Matt Campbell stands with his team during the postgame tradition of linking arms as the Iowa State Marching Band plays “The Bells of Iowa State” following a 41–27 loss to BYU on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, Iowa. BYU players celebrate in the background. Photo Credit: Jacqueline Cordova/Cyclone Fanatic
OKOBOJI, Iowa — The gut-punch reality right now is that Iowa State is a football team just trying to win a game. Any ol’ game. Even if it’s hapless Oklahoma State in the regular season’s final game. That’ll work, because this just in: Iowa State football isn’t bowl-eligible yet.
Second Big 12 championship game in a row? Forget it, unless everyone ahead of them forfeits all their wins.
A second consecutive 11-win season? Let’s just shoot for six, and then however many might follow, because that’s what this once-promising season has become.
Saturday’s 41-27 loss against No. 11 BYU at Jack Trice Stadium showed for the third time in a row that Iowa State isn’t as invincible as many people probably thought (or hoped).
Lofty expectations won’t be achieved unless Matt Campbell and his staff somehow, someway can figure out how to pull off the biggest one-season comeback in Iowa State football history.
Five wins in a row, a few very significant injuries, a very rare three-game losing streak — and now, more questions than answers.
“The Big 12 championship is out,” quarterback Rocco Becht conceded to reporters after the game, after he threw three interceptions, including a pick-6. “Pretty much out of our reach right now.”
Saturday was a 60-minute, one-of-a-kind moment in Iowa State football that, quite honestly, never should have happened.
Up by two touchdowns against the unbeaten team from Provo. Momentum through the clouds on homecoming at Jack Trice Stadium. Fans so loud on the Sukup end of the field that it forced the visitors into consecutive penalties.
Cyclones fans hadn’t seen a home game first half go so well against an opponent like the Cougars in at least a couple of seasons.
Chalk it up. Campbell’s team is right back in the Big 12 title hunt, fans told themselves after a two-game losing streak — and you know the rest.
Iowa State went from playing some of its best ball of the season to clearly playing its worst. Just like that, the season went from what could have been one of the program’s best under Campbell to one of the most head-shaking. But there’s more.
The good news for Iowa State fans is that games as bad as Saturday’s became are as few and far between as three-game losing streaks under Campbell. The bad news is that it happened.
Now, the question is this, after Saturday’s hair-pulling and bewildering defeat: Who on the Iowa State football roster is in charge of turning around a season that’s (at least temporarily) hit the skids after starting out with so much 5-0 hope?
The easy answer is Becht or defensive lineman Dom Orange. They’re the team leaders. They know how to succeed after adversity — except just not as bad as what they’re now facing.
The program’s last three-game Big 12 losing streak was in 2022. It was the last time Iowa State didn’t make a bowl game. That hasn’t happened many times — just twice in Campbell’s nine previous seasons.
“We’re brothers,” now-healthy running back Carson Hansen said on the postgame radio show. “Rocco does a great job. He’s got a positive mindset.”
After being on the threshold of becoming a top 10 team, you’re left wondering just where and when the next victory will come.
Forget still not being bowl-eligible; the 5-3 Cyclones travel to hapless Oklahoma State in the final game of the season.
Before that, there’s a home Big 12 title game rematch against defending Big 12 Conference champion Arizona State, a roadie against always-tough TCU, a home game against Kansas, and then the regular season’s finale against the Cowboys.
Yes, there’s still season remaining, and yes, all remaining games realistically are winnable. But no, that won’t happen with more of what everyone saw for most of Saturday’s second half.
Let’s not forget that BYU football is very good — something the college football world finally is starting to realize. There’s a reason this team has outscored opponents 135-61 after halftime this season.
Still, Campbell teams don’t blow two-touchdown leads. They don’t give up a mind-boggling finishing 31-3 run of points to an opponent, and they don’t make repeated mistakes. Somehow, someway, they find ways to recover — of turning adversity into positive.
Saturday, though, the bad stuff was too much to overcome. Saturday, the Cyclones started fast yet failed to finish.
“I thought the intensity and the energy — the game plan and the execution to the last 2 minutes of the first half was outstanding,” Campbell said on the radio.
Becht and Brett Eskildsen hooked up on a 75-yard touchdown on the game’s first play. Abu Sama and Hansen were running hard. Kyle Konrardy was back doing what he does best, and the defense was holding its own, as the score became Cyclones 24, Cougars 10, with a minute left in Iowa State’s best first half, possibly ever, under Campbell.
Then the sky fell.
“The world around us will want to bitch and whine and make excuses,” Campbell said on the postgame radio show. “But we won’t. The only way to get out of it is to work. When we come out the other side, you better look out.”
(Columnist Randy Peterson, a past Iowa Sportswriter of the Year winner, can be reached at [email protected] or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)
