Iowa State vs. Iowa Recap: The More You Want it, the More it Hurts
I had a low-grade headache from the time I walked into Jack Trice Stadium for the Iowa State vs. Iowa game. It had been a day full of sun and heat that reached in the 90s, and the last two hours of the tailgate felt like we were just trying to survive. Despite having drank what seemed like a gallon of water, the heat had caught up to me after eight hours outside and my head was beginning to hurt.
Headache or no headache, I was not going to miss this game. I was able to convince myself that my head didn’t hurt that bad, and that it wasn’t really that hot, as I watched the Cyclones run out onto the field. I looked around at the crowd. There was a buzz in the stadium I had never felt before. We had a top ten team in the country. We were playing a top ten team in the country. They happened to be our biggest rivals, who we hadn’t beaten since 2014. And by the way, this was the game of the day in college football on the national landscape. I turned to my friend Chris and my wife Paige and my voice was shaky as I said “I’ve never felt it quite like this before.”
There was no doubt. We wanted it, and we wanted it bad.
This was confirmed for me during a timeout in the first quarter. Iowa had just missed a field goal, a shank by their field goal kicker. Before the kick, the crowd was yelling, trying to distract the kicker. After the kick came off his foot and went nowhere near the goalposts, everyone erupted for the first time that day. I couldn’t help but feel like we had gotten in the kicker’s head. During the ensuing timeout, the crowd started an impromptu “Let’s Go State! Let’s Go State!” chant, followed by a “Cyclone! Power!” cheer. Almost everyone was standing. It was a raucous environment. There was electricity in the air. I again turned to Chris and said “I’ve really never felt it quite like this before. We want this game.”
A few hours later, I sat in silence, no longer able to convince myself that my headache didn’t hurt, and taking in a different scene. The few thousand Hawkeye fans had started several “Let’s Go Hawks! Let’s Go Hawks!” chants throughout the day, and as the day moved on it became less desirable for the Iowa State fans to boo and drown them out. We lost our mojo watching the Hawkeyes take control of the game. It wasn’t the “Let’s Go Hawks!” chant that really hurt, though. When they chanted “Hawkeye State! Hawkeye State!” it stung, but was to be expected. No, the chant that occurred as the fourth quarter was winding down, and Iowa had a sizeable lead, was worse.
“O-ver-ra-ted” *clap clap clap clap clap* “O-ver-ra-ted” *clap clap clap clap clap*.
Indeed, the Cyclones, for this day at least, were over-rated as the ninth best team in the country. They would surely drop, and likely far, after this game. And we were left trying to make sense of what this season, which coming into the day had college football playoff aspirations and dream season vibes, meant now that the Cyclones were no longer undefeated after just two games.
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The week leading up to the game had the typical CyHawk banter and, as per usual, a number of storylines seemed to emerge throughout the week to ramp up the rivalry.
Immediately after the Cyclones and Hawkeyes opened their seasons with wins in week one, the popular traveling pregame show “ESPN College GameDay” announced it would be in Ames for the CyHawk game. For many years, I had dreamed of having College GameDay come to Ames, and of having a football team worthy of getting Gameday’s attention. Two years ago, that dream came true. It felt like a turning point in the program’s prestige when College GameDay decided to come for the 2019 CyHawk game. It was a great experience, and at the same time meant that we waited for more than two hours in traffic early in the morning to get into the parking lots. As rumors swirled during the final weeks of the offseason that College GameDay might come for the Iowa vs. Iowa State game, my initial thought was “no thanks.” It felt a little less special this time, and I had no desire to fight that traffic again. After College GameDay announced it would indeed come, I changed my attitude. I decided I better embrace the experience. After all, this was a big game in a big season.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press Top 25 poll came out. Iowa State was #9, Iowa was #10. It would be the first time in the history of the rivalry that both teams were ranked, and now they were both ranked in the top ten.
