Iowa earned its Rose Bowl trip, but Ohio State had an even better case

Iowa was excellent this year, and the Hawkeyes are a generally deserving pick for this winter’s Rose Bowl against Stanford. But the another team in their own conference, Ohio State, deserved it even more.

Playoff committee executive director Jeff Long explained Iowa’s loss to Michigan State was the team’s most impressive performance of the year, keeping the Hawkeyes above Ohio State in the rankings.

“We really thought Iowa really proved more in that loss [than] they did throughout the rest of their schedule,” he said. “I think the committee was really thoroughly impressed by how they played in that game. Holding them [at No.] 5 was a strong sentiment of the committee.”

The Playoff Committee has four primary criteria that it uses when deciding between otherwise equal teams: championships won, head-to-head competition, schedule strength and record against common opponents.

Since both Ohio State and Iowa got Michigan Stated, did not win the Big Ten championship, and did not lose to anybody other than Sparty, there are two primary factors worth even considering here: Strength of schedule and the so-called “eye test” of how the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes looked on the field.

By both criteria and by looking deeper at common opponents, Ohio State deserves the Rose Bowl.

Based on their public comments in the last two years, members of the Playoff’s selection committee put some weight on records against ranked teams and teams better than .500 while determining strength of schedule.

This works out to about a wash. Ohio State played in a deeper Big Ten East than Iowa’s Big Ten West, but neither team played that tough a schedule. Ohio State played one more plus-.500 team, while Iowa played one more ranked team. They lost the same amount of these games -- one each, to Michigan State.

But by a more exhaustive review, it’s pretty clear that Ohio State had a harder road to finish with one loss than Iowa. Based on S&P+, Ohio State had a formidable strength of schedule that Iowa simple didn’t face.

Ohio State objectively played a much better schedule than Iowa. That’s rooted in the Big Ten East being better than the Big Ten West, but Iowa had plenty of agency over who it played in non-conference games.

Iowa chose to schedule 1-11 North Texas and non-major Illinois State. Ohio State chose to play living, breathing MAC teams with a pulse, such as Northern Illinois and and Western Michigan.

The Buckeyes played better teams. It should matter.

If Ohio State and Iowa played, Ohio State would very likely win. Let’s go through some of the statistics that give us the clearest view of a team’s true ability and talent level:

That’s a pretty striking difference, with Ohio State coming out well ahead of Iowa in a whole bunch of traditional and advanced metrics. If you’re only concerned with how a team looks, the only thing Iowa has going for it relative to Ohio State is that black and gold makes for a better color scheme than scarlet and gray.

The Playoff committee says it doesn’t make a big deal out of margin of victory against common opponents. But Ohio State and Iowa both beat all of their common opponents except for Michigan State, so let’s do that, anyway:

Everything’s coming up Buckeyes.

If Iowa had won the Big Ten, the Hawkeyes would deservingly be playing in the College Football Playoff. Even now that they didn’t, there’s something to be said for not penalizing a team for losing a conference title game that the other didn’t even qualify for, to be sure. But it doesn’t outweigh the massive gap in game-to-game performance and talent level between Ohio State and Iowa.