I want to caveat my Cyclone post with the fact that I will tag Cyclone Fanatic and the respective program on Twitter. I do not post often about Cyclone sports, so unless you are also libertarian in politics or Christian in faith, don’t waste your time following. Most of what I post about is current events from my own perspective.
Still, I am a fan of the Iowa State Cyclones and have been my entire life.
Hype for this season is at an all-time high. For good reason, Iowa State returns something like 20 of 22 starters and maybe 40 or so in the 2-deep, with several others that return who rotated in or played significant minutes for the Cyclones. Since those returning athletes, with a nearly identical coaching staff, also just produced the best season in Iowa State history, it stands to reason that expectations should be high.
That is where the old Cyclone fan in me rears his ugly head and starts trying to temper any enthusiasm.
National media heads are entertaining the idea of Iowa State winning the Big 12 and potentially even getting a College Football Playoff bid. Most aren’t picking them to do that, but the vast majority have Iowa State as the clear second best team in the conference behind Oklahoma.
Last season was the first Big 12 Championship game in Iowa State history. If the national pundits are correct and the hype is legit, this season should be the second in two years after never having gone prior.
That is an amazing achievement.
Now, I’m just old enough to remember the dark ages of the 80’s into the 90’s. Every year there would be whispers of some recruit that stepped on campus and was lights out the best player on the field. Hope would grow strong among the Cyclone faithful of a program about to turn the corner, only to have a preseason injury sideline the young stud, or even more likely, for reality to dash any hopes when we realized most of our competition could put athletes of their caliber on the field, as their backups.
Even when we had stellar talent, we lacked the depth. If we hung with a good team for a quarter, or even a half, it would always come apart at the seams by the end of the game. Our best players were gassed and looked a step slower as the game wore on.
Our best season prior to last season was also a 9-3 mark, but it didn’t include the Big 12 Championship game, and the 9th win was against an average Pitt team. We avoided Oklahoma and Texas that season, which is likely why they managed 8 wins in the regular season. This followed what would be the worst possible record any program could manage while having the Davis brothers in 5 straight seasons at running back. Following that 9-3 mark in 2000, we wondered how we could replace all that talent, and then we heard of a quarterback they brought in from a community college.
Seneca was fantastic, and never managed more than 7 wins. After his first 7 win season, with a close loss to Alabama in the bowl game, hopes were at all-time highs. The next season started with a great matchup in the pre-season against Florida State. The Cyclones lost (Seneca was in), but went on to win their next 6 in a row, climbing the rankings boards along the way. Things were looking great, until that 8th game, when Oklahoma tore the wheels off the team and absolutely drubbed them in embarrassing fashion. 49-3 was the final and they would win only one more game the rest of the season. They started 6-1 and finished 7-7.
Every season was a single injury away from near devastation.
The wasted years of Chizik were followed by the fleeting years of Rhoads.
Now, finally, a coach that seems to build for the future all the time. He seems to get it. We should be the team to beat and be favored in every game but one, which is the game against Oklahoma in Norman. But lets run down the list and play the curmudgeon for a few minutes.
Our first game is University of Northern Iowa at home. This FCS program should be a good warm up to start the season. They should be a good warm up every season. The problem? Northern Iowa is rarely easy for the Cyclones. Just 2 years ago, it took 3 overtimes and a gutsy fumble recovery by our quarterback, still Brock Purdy at that time, to not lose that game. The only other FCS opponent we’ve played with Coach Campbell at the helm was South Dakota State and we were only about a minute into what looked to be turning into an easy win when weather delayed and eventually cancelled that game. I wanted to intentionally ignore that Drake was on our schedule the year SDSU was, but we blamed the weather for that game, right?
That’s the problem. We always seem to have an excuse for when we look like garbage and more often than not, the first game of our season usually puts out any hype fires immediately. Cyclones should still win, but nothing is guaranteed in Cyclone history. Our first loss last season didn’t ruin the entire season, but even with the excuses we heard, it still doesn’t change the fact that the Cyclones seem to start every season slow.
Iowa is a story all their own. Although the on-field results, since Dan McCarney broke the 15 year losing streak for the Cyclones, have been fairly even, it has not been so of late. Matt Campbell has NEVER beat Iowa and although the last few have been close, the point is that something always has gone wrong. Even when Iowa State was winning those games, it was never the case that the program was even with Iowa, just that those teams were. This feels different, but Ferentz is the only coach on our schedule Campbell has coached against and not beat.
Then the Cyclones probably get their easiest opponent when they travel to UNLV. This should be an opportunity to get the young players in for some early action, which means it is almost guaranteed to have special teams mistakes and turnovers keeping UNLV into the game late and our starters playing minutes they should be resting to start conference play.
