Iowa State vs. Clemson Preview: It Matters Because We Say it Matters
I almost didn’t do it.
I almost decided not to go to the bowl game.
Bowl games bring unusual emotions in today’s day and age. They can mean nothing or they can mean everything. They can matter or they can not matter. It all depends on your perspective.
The first time during my lifetime that Iowa State made a bowl game felt like a special occasion. I had only been a true fan for a few years when the Cyclones broke their bowl drought during the 2000 season. For Cyclone fans, I sensed that it was the light at the end of a long tunnel. For as much as winning a Big 12 Championship currently feels like it would be the defining achievement for this program, back then getting to a bowl game was seen as that type of achievement.
The Cyclones hadn’t been to a bowl game since 1978, and had never won a bowl.
The 2000 season in many ways felt like a culmination of coach Dan McCarney’s slow rebuild of the program from a laughingstock to a competitive team. I remember the feeling before the season. Maybe this is the year we finally get back to a bowl game! Iowa State was led by the likes of Sage Rosenfels, J.J. Moses, Reggie Hayward, Ennis Haywood and more, names that Cyclone fans will long remember. They lived up to the hype. Iowa State began the season 4-0 before losing a hard-fought game against Nebraska, at the time the #2 team in the country and still considered a national powerhouse. Iowa State was 5-2 when Missouri came to Ames on a Saturday night. I watched from the stands; people hugged and high-fived as Iowa State put together a dominating 39-20 win to get its sixth win and become bowl eligible. The Cyclones finished an 8-3 regular season with wins at Colorado and at home against Kansas to earn an invite to the Insight.com bowl against a 7-5 Pittsburgh team.
From every account I have ever heard, somewhere around 25,000 – 35,000 Cyclone fans made the trip to Phoenix and drank the city dry. I watched on television, and could tell the crowd was heavily in favor of Iowa State. The Cyclones jumped out to a 27-7 lead at halftime before Pitt cut the lead to 27-20. In what is still one of my favorite plays of my fandom, Jamaine Billups returned a punt 72-yards to put Iowa State up 34-20, and the Cyclones held on for a 37-29 win. There may be an alternate universe in which Pittsburgh completes a 20-point comeback to shock the Cyclones; in a sign of how I expect heartbreak as an Iowa State fan, sometimes I think about how sadly poetic it would have been to lose that bowl game. But Iowa State won, and we got to celebrate. I’m sure the party went on long into the night in Phoenix.
Most people would probably not consider an Insight.com Bowl win against a 7-5 team to be a major accomplishment, but for Iowa State fans that year, it meant everything. It mattered to us.
There are a couple ways you can look at a bowl game. One way is that it’s an exhibition that happens a month after the season. It doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just one more game.
The opposite way to look at it is that it’s a big game, the pinnacle of a hard-fought season; a reward for players and fans. It’s the equivalent of making the playoffs in the NFL or the postseason tournament in college basketball.
The reality is likely somewhere in-between, and unique to each school and each season and each fanbase. In my opinion, bowl games as a whole likely meant more to college football in 2000 than they do in 2021. And the further back you go, the more they probably meant. There was no College Football Playoff or National Championship Game, and there were at one time significantly fewer bowls, making each one feel more important. Now, the College Football Playoff has made the bowl games feel much more like exhibitions.
Adding to that, it has become more and more of a trend for players that are preparing for the NFL draft to sit out the game, a perfectly justifiable (and smart) move given the potential for injury and millions of dollars on the line. It has become much more common for players to decide to transfer to different schools between the final regular season game and the bowl, meaning they will not play for the team in the bowl game. Bowl games happen in many cases after the postseason coaching carousel has been in full swing, meaning teams in many cases are playing with new head coaches or coordinators, or both. Simply put, the makeup of many teams is fundamentally different between the final game of the regular schedule and a bowl game.
The ultimate meaningfulness of the game comes down to a combination of factors, including the destination, the matchup, the makeup of the team, and even the general mood of the fanbase regarding the season.
For me and many fans, the period between the TCU game and the Cheez-It Bowl against Clemson was a rollercoaster.
When I wrote about the TCU game recap, there were rumors upon rumors that coach Matt Campbell was on his way to a new team. First there were heavy rumors around the USC job. Then it was the Notre Dame job. Both were filled by people not named Matt Campbell. There were a number of other openings, and rumors linking Campbell to those openings, but none of them came to fruition.
Meanwhile, photos were emerging from Campbell on the recruiting trail, helping ease fans’ fear. It seemed to be business as usual for Campbell and the program. I mentally moved on to focus on the Cyclones bowl matchup announcement.
Part of the fun of bowl games is that your team gets to play a matchup that fans don’t get to see very often, and there is a certain anticipation in finding out where the team will play and who it will play against. Conventional wisdom said Iowa State had three likely outcomes: The Cheez-It Bowl in Orlando against an Atlantic Coast Conference team, the Autozone Liberty Bowl in Memphis against a Southeastern Conference (SEC) team, or the Texas Bowl in Houston vs. an SEC team. As with most aspects of the season, the options weren’t exactly what we were hoping for before the first game kicked off. The Houston Bowl, which I had attended as a member of the Cyclone Marching Band in 2005, was scheduled to take place after the new year and after the majority of people would return to work after the holiday season, making it the least desirable option to me. The Liberty Bowl, which I had attended in 2012 and 2017, was scheduled between the week of Christmas and New Year's, and Iowa State fans had a track record of traveling well to Memphis. This was a little higher on my list. The Cheez-It Bowl scheduled for Dec. 29 had hosted Iowa State in 2019 in a historic matchup against Notre Dame, a game that I and most other Cyclone fans would like to forget. There was buzz that Iowa State could match up with Clemson in that game, which excited me more than any other option.
