I had never heard of the statistic until one of the broadcasters brought it up in game 1 or 2 this season, and then every week it is one of the preparation requirements for the next broadcast team that does the Iowa game. I do think in general if Iowa gets to 24 on offense it has a good chance of winning. It seems like a low bar for an offense.
Believing it might be interesting to check the average scoring offense for FBS football I found this website:
Offense - Points Per Game 2021 FBS College Football | WarrenNolan.comOn average in 2021 FBS teams scored 29.4 ppg. Iowa has held teams below the 2021 average ppg for 27-straight games by an average 5.4 points; it's good, but I am not sure that's the big deal it's made out to be. I'd like to see when the last time another team had a streak this long; or are there others now who share this streak?
After reading the above linked chart, now I want to know, "What's going on with Pittsburgh scoring 52.4 ppg? Pitt is 55th @ scoring defense giving up 22.6 ppg. Now that I look at Pitt's schedule, it's not that they played nobody, because they have played 5-games but they played nobodies 3 times out of 5.
The stats used in my opening post were off. I am guessing the website I used had not completely updated stats from Week 4 to Week 5. Week 5 defensive stats show Iowa scoring defense 2nd @ 11.6 ppg and Penn State 3rd @ 12.4 ppg in scoring defense, both massively outranked by #1 Georgia @ 4.6 ppg
NCAA College Football FBS current team Stats | NCAA.com Both Iowa and PSU have great defenses. Iowa's defense gets a few more turnovers. It will be a competitive game unless somebody develops momentum and blacktops the other.