One thing you can typically count on the first Wednesday of February is that an Iowa football recruiting class is not going to appear in the Scout.com or Rivals.com Top 25 classes.

That’s been the way it has been since those websites came into existence as late as the 1990′s.

Here is how Iowa’s classes have stacked up going back to 2002, first with Rivals’ Big Ten rankings:

2002: 8th
2003: 7th
2004: 6th
2005: 2nd
2006: 6th
2007: 5th
2008: 8th
2009: 10th
2010: 5th as of 9:00pm central on 2/1/2010

That is an average of 6.3 out of 11 teams, or in the bottom half of the league. During that time span, Iowa has been to six January bowl games, two BCS bowl games, has won two Outback Bowls, a Cap One Bowl and an Orange Bowl to go along with two Big Ten titles. On the field, Iowa has finished 3.5 out of 11, or just in between third and fourth place in the Big Ten during that same time. So the Hawks ‘outperform’ their Rivals.com recruiting class rankings by a substantial margin on the average over the past eight to nine years

Now, here are the Big Ten recruiting class rankings from Scout.com:

2002: 5th
2003: 3rd
2004: 7th
2005: 3rd
2006: 6th
2007: 5th
2008: 7th
2009: 11th
2010: 6th as of 9:00pm on 2/1/2010

The average Big Ten class ranking for Iowa during the last nine years of Scout’s rankings is 5.8, which is closer to Iowa’s on the field conference finish of 3.5 but still a couple of slots off.

Is this a case where the Hawkeye classes are almost always underrated by the ‘experts’ as it relates to eventual on field performance? Or is it a matter of the Iowa coaching staff identifying and developing talent as good if not better than any other FBS program in America?

It’s probably a little bit of both.

That being said, just one Iowa recruiting class, the 2005 class, was ranked in the national Top 30 by either Rivals or Scout. Last year’s Iowa class was ranked 75th by Scout.com and I was probably as excited about that class as any in recent memory.

I say the same thing about this year’s Iowa class, as it’s perhaps the most unique of any of the Ferentz era in that most of the work was done before Iowa played in their bowl game.

In past classes, the first two weekends in December have been of the utmost importance, as the Hawkeyes typically have at least half of their recruiting work ahead of them from that time to the first Wednesday in February. This year, Iowa has 20 known commitments and just one of them, WR Kevonte Martin-Manley, committed after the calendar had turned to December. TE C.J. Fiedorowicz committed to Iowa on 11/26, and he and Martin-Manley are the only two players in Iowa’s class that didn’t commit on or before October 11th.

That’s one of the reasons why I think this Iowa class has a chance to really shine when it’s all said and done. Iowa’s track record of finding players that other schools overlook is established and sparkling. The overwhelming majority of the players in this year’s class were offered scholarships by Iowa based on junior film and/or camp showings.

Again, given Iowa’s track record for finding diamonds in the rough, that says a lot to me. It says they identified the players they were high on early in the process, something they do each year. Except that this year, many of those players climbed aboard the Hawkeye Express before they were handed their pads for their senior years of high school.

Iowa identified who they wanted and they got most of those targets at an earlier stage than they ever have before. So be excited about that!

Tomorrow Night: Jon’s choice as the best recruiting class of the past nine years. Be sure to stay glued to HawkeyeNation.com on Wednesday as we’ll have complete coverage of Kirk Ferentz’s annual signing day press conference, one of the best of the year.

Tags: hawkeye football, Hawkeye Nation, hawkeyenation.com, Iowa football, Kirk Ferentz, recruiting