Also on Tuesday, Iowa running back Tyler Goodson remarked on the game to reporters: “This is like their Super Bowl.” It’s an age-old criticism in this rivalry that somehow Iowa State cares more than Iowa, and it’s like filling out a square on your CyHawk Bingo card every time an opposing player or fan mentions it. If it was at one point ISU’s “Super Bowl,” that day has passed, even though I still care a lot.
On Wednesday, Iowa State unveiled its uniform combination: white helmet, black jersey, white pants. Up until very recently it would have been unthinkable for Iowa State to wear the color black, let alone when playing their rivals who wear black and gold. The black jerseys, however, worked their way into the rotation during ISU coach Matt Campbell’s tenure and have been associated with big wins, including the Fiesta Bowl. I was almost sure the Cyclones would wear black against Iowa this year, and was not surprised. This was a big game, worthy of a big game jersey. I am also convinced the Cyclone coaches knew exactly the reaction they would get from some Hawkeye fans for wearing black jerseys. Something along the lines of “How dare you copy our color?” Just a little extra tweaking of the rival.
And then on Friday, things ramped up when ESPN announced its guest picker for Gameday. The guest picker joins ESPN’s analysts on set to give their picks for the biggest games of the week. The game at the site where the show is stationed that week is always picked last. Lee Corso, the popular analyst, has a long-running schtick where he will put on the mascot head of whichever team he is picking in that game. If he picks the home team, the crowd goes crazy. If he picks the away team, the crowd boos. It’s great television that plays into the passion of college football fans.
The guest picker adds fuel to this process. Throughout the week, Cyclone fans threw out names such as actor Kevin Costner, who was just in Iowa for a baseball game at the Field of Dreams, or one of the handful of Cyclones in the NBA such as Georges Niang, Monte Morris or Tyrese Haliburton. Rumors began to circulate on Friday that the guest picker would be a Cyclone fan’s worst nightmare: Ashton Kutcher, the Iowa-born actor who is an unabashed Hawkeye fan. No way ESPN would go that route. Just no way. I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand how they could pick a guest who is a known fan of the away team. It seemed like it would be a slap in the face.
And it felt like a slap in the face when ESPN indeed announced it was Kutcher. On the College GameDay Facebook post, the account even tagged the Hawkeye Football Facebook account, but not Iowa State. The announcement post included a video of Kutcher, wearing a Hawkeye hat, and he ended by saying “Go Hawkeyes” in a way that seemed purposely obnoxious. Part of me thought we were getting Punk’d, but I have been an Iowa State fan long enough to know that was probably not true. ESPN was playing into the rivalry.
It could be easy to justify that Kutcher is the most famous and relevant person from Iowa for this type of appearance. Sure, that may be true. But it still hit a chord that made it painful for Cyclone fans. Here we were, with (hopefully) the best team we’ve ever had, hosting our rival and College GameDay… and ESPN picked our rival’s most famous fan to appear on set, at our home stadium. The feelings of irrelevance many of us have felt for years prior to this, the feelings of being the “little brother” to Iowa, those feelings were hard to escape on the Friday evening before the game. Sometimes it really is Cyclones vs. The World.
None-the-less, I went to bed Friday evening thinking tomorrow could be a special day in my life… one of those really memorable Cyclone wins. Although I had set my alarm for 5 a.m., I woke up at 4:45. Gameday! No going back to sleep now! Per our usual morning gameday ritual, I texted my brother, the Hawkeye fan. I put on my black t-shirt with the Jack Trice logo, and a red hat with an “I-State” logo to make sure nobody confused me for a Hawkeye fan. We met Chris and his wife Kaci, as well as our good friend Charles, who had driven down from Minneapolis for the game. We were all in a jovial mood despite the early hour.
All week I had been worried about the possibility of sitting for hours in traffic to get into the parking lots. This time, we had no issue. We arrived a little after 7 a.m., parking pass in hand, and pulled right into the lots. Time to tailgate! It already felt like things were going better than the CyHawk gameday two years ago. That feeling would not last.
