Tom Dienhart, BTN.com Senior Writer, November 3, 2015

Much anticipation and buzz surrounds the release of the CFP rankings, especially the inaugural edition. The unveiling of Poll No. 1 will be at 7 p.m. ET Tuesday. The main focus will be on which teams occupy the first four spots, which guarantee playoff berths. Schools like Ohio State, LSU, Clemson, Michigan State, TCU and Baylor are expected to be jockeying for one of the top four positions.

[ MORE: See Tom Dienhart's initial top 4 ]

But what about Iowa? Like the aforementioned six teams, the Hawkeyes are unbeaten and trying to make a claim as a playoff contender.

Where will the Big Ten West leader land? I asked some of my esteemed colleagues.

Program alert: A special edition of B1G Football & Beyond will air at 8:30 p.m. ET Tuesday on BTN/BTN2Go.

Dave Briggs, Toledo Blade. No. 9. That's where I voted Iowa in the AP poll, and I suspect the committee will view them similarly. A big emphasis is placed on road wins, and the Hawkeyes have two decent ones at Wisconsin and at Northwestern to go along with a nice win over Pitt in Iowa City.

Steve Greenberg, Chicago Sun-Times, Bleacher Report, Rolling Stone. Bottom-of-the-top-10 range - and it won't be fair to an Iowa team that probably will be worse-off in the rankings, relative to its record and to the quality of its wins to date, than anybody. But you know what? I'm not going to pretend I believe Iowa is better than Alabama, so I can't give the committee grief if it doesn't pretend to believe that. And, really, it doesn't matter anyway - if the Hawkeyes win out, they'll be in the playoff. You can take that to the bank.

Tom Oates, Wisconsin State Journal. Iowa and Michigan State should be 7 and 8, in no particular order. Neither one has pounded opponents, but both are undefeated and have similar resumes. Iowa suffers because it started lower than MSU. Wasn't the CFP supposed to eliminate that?

Scott Dochterman, Cedar Rapids Gazette. 8th. I think committee members will appreciate more than pollsters how Iowa has won six games by at least nine points and beaten three teams with records of 6-2 or better. It might be higher if comparative scores are figured in.

Sean Callahan, HuskerOnline.com. That's a really interesting question because when you look at Iowa's best wins over teams like Pittsburgh, Northwestern and Wisconsin, they are quality wins, but they aren't as strong as some other teams behind them. I wouldn't be surprised at all if teams like Memphis, Utah and Florida are ahead of them in the poll. I think they land somewhere right around No. 12. All they can do is play the schedule the Big Ten gave them and keep winning. They'll get their chance to prove they belong in Indianapolis if they stay on track.

Bill Rabinowitz, Columbus Dispatch. Without having studied it in detail, I'll guess that the Hawkeyes will be No. 7. They'll be behind fellow undefeated teams (in no particular order) OSU, Baylor, TCU, Clemson, LSU and Michigan State). I think they'll be ahead of unbeaten Oklahoma State and I'd have them barely ahead of Alabama and Notre Dame, though I'm not sure the CFP committee will. I've only seen Iowa a couple times and not for a whole game. I like what I've seen. But I don't think the Hawkeyes have the raw talent that some of the other elite teams have.

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So, for what it's worth, No. 7 is the highest ranking I got and No. 12 is the lowest. I think the former sounds more accurate, and we should expect to see the Hawkeyes in the 6-9 range.

No matter what happens tonight, there's no need to stress. Remember, Ohio State, the 2014 national champion, was No. 16 in last year's inaugural poll. Even more important: Only one of the teams (Florida State) in the last year's first poll, went on to make the inaugural College Football Playoff.

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