Happy Monday Fanatics! What an exciting weekend it was to be an Iowa State football fan.
The best part about Saturday’s upset is the fact that the Cyclones are officially nationally relevant again.
Considering the circumstances, I’d say that Iowa State got some fair national publicity after their 9-7 win over Nebraska last weekend.
Take ESPN for instance. Jesse Smith got a Lou Holtz helmet sticker. That’s right. Dr. Lou talked about Iowa State. That doesn’t happen every day. Tim Griffin just recently ranked Iowa State 5th in his Monday morning power rankings.
Bowl talk is in the air. This, my friends is a beautiful thing.
The Cyclones need just one more W to qualify for a bowl game, which was the ultimate goal for this football team in August.
There are a handful of bowl projections floating around the Internet this morning. The highest I’ve seen anybody place Iowa State is in the Independence Bowl in beautiful Shreveport. According tocollegefootballnews.com, the Cyclones would be going head-to-head with you know who, Gene Chizik and Auburn from the SEC.
Can you imagine the pub that would surround that game on a local level? Unbelievable.
ESPN.com has had Iowa State going to the Texas Bowl against Navy for a few weeks now. In order for that to happen, I’d say the Clones would have to win just one of their remaining four contests. I’m not sure if anyone around the program would be happy, should that be the case.
While I think that most Cyclone fans will be happy just to play in the postseason, I really feel like Saturday’s win allows everybody to start thinking bigger thoughts, as I wrote on Saturday night.
Quit Ripping the North, We Get it Already
It’s happening again. A guy can’t get through a national college football radio show without hearing about how terrible the Big 12 North is. Last night, I linked a column written by Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star where he literally beats the division to pieces. Whitlock claimed that it would be an embarrassment for Iowa State to represent the division in the league championship game.
Here’s my take on that. Big deal…Iowa State, or no other team in the North for that matter, can control anything but what they do on Saturdays. This whole trend to rip the North just gets nauseating to me over time.
Is the North as good as the South? Of course it’s not. But why constantly talk/write about it?
The reason that the North is like this is partly because the league is dominated by Texas money anyway.
I don’t want to go off on this topic because I’d be doing exactly what I am accusing others of. But if Iowa State wins the North, it wouldn’t be an embarrassment for anybody. It would mean that they won more games and earned the right to play in the title game. If the other teams aren’t any good, that’s not ISU’s fault.
Teams can only control what they do on Saturdays. Case and point, the Nebraska game. Nebraska turned the football over eight times. Iowa State…zero. Again, the Cyclones controlled what they could control…and they won.
Period.
I’ll be at Coach Rhoads’ press conference later on this morning. Look forward to notes, quotes and all sorts of great stuff here at CycloneFanatic.com later on today.