As we stood around and sipped on our first drinks of the day (for me, a full bottle of water followed by a Zoltan beer from Exile Brewing Company), our discussion turned to the game. During the UNI game, Chris and I discovered a great system to prevent him from verbalizing negative predictions. Instead of saying out loud what he feared was going to happen in the game, he texted himself. We did not learn from that lesson. “I just have this bad feeling we are going to lose by something like seventeen points today,” he said. D’oh!
Around 9:30, Chris, Kaci, Paige and I, along with a few others, headed to the College GameDay set located south of Jack Trice Stadium in the Reiman Plaza. As it was two years ago, it was a site to behold. The plaza was packed with Cyclone fans, and of course a few Hawkeyes. As is customary on College GameDay, there were handmade signs everywhere. Fans try to come up with the most creative signs to get on television. As the morning went on, we continued to point out unique signs to each other (many of which likely pushed the boundaries of appropriateness to be shown on television). Some were straightforward such as “Iowa is Bad at Football.” (I wish that would have been proven to be true.) Some were a little more creative, like “Ashton Kutcher Please Take a Shower.”
The crowd grew, and the anticipation built as ESPN showed Kutcher’s airplane arriving on the big screens next to the set. The weather was heating up, and so were emotions.
Others left to go back to the tailgate, but I wanted to see the picks and Chris was game to keep me company. If there was any less excitement about having College GameDay on site in 2021 as opposed to 2019, I wasn’t noticing it at that point. The crowd was into it and playing their part to make Cyclone Nation look strong to a national audience.
And, if there was any doubt that ESPN was trying to manufacture drama with its pick of Kutcher, that doubt was erased as a farming combine, painted in all black with a yellow Hawkeye logo, pulled up to the GameDay area, Hawkeye flags flying from the top, Kutcher waving from the door. Yep, they were going all in on this bit. As Chris pointed out, there was a WWE aspect to it. Play to (or against) the crowd to manufacture excitement and controversy.
A few minutes later, it came time to pick the game. Although we couldn’t hear much from on the set, as Kutcher talked most of the crowd predictably booed. It was a good-natured crowd, but I sensed a tinge of genuine anger that we were getting played as a fanbase having a Hawkeye fan on stage. Looking around me, I also sensed that ESPN’s cameras might have a difficult time panning the crowd without catching a few hand gestures.
Then it was Corso’s turn. His pick would generate likely the loudest cheer or boo of the day. C’mon Corso, pick Iowa State!, I thought to myself. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, but we saw him reach down and pick up… a Herky mascot head. He was picking the Hawkeyes. As Kutcher and Corso put their arm around each other, Corso still with Herky on his head, Iowa fans cheered and Iowa State fans drowned them out with boos. I turned to Chris and said “I’ve just decided I believe we’re going to win!” Something about the Cyclones vs. The World mentality gave me more confidence. Ah the irrational optimism created by the emotions of a gameday.
A few hours later, after some more tailgating, I needed to sit in the car for a little bit. The heat had arrived, in the 90’s and humid. At that point I had drank eight-to-ten bottles of water, but the heat was still getting to me. There was no way around the fact that it was a long day in the heat and sun. I sat in the air conditioning, drank some more water and mentally prepared myself for the game. I could feel a headache coming on, the type I’ve felt before after a day in the heat, and I knew it was going to persist. I also had confidence the adrenaline and emotion would help me hold the worst effects at bay until the game was over.
I forgot about the headache as we got into the stadium just in time to see the marching band take the field. The CyHawk game is always the most packed crowd of the year for the band’s pregame show, and the crowd was into it. The PA announcer asked for a moment of silence in remembrance of the twentieth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2021, and after the playing of the National Anthem fans chanted “U-S-A!! U-S-A!,” a reminder that although we were Cyclones and Hawkeyes and may have different political beliefs, we also shared a common bond of being Americans.
