I’m happy with 8 wins and see the season as a good one with the injury issues. I am disappointed with the overall outcome because a healthy is a playoff contender for sure.
I'm here as well, for the most part.
I have been vocal that I personally don't see the significance/relevance of comparing Iowa State 2025 to past historical teams and eras. I remember those days in the early 90's when there were like 412 people in the stands and the turf looked harder and more painful than the parking lot. It's just such a different world though now - nearly nothing about "us" - or college football in general - is remotely the same as it was 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, etc. The conference is light years different. And this matters, a lot. I truly believe Campbell and the staff expect to contend for a conference title
every year. And I do not believe any other previous staff has
ever remotely operated this way. The path to being consistently a very good team (where 8 wins can be reasonably considered somewhat disappointing) starts with the fact that the conference is not only much easier - but it is so much bigger. It's flat out common to get a favorable schedule where you simply don't even play all the other good teams on your own league.
Respectfully, it drives me nuts to see fans take so much open pride with "more with less" because that's often how they donate...e.g.,
less. This is "lovable loser" talk. I guarantee if a fan went up to Matt Campbell and told him how proud they are for getting to 8 wins doing 'more with less' he would smile politely and secretly be really pissed off. Like, sincerely frustrated. He doesn't want to do more with less. He wants more. He deserves more. He wants Iowa State to compete. He wants bigger/faster/better players and that costs money. He wants/needs our big donors to be
bigger donors. He wants/needs the fans at the $1,000 level to be at the $5,000 level and the fans at the $10,000 level to get to $50,000. Sound nutty? Insane? Yep! Welcome to 2025, where the world of college athletics is nothing like it was in 1994 or 2003 or 2013 when we sucked at football. And I do not for a second believe Iowa State doesn't have the donor/alumni base to be MUCH bigger players in the NIL game, including donors that are able to give big sums of money. It will require some major mindset changes though, and a lot of letting go of the past. And transparently, a fundraising arm that has the sales pitch mentality that goes big, then bigger, then bigger.
And so we're clear - this isn't a comfortable spot for much of Cyclone Nation. I grew up in West Central Iowa - I KNOW what it is like to have to put up with the horrible, douchy, disgusting, unearned arrogance of suckeye and husker fans. They are the worst. The absolute worst. Not just on gameday. These fans suck in day to day interactions. They were pricks back in the day. They still are. I watched parts of their game Friday and I wanted somehow both teams to lose -100 to -100 and there would be a lead off story on SportsCenter as it was the first time in sports history that 2 teams have ever scored negative points somehow and both lost, embarrassingly. Those fanbases deserve that. They don't deserve nice things.
To summarize my weird rant here, I am glad we won 8 games but believe firmly we SHOULD have won 10. IMHO, we didn't lose 4 in a row
because of injuries. We lost 4 in a row because of lack of discipline through these games. And this is the exact same thing the head coach said during his pressers and interviews during this timeframe. I agree with him. We should have been 2-2 at worse during that stretch, this yeaer, with this group, with these injuries. The good news is - we are a very good and stable program right now. We don't need to start every podcast or lead every broadcast with "...I'm old enough to remember when Iowa State wasn't very good.." - because it doesn't matter. Expect to win and continue expecting to win. And don't act like an arrogant dbag suckeye or husker fan along with way.
