The 2025 college football season came and went in the blink of an eye. It saw the Iowa Hawkeyes finish the year 9-4 with an exclamation point in destroying Nebraska in the final week of the regular season, followed by a ReliaQuest Bowl victory over Vanderbilt.
The year also saw a few heartbreaks and left fans with questions of what the season could have been if a few plays had broken Iowa‘s way or the ball bounced differently just a couple of times. While there was some heartbreak, one cannot deny that the season also entailed an endless amount of tight, fun, exciting games.
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Two of those games ended up on ESPN’s list of the best college football games of the 2025 season. Coming in at No. 71 and No. 72 on their rankings of the top 100 games, Iowa’s games against Indiana and Oregon did not lack fireworks.
72. No. 9 Oregon 18, No. 20 Iowa 16 (Nov. 8)
71. No. 11 Indiana 20, Iowa 15 (Sept. 27)
Iowa was achingly close to a huge season: The Hawkeyes went 9-4, but the four losses — including these two to CFP semifinalists — came by a combined 15 points. The loss to Oregon was particularly painful, as Iowa came back from a 15-7 deficit to take a 16-15 lead when Mark Gronowski capped a 93-yard, nearly seven-minute drive with a 3-yard touchdown run. Getting the ball back with 1:51 left, however, Dante Moore completed five passes, including a 24-yarder to Malik Benson, and Atticus Sappington hit a 39-yard field goal with three seconds remaining.
Indiana rolled through most of 2025, but when the Hoosiers had to prove themselves in clutch situations in Big Ten play, they did exactly that. A field goal contest, tied at 13-13, got wild late when, following an interception, Iowa’s Drew Stevens missed a 42-yard field goal attempt with 2:01 left. (He had made a 54-yarder earlier in the quarter.) Given second life, Fernando Mendoza quickly connected with Elijah Sarratt, who burst into the open field and scored from 49 yards. Iowa drove to midfield but got no farther. Indiana ran out the rest of the clock with an intentional safety. – Bill Connelly, ESPN
Against Indiana, Iowa was driving late with a chance to run down the clock and walk things off. Unfortunately, an untimely injury to quarterback Mark Gronowski bogged down the drive and saw Iowa settle for a field goal that was pulled wide left and left the door open for Indiana, the future national champions, to survive.
Iowa took Oregon to the brink. In a cold, rain-soaked Kinnick Stadium, Iowa engineered a 93-yard touchdown drive that lasted 12 plays and was one of the best drives from this program in years. With the lead, Iowa kicked it back to Oregon. The Ducks’ quarterback proved why he is one of the best in the nation, connecting on a deep ball that was perfectly placed and setting up Oregon’s game-winning field goal.
So, while the year was fun and did have some heartbreak, it is undeniable that it was exciting and saw the Hawkeyes constantly competing with the best programs in the nation.
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This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Iowa football played in two of ESPN’s best games of the 2025 season