All of the other familiar stuff happened — the Cyclone Power cheer, the Cyclone Weather Alert, and the team entrance. The loudspeakers blared music as the game approached kickoff. I often feel these are the best moments of the day, as excitement reaches its peak and nothing negative has happened during the game yet. The student section looked like a popcorn machine with people jumping up and down. Cyclone fans around the stadium were clapping to the beat, and not just a polite clap. We were using our hands as noise-making machines. The whole scene was chill-inducing.
I need to warn readers now that the description of this game gets a bit tedious, because it needs to be to truly convey the suffocating feeling of what it was like to watch. If you like reading about punting and field position, oh boy are you in for a treat!
Iowa took the ball first and the ISU defense immediately held the Hawkeyes to a three-and-out. In came the punter, Tory Taylor. Normally I wouldn’t spend much time thinking about the punter. On this day it was inescapable. He belted the kick fifty-eight yards, and it was downed at the Iowa State eight-yard-line.
Here’s how I would describe Hawkeye football under head coach Kirk Ferentz, who has led Iowa since 1999. The Hawkeyes are not flashy. They do not try to run a hurry-up offense or gamble too much on defense. They play fundamental football. Take care of the ball and don’t turn it over. Control the field position with solid punting. Limit big plays on defense and force the offense to “earn it” with long drives. It’s as though they say “Here’s who we are. If you think you can beat us, go ahead and try.” They have an identity that has been overall overwhelmingly successful, and has won them a lot of games they wouldn’t be expected to win if stats are any indication. It keeps them in games against better teams, sometimes keeps inferior opponents in games with them, and sometimes adds up to a perfect combination of being able to destroy the opposing team’s will.
Iowa State, under Campbell’s direction, has tried to build a program in the same type of style. As Campbell likes to say, if the Cyclones are going to be good they need to win in the margins. In conference play, this has been very successful and put Iowa State in positions it has never been in before. In the CyHawk rivalry, it has pitted two teams that want to win the game in exactly the same style, and one has always been better at it than the other.
So, the punter matters in the CyHawk game, because field position matters, because that’s one way to win in the margins. Iowa’s defense was going to make Iowa State’s offense earn every yard and every point, and a ninety-two-yard touchdown drive would be a tall task. Iowa State went three-and-out on its first possession, and trotted out Corey Dunn for a punt. His punt went fifty-six yards, and was returned four yards by the Iowa returner, setting up the Hawkeyes at the thirty-nine yard-line, five yards ahead of where they punted minutes ago. The Hawkeyes didn’t gain a yard on their possession, and Taylor booted a punt fifty yards to be fair caught at the Iowa State six-yard-line. Both of the Cyclones’ first two possessions began pinned inside their own ten, playing right into Iowa’s gameplan.
Iowa State did gain a first down to a loud ovation from a still jacked-up crowd, but then had to punt again. This time, Dunn’s punt went just thirty-nine yards and was returned eighteen yards. Iowa began possession in Iowa State territory at the forty-one yard-line. The Hawkeyes had yet to pick up a first down, but had effectively moved the ball thirty-one yards through special teams play and were right at the cusp of field goal range. Having watched my fair share of Iowa games over the years, I knew they were accomplishing exactly what they wanted.
Iowa moved the chains for a first down for the first time on the afternoon, but a sack by ISU defensive lineman Will McDonald forced a long field goal attempt of fifty yards. In one of the loudest crowd reactions of the game, the Iowa kicker shanked it. I’ve always felt there is something extra deflating about watching your team miss a field goal. It feels like a waste to get in position for points and then not capitalize. It is also typically a momentum shift. And Iowa State has had its share of inconsistent field goal kicking over the years, including some really big, and bad, misses. Iowa, conversely, always seems to be solid in that aspect of the game. So when Iowa missed its first kick, it felt like maybe, just maybe, the tide was turning in our favor, and it was a little extra satisfying to see our rival miss it. The crowd responded with “Let’s Go State” and “Cyclone! Power!” chants during the ensuing timeout. It was about the only time in the game Iowa made a mistake, if you can even call missing a field goal from that distance a mistake.
