​Our hypothetical 24-team playoff series has now completed its journey through Hayden Fry’s legendary two-decade tenure. With a 24-team College Football Playoff field likely to arrive in the near future, Hawkeye Roundtable’s 2026 summer series catalogs every Iowa football squad that would have qualified for a 24-team bracket under Fry and Kirk Ferentz. The Ferentz era voyage begins this Tuesday, but in the meantime we’re recapping our Fry series. Remember, this list reflects our opinion, but by our count eight of Fry’s teams would have made a 24-team bracket had such a format existed back then.
Each squad is dear to Hawkeye fans for a different reason, yet the question we’re after today is which of those teams had the best national championship odds. Here’s a ranking of the eight teams based on their title potential. This ranking proved especially tough because all of these teams were good enough to contend in a 24-team playoff, but the eighth spot goes to the 1986 squad. That group finished 9-3 and just outside the top 15, yet the lack of a signature win torpedoes their prospects in this scenario. They might have won a few games in a 24-team field, but that would have been their ceiling.
Next up is the 1987 team, which became Fry’s second 10-win campaign. They were nearly a mirror image of 1986, but they’d closed the year much stronger. Iowa stumbled down the stretch in 1986, yet 1987 ended on a six-game winning streak. Chuck Hartlieb was playing exceptional football, and you can’t overlook future NFL Pro Bowler Marv Cook.
Some would argue the Hawkeyes were better in 1986 and 1987, but the 1990 squad earns the nod here by capturing Fry’s third and final Big Ten title. As I noted in the 1990 profile, Iowa was probably a year early in its rebuild, yet the co-Big Ten championship felt like a meaningful reward for Hawkeye faithful. The November collapse and Rose Bowl letdown kept this team from cracking the top five.
The 1981 season was magical for Iowa, but that’s precisely the key word here: magic. That roster was loaded with talent, including future Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Andre Tippett, yet in a 24-team national championship format, the Hawks likely ran out of luck early in the tournament.
By the mid-1990s, Iowa had drifted from its 1980s peak, but the 1996 squad could have competed in a 24-team field due to its formidable trio of playmakers: wide receiver/return specialist Tim Dwight and running backs Sedrick Shaw and Tavian Banks. Shaw remains Iowa’s all-time leading rusher, which would have added an intriguing storyline if he and Ba were featured together in a wider field.
This series has been a deep dive into how those era-defining teams might have fared on a larger stage, and it’s given Hawkeye fans a fresh way to appreciate the merit and mystique of Fry’s tenure. As we move into Ferentz’s era, the conversation about championship potential in a modern, expanded playoff will only continue to evolve, but for now, these eight teams stand out as the strongest possibilities for a 24-team bracket from Fry’s Iowa squads.