By Dec. 5, the day bowl games were announced, I was excited to finally find out. It wasn’t quite the anticipation of opening presents on Christmas morning, but I was curious all day and checking in on Twitter to read the latest speculation. Early in the afternoon, it became official: Iowa State would play Clemson on Dec. 29 in the Cheez-It Bowl in Orlando. It was the best-case scenario I could have imagined after a 7-5 season.
Clemson finished the regular season with a 9-3 record, but more importantly brought a pedigree that few other programs could have provided in a bowl game matchup. The Tigers had made it to the College Football Playoff each of the previous five seasons, and had won two national championships in that time period. 2021 was a down season record-wise, but Clemson still brought a brand name. My immediate reaction was that the game would provide one more opportunity to get a big, memorable win for the current group of seniors and give the program momentum heading toward the 2022 season. I could sense a higher level of excitement among Cyclone fans than some other potential matchups could have produced.
The rest of the break between games was eventful enough that for a few weeks it was easy to forget the game was even happening. A number of players, including some surprising names, announced they would transfer to other schools, which is a reality of modern-day college football. Some fans speculated there was turmoil in the program, or uncertainty caused by rumors of Campbell taking a new job. Others, including me, felt it was likely a factor of the current climate of college athletics: Transferring isn’t personal; there could be any number of reasons a player wants to try a different place, and most of them aren’t a negative reflection on the school the player is leaving.
A few days later, a number of players eligible to move on to professional world or graduate and move on from Iowa State announced they would return for 2022, including starting cornerback Anthony Johnson, sack king Will McDonald and star wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson. Right around this time, the Cyclones signed the best recruiting class in school history, placing it near the top of the conference in overall recruiting rankings. I felt confident the future was still plenty bright.
Finally, running back Breece Hall announced he was going to forego his senior season to play in the National Football League. Running backs are known for having a short shelf life, so to speak, in professional football due to the physical nature of the position. As a likely early pick in the NFL Draft, Hall’s decision made total sense from my perspective. Make money while the opportunity is there. Unfortunately but understandably, it means Hall will not play in the Cheez-It Bowl, meaning we have seen him play for Iowa State for the final time.
Clemson has had its own disruptions. Defensive Coordinator Brent Venables took the head coaching job at Oklahoma. Offensive Coordinator Tony Elliott left to take the head coaching job at Virginia. The game won’t look or feel the same as it would have if the teams had played in the College Football Playoff, which seemed like a possibility at the beginning of the season.
For me personally, I was facing my own internal struggle. When the game was announced, I immediately started reaching out to friends. I couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to go. Most people had holiday plans and didn’t want to spend the money, and it was not quite a prestigious enough game to move the needle.
As I started pricing it out for myself, I was taken aback by the cost of plane tickets and hotels, and somewhat apprehensive about my lack of knowledge about the city. As I began to add up all the factors, I decided I was probably just going to miss this game.
The decision ate at me for weeks. I had gone to all 12 games during the season, and decided to begin this journey precisely for the reason that it would force me to go a bowl game in hopes that Iowa State would go back to a New Year’s Six game or better. Am I really doing this right if I don’t go to the bowl game? I tried to justify it to myself. It’s expensive, I don’t have anyone to travel or stay with and I know nothing about the city. Besides, does the game really mean anything? We had made plans to travel to Colorado for the holidays, and I thought maybe my wife and I could just go to an alumni game watch.
Yeah, this will be fine.
It wasn’t fine.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should make the trip. I continued to look at flights, and I continued to look at hotels, finally finding some semi-affordable options. On Dec. 19, just 11 days before the game, I brought it up again with my wife, Paige.
“Honey, I think you should go,” she said.
I booked my airplane tickets and hotel that evening.
The reality is, this game isn’t as special of an occasion as the 2000 Insight.com Bowl. It isn’t as special as the January 2021 Fiesta Bowl would have been if fans had been able to attend the game. But it still matters.
It matters for tangible reasons. The game counts toward the season record. They give a trophy to the winner. Two years ago, Iowa State had a chance to measure itself against a historic powerhouse in Notre Dame, and fell significantly short. Clemson’s program is one that defines excellence in college football. This game is another measuring stick for the program, which reportedly made quite a few changes in response to the end of the 2019 season.
It matters for a whole lot more reasons than that. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Cyclone fans will make the trip to watch in person, and many thousands more will watch on television. We’ll all share a common experience. We’ll all remember it, and talk about it for years to come. Some people may say it doesn’t matter to them, but I guarantee they will be happy if the Cyclones win and upset if the Cyclones lose.
At a certain point, why do fans care about any of it? Why does any of it matter?
It matters because we say it matters. It matters because the players and coaches say it matters.
The 2000 Insight.com Bowl mattered. The four bowl wins and seven losses since that 2000 game have mattered. And this one matters.