The Cyclones responded, driving down to the five-yard-line before needing to settle for a field goal. It was nice to have the lead at 3-0, but there was also a feeling of regret. Scoring in the red zone (inside the opponent’s twenty-yard-line) is one of those “winning in the margins” moments that Iowa State had just missed.
After another defensive stop, Taylor punted it forty-six yards to be fair caught by Iowa State’s Tarique Milton at the ten-yard-line. Another possession with poor starting field position. The Cyclones decided to take a chance, and quarterback Brock Purdy heaved a throw downfield in the direction of receiver Xavier Hutchinson. The pass was late, and Iowa’s Matt Hankins came down with a jump ball interception at the Iowa State forty-nine-yard-line. Avoiding turnovers, and conversely forcing them when the opportunity presents itself, are both examples of a team “winning in the margins.” Iowa again won in the margins on that play, and then put together its first solid drive of the day with a short field. When presented with the opportunity of their own in the red zone, the Hawkeyes scored on a four-yard Tyler Goodson run to make it 7-3 with 8:13 left before halftime.
After another Iowa State punt, the Hawkeyes put together what would ultimately be their best drive of the day capped off by a twenty-six-yard touchdown pass with just 1:01 before halftime. The mood in the stadium turned a little bit somber. This was not what we had all hoped for.
It felt like the game was hanging in the balance when Purdy found Darren Wilson Jr. over the middle, who broke free and ran down the sidelines before finally being pushed out of bounds at the Iowa four-yard-line, a gain of forty-nine yards. On the next play, with just twelve seconds left in the half, Purdy handed it off to running back Breece Hall who powered his way toward the goal line and stretched out his arm to push the ball across. Iowa State had scored to end the half, and the crowd was back into it. Would it be a game-changing, and maybe even a season-changing, drive?
At halftime, Kaci asked me how I felt. I said “Pretty good, a lot better with that last drive. I think if we can come out and score right away it could turn this game around.” Iowa State took the ball first. I envisioned the Cyclones marching down the field, scoring a touchdown to take the lead and the loudspeakers playing the Juicy Wiggle to a rockin’ crowd. It looked promising as Iowa State got near midfield with a couple first downs before being forced to punt. Dunn’s punt was fair caught by Iowa’s returner at the ten-yard-line. Finally Iowa State flipped the field position. The Cyclones forced a three-and-out and Iowa was forced to punt from the six-yard-line.
This could be our moment, I thought. “I think we’re going to get the ball back, score, and play Juicy Wiggle,” I told Chris. Even with a fifty-yard-punt, Iowa State would still get the ball in Iowa territory. If we were going to beat Iowa at its own game, this was the moment.
Milton was hovering around midfield to attempt to field the punt, but the play all around was awkward. For some reason, he could not position himself to make the catch, and the ball bounced right by him, and right down the field to be downed at the Iowa State twenty-five — a sixty-nine-yard punt when all was said and done. Somehow, the Cyclones went from needing to go half the field to needing to go three-quarters of the field. Another loss in the margins.
On second down, Purdy was sacked and the Cyclones were ultimately forced to punt from their own thirteen. Dunn hit it fifty-four yards, but Jones broke a tackle and returned it twenty-four yards to the Iowa State forty-three. The Hawkeyes had again won in the margins and flipped field position. I’ve, somehow, gone this far without mentioning how great the Iowa State defense was, and indeed they again forced a three-and-out and an Iowa punt, which was again downed… at the six-yard-line. “My gosh. Unbelievable,” I muttered. I never anticipated writing in this much detail about punting and field position.
