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IOWA CITY – The Iowa football team really could use a convincing victory today.

If the Hawkeyes can beat Indiana by a substantial margin in an 11 a.m. game at Kinnick Stadium, perhaps they can convince some people that they really are the best team in the Big Ten, as the record indicates.

They might convince a few national pollsters that they’re among the top five teams in the country, as the computer ranking indicates.

They might even convince themselves.

“Realistically, I still have a hard time picturing us in the top 10,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said earlier this week. “We’re winning with attitude more than anything else.”

But they are winning.

They’re doing it with blocked field goals and blocked punts and flurries of fourth-quarter interceptions and touchdowns with no time left on the clock.

The common refrain last season, when they went 9-4, was that the Hawkeyes were 12 points away from being undefeated. This season, at 8-0, they are eight points away from being 4-4.

“The reality is that we could be a 4-4 team,” Ferentz said. “I’m very proud of the fact that we aren’t. But if we don’t handle the next four weeks well, we could be an 8-4 team.”

That four-week trek begins today with Indiana and includes three home games against teams that are likely to finish in the second division of the Big Ten.

But it is teams such as Indiana that scare Ferentz most. He knows the talent gap between his unbeaten Hawkeyes and the 4-4 Hoosiers isn’t nearly as vast as it might appear.

“We have been living it for eight weeks for the most part,” Ferentz said. “We have tangible examples each and every week. We have been in tough, tough ballgames and it gets back to … just about perceptions. To me, whatever we are ranked right now, the difference between us and a team that might be ranked 20th is probably pretty slim at this time of year.”

He said his players have managed to remain grounded and modest “because they know what we know.

“Our margin for error is really thin, and I think our players understand that,” Ferentz said. “Thus far, at least, they really haven’t seemed to be very affected by anything going on outside, which is really a good thing.

“It’s a tribute to our leadership.”

Those team leaders still are having a little difficulty wrapping their brains around 8-0.

“Do you think we look like the No. 1 team in the nation?” senior linebacker Pat Angerer asked reporters. “I don’t think we’ve played like that. I just know Indiana’s going to come in here and play us tough.”

Quarterback Ricky Stanzi admitted to being somewhat surprised at the record.

“You don’t realize how hard it is just to get through the season,” he said. “I don’t want to say I’m surprised, but I don’t think going into the season we thought we were going to win every game.”

Offensive tackle Bryan Bulaga said he has watched many of the national cable shows in which experts dissect and demean Iowa’s record, but he said he hasn’t been offended by it.

“People are going to say what they’re going to say,” he said. “It’s just a matter of going out and working hard every day. It’s not going to affect how we play.

“Honestly, that stuff is not in our hands anyway,” Bulaga added. “It’s in the hands of the computer.”

Most of the computer formulas, including the one used by the Bowl Championship Series, have the Hawkeyes No. 1 while the polls assembled by subjective human beings peg them No. 7 or No. 8.

“The computers haven’t seen us play,” Ferentz said. “If they had eyes and could see us play, they would say, ‘Are you kidding me?’”