Worst ISU Football Team You've Watched
- Thread starter SolarGarlic
- Start date
October 6, 1979, Losing 24-7 to The University of the Pacific was my introduction into never feeling comfortable about a pushover opponent.
Forty one years and all those nut kicks later, I hope you younger fans can understand the feeling of impending doom we old-timers feel when it looks like there MIGHT be a W in the bag -only to have Lucy pull the football away at the last minute.
That said, optimism and hope for the future are a never ending commodity for the long-suffering Cyclone fan. It only makes the wins that much sweeter.
Forty one years and all those nut kicks later, I hope you younger fans can understand the feeling of impending doom we old-timers feel when it looks like there MIGHT be a W in the bag -only to have Lucy pull the football away at the last minute.
That said, optimism and hope for the future are a never ending commodity for the long-suffering Cyclone fan. It only makes the wins that much sweeter.
The worst thing about that NDSU game is that it actually started out great for the Cyclones. Up 14-0 early and then the wheels came off....34 unanswered points. Good grief.
Oh we know.. Just last year we had the Baylor one, the Iowa one, and the OU one. I'll be honest too.. every single one of those games felt like a win.. Also, thank GOD Purdy fell on that fumble in the UNI game. That would've been such a classic ISU move.
Personally, it's McCarney's last year, 2006. Won first two games against Toledo and UNLV, then went on a run of 1-8 with that one win being against UNI in Week 5. Capped off with the fun win against Mizzou to end the era, but damn, that was a tough year to sit through.
My favorite Walters and Heft moment is after ISU scored with like a minute left and Baylor returned the kickoff. Hilarious
I'll break down the key moments in each loss as I remember them. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Nebraska: We score first in OT. They get the ball, and a game winning INT hits Nick Leaders right in the bread basket and he can't hang on. Hard to pin much blame on a guy like him (one of my favorite Cyclones of all time), but that ends the game right there.
Baylor: 2 fumbles at the goal line. One of which occurred after the ball had pretty clearly broken the plane. It was a terrible call that changed the game That would have put us up 10. Instead Baylor got to retain possession and scored a TD, giving them a lead. Late in the game, we were down by like 3 and they had the ball. We had them at 3rd and 16, and their slow-ass QB scrambled for 17 yards. They score a TD to ice it away.
Mizzou: We spot them a 2 TD lead with a couple fumbles inside our own 20. Come roaring back. Brad Smith gets knocked out, and Chase Daniels comes in. We're up by a TD with less than 2:00 minutes, and they start driving. Steve Paris intercepts a pass that the Mizzou receiver briefly has possession of, and takes it to the house for a 14 point lead. Refs rule that the receiver was down by contact. Mizzou scores to take it to OT. Culbertson misses a chip shot in first OT, Mizzou converts field goal.
Kansas: We have a late lead and get typically conservative for the Mac era. Late in the game, Kansas desperately needs points, and they try a QB sneak at the goal line on 4th down. We obviously stop it short of the goal line, but somehow, they are awarded a touchdown. It's one of the worst calls that's ever gone against ISU. OT. Culbertson misses another chip shot and that ends it.
3 of the 4 regular season losses featured bad calls that either took points away from Iowa State or gave points to the opponent. 2 of them featured missed chip shot field goals that would have extended the game.
I think it's difficult for the young folks these days to understand just how terrible ISU's facilities were compared to the rest of ISU's league and Iowa in the mid-90's. The 0-10-1 season didn't just happen out of the blue.
ISU was still very poor in Mac's first few years. Wasn't until 1998 that you started to see some signs of life in the program. Even in 2000 (9-3 bowl winning team) we only had in the low 30,000's in the stands for our final game of regular season.
What we have now is nothing like those days.
ISU was still very poor in Mac's first few years. Wasn't until 1998 that you started to see some signs of life in the program. Even in 2000 (9-3 bowl winning team) we only had in the low 30,000's in the stands for our final game of regular season.
What we have now is nothing like those days.
That season had some awesome moments (Iowa game, Texas A&M game, Colorado tornado game) and then had these turds. Incredibly frustrating that year.
The first thought that came to mind for me was 2003. I remember being at the Kansas State game that year and it was perhaps the lease competitive I've ever seen an Iowa State team.
The other one that sticks out in my mind was the 2013 Baylor. I thought we might lose by 150 points at one point during the game.
I shouldn’t of still had an emotional reaction to reading that, but I did. This is exactly why younger clone fans need to appreciate what we have now. It could be worse..... so so much worse.
For those making the case for some of CPR's teams, I think it was just the general feeling of hopelessness around the program that made those teams seem so bad. There were already fans in 2013 who were done with Rhoads, and then nearly everyone bailed on him after 2104, and yet he still got another full season after that. It's one thing to be bad. It's another to be bad and know that things will only get worse until you blow it up and start over.
I had just moved to Lincoln and I went to that game. It was the fourth quarter, Nebraska was up by just shy of a million points, the kNU third and fourth strings were playing and there were still Fusker fans around me screaming at the kNU players to rip somebody's head off.
The difference in talent between the two teams was as lopsided as any game I've ever seen. Without seeing the score you could tell Baylor was beating the **** out of them. Bigger, faster, and more athletic at just about every position.