That’s when the game went from frustrating to nearly unbearable. Hall, Iowa State’s superstar running back, had the ball knocked away by the Iowa defender, which was scooped up by Iowa’s Jack Campbell for a touchdown. The momentum had fully turned now as Iowa went up 21-10. Iowa State had again lost in the margins with its second turnover of the day. “Let’s Go Haws! Let’s Go Hawks!” rang through the air.
On Iowa State’s next possession, Purdy threw a pass that went right through the hands of Hutchinson, and right into the hands of Iowa defender Seth Benson for another turnover. Iowa took possession at the Iowa State twenty-five. After another three-and-out forced by the ISU defense, Iowa drilled a fifty-one-yard field goal to make it 24-10.
Some of the most memorable games are the unexpected comebacks, and I told myself that maybe this could be one of those as Iowa State began to drive on its next possession, making it into Iowa territory. I couldn’t believe my eyes as Purdy’s pass was again intercepted by Hankins and returned forty-one yards all the way to the Iowa State twenty-two-yard-line. That was four turnovers for the Cyclones. Three given up by senior quarterback Purdy (with a major assist to go-to receive Hutchinson), one given up by Heisman Trophy hopeful Hall. Iowa State had gone from losing in the margins to handing the game to Iowa on a silver platter.
Iowa was again only able to convert the turnover into a field goal, but the damage was all but done. Iowa 27, Iowa State 10 with 12:53 to go. Some Iowa State fans began filing out of the stadium. This was not how any of us pictured this day going. Except Chris, who apologized to me for having verbalized his prediction earlier in the day. The air had been let out of the stadium, except for the Iowa fans cheering as their cheer squad waved the “I”-“O”-“W”-“A” flags.
The game took on a different feel at this point. On the next possession, it wasn’t the senior quarterback Purdy who trotted out to lead the Cyclone offense. It was his backup, Hunter Dekkers. Some in the crowd applauded, I suspect for a combination of wanting to show support for the new quarterback in the game but also out of frustration with Purdy’s game. Right or wrong, it seems football fans often want to see the backup quarterback when things are going poorly. The offense, on cue, immediately went three-and-out.
For most of the fourth quarter, I couldn’t tell if Iowa State was actually still trying to win. Another Campbell saying that we all know well is “trust the process.” When Iowa State is not playing well, and more importantly not doing the little things well, or — say it with me — winning in the margins, Campbell often does not tend to force the issue. It’s almost as if he’s saying “If we don’t do the things we need to do to deserve to win, we just aren’t going to win.” It’s kind of like a parent who declines to bail their teenager out of jail because “they don’t deserve it.” As the fourth quarter wore on, there was little sense of urgency. The play-calling didn’t seem to change. The backup quarterback Dekkers remained in the game. Freshman running back Eli Sanders was getting snaps. I don’t know if Campbell saw the game as a blowout and this was an opportunity to give his backups experience, or if he was sending a message to his star players, or a little bit of both. (The reasoning given by Campbell after the game for Dekkers replacing Purdy was that it seemed like the right move to “settle the game back down.”) As unlikely as a comeback seemed with Purdy and Hall in the game, it seemed overwhelmingly unlikely without them. It sort of felt like Iowa State had conceded the game. “We’re going to work on us now, and if we happen to come back, great.”
I have seen Campbell have enough success to give him the benefit of the doubt, knowing it’s a long season. But it was so depressing. As more and more Cyclone fans left during each timeout on the field, I sat silently seething as my head continued to throb a little more painfully. “Let’s Go Hawks! Let’s Go Hawks!...”
I couldn’t help but think about the emotions going into this game. How much I wanted it. How much the fans wanted it. How much it meant to not only beat our rival, but to beat a top ten team, and do it in what was supposed to be our best season ever. The script in my head said “of course we’ll beat Iowa. That’s what is supposed to happen this year.” I asked a few people around me if this was the most disappointing game they could remember. “Nah, we got blown out by Kansas at home before, and we lost those games that could have gotten us to the Big 12 Championship (back in 2004 and 2005),” one person said. “We’ve had some pretty bad games,” another said. I agreed, and yet when I thought about the expectations of this year, the Iowa fans all around me having a party as they let the air out of our dream season, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been more disappointed in a single game. At some point, the “O-ver-ra-ted!” chant started up, and it was almost too much to take in.