They might need the rest, because they travel to Baylor after that. The last outing in Waco had seriously hot temperatures and the league refusing to let the Cyclone players use the shade. Even then, last year Baylor travelled to Ames and gave our “best team ever” more than they bargained for. The Baylor coach is no slouch and schemed up some special stuff for Iowa State which caught them on their heels. We were fortunate that what was potentially Purdy’s worst half of football was followed by what may have been his best half of football, or that game would be a loss. Now we play them in Waco? Far from a gimme.
Kansas has a new coach, but if we’re honest, this one is only spared from being our easiest game because UNLV is on the schedule. We also play them in Ames, but I can imagine that by this time in the season they have developed an identity, and the previous staff at Kansas wasn’t exactly recruiting scrubs. They do have some talent on that roster, and although I don’t think they can put together a win, I do fear they might punch above their weight for a game and make this more interesting than it needs to be.
Fortunately, Kansas State follows Kansas, so it is unlikely they will catch us in a trap game. Last season was an aberration in this series. Don’t ever expect a Cyclone team to drub Kansas State the way we did last season. They had a roster ravaged by COVID and just couldn’t hold up to a Cyclone team that was rolling by the end of last season. They will put up a damn good fight, and even if the Cyclones manage to steal one away from Dracula’s House of Horrors in Manhattan…
They have to travel back home and face Oklahoma State and Gundy’s thorny Cowboys. Remember how last season was the best in program history? Our only regular season conference loss was from Gundy and his bandits. They seem to never be an easy out, they never give up, and we can never put them away.
So we get to travel to what may be the most hostile Big 12 stadium in West Virginia University. Morgantown can suck and although Campbell has seemed to have their number, indications also point to their program getting back on good footing. This is a scary place to travel this late in the season, after what is likely a dog fight against Oklahoma State and with a game against Texas looming in the near future.
Texas is Texas. They are very talented and seem to never put it together. They beat up on poorly coached teams or teams with vastly lesser talent, and struggle against anyone else. They have a new coach, so it will be interesting to see what this looks like by this time in the season, but lets not forget that they are TALENTED. For a team like Iowa State, which is very well coached and with more depth than we are used to, a focused Texas team is still a hard out. Coming off a couple games which are likely to be very difficult, this could be tough.
Then we have to travel to Lubbock, which is probably the most hostile stadium to play in not in Morgantown, to play Texas Tech. This one should be easy, but if you look at the previous 3-4 game stretch and tell me it should be a walk in the park, you are fooling yourself. This team has some ability to get up and depending on how their season has gone, this might be walking into a hornet’s nest.
Then the crème de la crème, Oklahoma in Norman. Potentially the best team in the country, gets to welcome us coming off arguably the toughest 5 game stretch in the nation. Oklahoma struggled for most of the last 5-6 years to put a good defense on the field. They had the talent, but something was missing. Fortunately for them, they were so talented and so potent on offense that their defense could struggle and they’d still win, until they made the playoffs and ran into great defenses and offenses that could scorch their terrible defense. Not the case anymore. By the end of last season, Oklahoma’s defense may have been the best in the nation. Now with their potent offense and fantastic defense, I find it hard to think they will lose a game this season.
Texas Christian University then travels to Ames on a short turn around to play what will likely be a bruised, beaten and reeling Cyclone team to cap off the toughest 7 game stretch in the nation. They will not be an easy foe to fend off, though we can count our blessings that we are playing them at the end of November. IF the season goes well, this might be the game that decides who plays Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship game. TCU is always talented and their coach is capable of making this hard for the Cyclones.
In short, the over-under for regular season wins for the Cyclones in Vegas right now is 8.5, which means if you wanted to bet the over, you have to get 9 wins to win the bet. The Cyclones would have to match or beat their best season ever in order to reach that total. Although I find it hard not to buy into the hype myself, are you telling me you can’t find more than 3 losses on that schedule? I can only see 1 loss that I would say is more likely than not, when we travel to Normal to play OU, but there are at least a few, with Iowa, Oklahoma State, Texas and Texas Christian that I would say are far from in our favor. We are very fortunate that all of those games are in Ames this year, but going on the road to West Virginia, Kansas State, Baylor and Texas Tech isn’t exactly a breath of fresh air. What it really means is that if we struggle, our margin for error shrinks incredibly thin. Our hopeful 9+ win season could be 10-20 yards away from a 4 win season.
In reality, I think the absolute worst case scenario for Iowa State this season is 7 wins, but I know I am not alone when I say that although that is a great sign for the program that we can’t even see less than 7 being reasonable, it also isn’t comforting or making me confident.
I said I’m buying the hype, though, so tomorrow I’ll cover the optimistic side.
