In basketball Iowa has dominated ISU in in-state recruiting pretty much every year except 2020. And that hasn't exactly yielded on the court dominance over the decades. While ISU has been more competitive in recruiting in-state in football, Iowa continues to dominate there. Yet the two football teams have had relatively similar success over the past three years.
Winning the Iowa recruiting battles would be nice, but quite frankly it's not all that important if you get talent from elsewhere.
Not sure what "recruiting battles" you are referring t
ther than Wieskamp, ISU has not offered anyone on the Iowa Roster in a long time. ISU never offered JorBo, Kriener, Pemsl, either McCaffery, etc. So I guess ISU can take Foster and call it a day.
Longer term, it you want to look at winning recruiting battles in Iowa, Roy Williams has owned both schools.