Of course, right after I felt like Iowa State had conceded the game, Dekkers led Iowa State on an eighty-three-yard touchdown drive to make the score 27-17 with 3:27 left. Iowa State came agonizingly close to recovering an onside kick. Iowa finally didn’t make a play in the margins as the ball bounced off a Hawkeye player’s hands… right past Chase Allen and out of bounds. Hawkeye football. Iowa State again forced a three-and-out and got the ball back for one ditch effort. (The Cyclone defense, it should be noted, gave up only 173 yards, an incredible performance.) A few solid plays took the Cyclones within field goal range. If they could make it, they’d have one more chance at an onside kick and a couple plays to force a miracle comeback. In poetic fashion, kicker Andrew Mevis had his own shank, wide left. “Well, hopefully we just got our missed kick out of the way,” I joked sarcastically, fully aware of the schadenfreude I had felt earlier when Iowa’s kicker missed. That was the game. Iowa 27, Iowa State 17.
As we walked out of the stadium, I was dejected but calm, having mentally accepted for quite awhile that Iowa State was going to lose. I looked at my phone and had a text message from my mom. “We love you!!” she wrote. Since their two sons (me and my brother) are on opposite sides of the rivalry, my mom and dad tend to cheer for both Iowa and Iowa State. They want to see us happy. They will never admit who they are cheering for in this game in order to keep the peace, and I suspect they really don’t enjoy the game knowing one of us will be disappointed. She knew I would be pretty down after that loss. Her message was well-timed. I needed to feel some love right then.
After a lot of games, we’ll listen to the postgame show on the radio on the drive home. Sometimes I’ll scroll through Twitter, which I usually can’t access while in the stadium, to catch up on what other Cyclone fans think. As we sat in traffic, my headache feeling much stronger than it did four hours ago, I didn’t do any of that. I made a deal with myself: No scrolling Twitter until at least tomorrow. This was just a good night to not think about the game. I was numb from the letdown of not getting what I so badly wanted, and I didn’t think I could handle seeing the inevitable trash talk from fans. I was stuck in my thoughts. The dreamiest of dream seasons was now over, after two games. Iowa State’s offense had looked like a shell of its former self despite almost all the same players. The vibes would now be different.
I used to let an Iowa State loss ruin my entire weekend. At some point, I realized that was probably unhealthy, so I learned to compartmentalize better and let the losses go. This was not one of those times. I knew this was going to stick with me. It was a similar feeling to the loss at the beginning of the season against Louisiana in 2020. All the hype and hope was deflated quickly. Except this time it was to the Hawkeyes, which was even worse. This had now become a memorable day in Hawkeye history, from having Kutcher pick the Hawkeyes on College GameDay to dominating their rivals to earning a spot near the top of the college football rankings. Can’t you let us have it just this once??
I walked my dog that evening before calling it a night, and I thought about the new reality of my journey as my headache subsided. The Vegas game, which so many people had been so excited for, wouldn’t feel quite the same. It just couldn’t. The madness of college football is that the entire offseason of excitement can be doused with cold water very early.
I was also reminded that the best season in school history happened after that Louisiana loss. It didn’t feel like Iowa State was going to be very good after the Louisiana game, and at least on offense, the 2021 Iowa game gave me many of the same feelings. In 2020 things turned around quickly. In 2021 there were still ten opportunities remaining. The story of this season was still very much in progress, and I always knew there would be adversity.
The sun still came up on Sunday morning (in a manner of speaking; it was a cloudy day, which coincidentally would have been a perfect day for tailgating without the threat of heat exhaustion). I was reminded that living the worst days as a fan makes the best days even better. It’s still Cyclones vs. The World. Let’s hope for some better days.
