washington (note: praise of the Huskies may be tempered by the fact that the Hawkeyes play them this week), losing such a boring game to the Huskers may be a bit of regression to the mean. I mean, generally speaking, over the past decade, if you hold Nebraska to 14 points, you win.

So picking this game swings around the overrated-underrated axis. How should one assess Rutgers in light of how three of its four wins are against teams that just ain’t all that? When evaluating Wisconsin how much weight does one give to a beatdown of the Big Ten’s most woebegone team and how much to the fact that every reasonably talented team the Badgers have played has run them right off the field? It’s not that hard, actually, since Rutgers is reasonably talented and Wisconsin ain’t all that. The Bucky don’t know what the Bucky is getting.

Rutgers 30, Wisconsin 24

Oh no no no. Nope. Not gonna do it. The old conventional wisdom is that a rated Illini team is going to soil itself against a markedly inferior opponent, because Illinois football cannot have nice things. But Purdue is a special kind of futile this season, struggling mightily on the side of the ball that got its coach hired because he was good at it and the previous regime wasn’t. Resistible force, meet moveable object. Yet, as with the preceding game, this one isn’t too tough to figure out since Illinois has a good offense, so. There’s not much between despair and ecstasy.

Illinois 41, Purdue 13

As noted above, every season under James Franklin, Penn State somehow manages to find a way to set itself on fire. I do believe that UCLA is a bit better than its record indicates, but a Top Ten team should have performed much better against the Bruins than Penn State did.

Last week’s USC loss to Minnesota has taken quite a bit of the shine off this game, however. It likely would have been a matchup of two Top Ten teams otherwise. We all knew travel would be a factor when the West Coast teams were added; the only question is how much of a factor travel would become. Last week USC was a victim of travel. Will it be a beneficiary this week?

In spite of it all, I don’t expect it will take more than a season or three for the entire conference to figure out how to do coast-to-coast travel. Even though the rosters are constantly turning over, the staff will find ways to make the trips meaningful but unmistakably business trips. I mean, you’ve seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town … okay, actually, LA is beautiful. That’s why it’s crowded and polluted.

USC 31, Penn State 30

This is another one of those games that makes all the kerfuffle about expanding the conference totally worth it. We get to see how the Big Ten’s bully handles (Former) Pac-12 After Dark, the notorious red-light district of college football.

Ohio State played well-disciplined football against Iowa last week, waiting for the Hawkeyes to make mistakes upon which it could capitalize. Oregon had little trouble against Michigan State, which is still at least a season away from being back.

You don’t need me to tell you this will be the best Big Ten game of the week and possibly of the entire season. Expect anything. Just know that, thanks to the overtime rules, it won’t get Thai’d.

Oregon 36, Ohio State 34

Last week Minnesota was the beneficiary of USC making a long road trip on a short week to play an opponent that was probably looking past it to a bigger fish it thought it could catch. This week UCLA has a chance to show Minnesota the traffic on that street goes in both ways.

Ridiculous, you say? Well, one night in Westwood makes a hard man humble.

UCLA 26, Minnesota 20

And of course, that leaves only ...

For Iowa fans of a certain again (mine, roughly) Washington is an opponent that inspires existential dread. Specifically, Washington calls back memories of the 1982 Rose Bowl, when we all watched our impossible dream of a season end in dust and disarray at the merciless hands of the Huskies.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20 and rose-colored. It’s easy for our now middle-aged brains to filter out the memories of how the Hawks beat three Top Ten teams but soiled themselves against unranked Minnesota and Illinois. They evaded playing Ohio State, who also managed to give the Hawks the bump they needed to get to Pasadena by beating Michigan in a game most of us paid very close attention to. They even had … crikey, I’m not sure my fingers remember how to type this … a quarterback change. The 1981 Hawkeyes were great, but they were also fortunate. When you’re playing in the Rose Bowl with an 8-3 record, that’s kind of a given.

Anyway, that has absolutely no relevance to this game, except in explaining my mindset. As I explained above, one of my axioms of football is that it takes an exponential increase of all inputs to lift a football team from one level to another. The Hawkeyes simply do not have what it takes to compete with the sport’s most elite teams. They have never had it in my lifetime and likely never will, unless somehow the program manages to hire a third great coach who outshines the previous two great coaches and manages to stick around for about as long. It could happen, but the margin for error is, shall we say, considerable.

Washington played in the national title game last year and got its well-deserved revenge against what’s left of the Michigan team that beat it. That game was in Seattle. This one is in Iowa City and it sets up as an eerie parallel to last week’s USC-Minnesota tilt in that the Huskies are probably a bit hungover and -- I can’t believe I’m even typing this -- there’s a chance they’re looking ahead to Indiana. The Hawkeyes, meanwhile, have something to prove and a home crowd to prove it to.

Last week’s great win notwithstanding, Washington has been incredibly inconsistent and is playing just its second road game of the year.

Last week’s nauseating loss notwithstanding, Iowa is a pretty good football team. Not a great one, but a pretty good one. Some will see this as a risky pick. Don’t care. Iowa has a ferocious defense and special teams that get their kicks along the sideline, sunshine.

Iowa 20, Washington 17