By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The oddsmakers are starting to release their win totals for the 2025 college football season, and to absolutely no surprise, FanDuel has Iowa listed at 7.5 wins.

Putting Iowa’s win total at 7.5 is like predicting that a B-minus student will finish with a B-minus grade on the semester exam.

And while Iowa currently sits with a win total of 7.5 games, FanDuel has better odds on Iowa finishing under that mark at minus-154, whereas the odds to surpass that number are plus-126.

As Kirk Ferentz enters his 27th season as the Iowa head coach, his teams almost always seem capable of winning at least seven games, and sometimes even more.

Iowa has reached the 7.5-win mark in nine straight full seasons, and has surpassed 7.5 wins in all but four seasons since 2008. The last time Iowa fell short of 7.5 wins was the shortened 2020 season where the Hawkeyes finished 6-2 while facing only Big Ten opponents during the global pandemic.

The last time Iowa fell short of 7.5 wins in a full season was 2014 when the Hawkeyes finished 7-6 overall, capped by a disappointing 45-28 loss to Tennessee in the TaxSlayer Bowl.

Kirk Ferentz was so disappointed with how the 2024 season ended that he benched starting quarterback Jake Rudock and made C.J. Beathard the new starter just a few days after the season had ended.

Kirk Ferentz also switched practice from late in the afternoon to the morning following the 2014 season, and his teams have hit the 7.5-win mark in every full season since then.

I currently have Iowa winning anywhere from seven to 10 games in 2025, which is hardly going out on a limb. But if you pressed me to pick a an exact win total, I’d probably go with nine, including a bowl game, so 9-4.

Before you call me a hater, let me explain.

Iowa has to replace eight starters on defense, including its top three linebackers, and faces what looks to be a potentially brutal schedule with home games against Indiana, Penn State, Minnesota, Oregon and Michigan State.

The road schedule also looks daunting with games at Iowa State, Rutgers, Wisconsin, USC and Nebraska.

The only sure wins would appear to be Albany in the season opener and UMass in game three.

Iowa has invested heavily in South Dakota State quarterback Mark Gronowski, whose success at the FCS level is certainly cause for hope and optimism.

However, Gronowski will also face better competition as a Hawkeye and he has yet to show that he can meet that challenge because he hasn’t had the opportunity.

He will also be coming off shoulder surgery, so to have sort of wait-and-see approach with Gronowski seems justified.

There will certainly be pressure on Gronowski to play well, and to have team success.

But on the other hand, the bar hasn’t been set very high for Iowa quarterbacks in recent seasons.

Just being a game manager would be an improvement and probably enough for Iowa to hit the 7.5-win mark. But Iowa will need Gronowski to be more than that in order to make the 12-team playoff.

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Iowa Men’s Basketball Roster Update: Since being hired as the new Iowa men’s basketball coach in late March, Ben McCollum has added nine players to his roster and kept one holdover from the 2024-25 squad in freshman Cooper Koch for a total of 10.

McCollum told the Des Moines Register recently that he still would like to add another point guard and another frontline player to the 2025-26 roster.

But that is easier said than done in this age of the transfer portal and NIL in which proven point guards and frontline players don’t come cheap at this level.

Iowa also lost a player who had previously committed under former Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery as 2026 in-state guard Navon Shabazz recently de-committed from the Hawkeyes.

The 6-foot-3 Shabazz attends Iowa United Prep in Des Moines after playing one season for Davenport Assumption.

As a sophomore, Shabazz helped to lead Assumption to a Class 3A state title.