How Great is 8?

Hahaha

You would take the program at CU over what CMC has built.

While I wasn't really expecting you to bring something objective and rational to the debate, I didn't think you would go pure idiot out of the gate.

You go ahead and wish for JP to hire the next 'Deion'. Have a good time.

You are either willfully misconstruing what I said or lack reading comprehension, but — fortunately — neither is my problem.
 
If 8 wins is now mediocre, then this program has grown a lot under CMC
You don't understand. CMC is the only standing between ISU and a national title. What we need is a combination of Prime, Kleiman, Satterfield, Satani, Willingham - you know those the other Big XII coaches that have really dominated the CFB landscape.
 
Ehhh....I'm not sure it is weaker than the Big 12 North was.
No but you were still playing one Oklahoma school and 2 TX schools when those programs were almost all respectable or better.
 
8-4 is a solid season. But it is not an amazing season. And I don't care how that stacks up favorably to our history. The Big 12 we play in today is the weakest football conference in my lifetime. 8 wins today is much easier to come by than in the 80s or 90s.

You can go back and look and ISU lost to a lot of bad teams back then and they'd play 3-4 decent to very good teams otherwise.

You can't lose to UNI, marginal Iowa teams, get spanked by lower conference teams, etc. and then blame the conference.

If you're remotely good you'll generally win 7ish games no matter the schedule.
 
That is my point. There isn't another program we would want to be like but you don't like our program. You can't point to a program that is performing better than us. Help us 'settlers for mediocrity' understand what we should aspire for our program to be.

I think you must have some very bold and unique ideas about what a top tier Big XII program should be like and how to get there. I hope you are sharing these with CMC and JP.

I really really really want the response to this to be 'I emailed both and they won't write back'.
 
To those who claim 8-4 is disappointing or mediocre, I went back to see how many of the current Big 12 teams have won at least 8 games a majority of the time over the past 10 full seasons. (I excluded 2020 since many of the teams didn't even play 8 games.) From 2015 through this year, only 4 programs out of the 16 in our conference have won at least 8 games more than 5 seasons out of the ten. I know some of you will only be happy if ISU wins 10 games every year, but that's not a realistic expectation at this point. 8-4 is a good season for ISU whether you like it or not.
 
8-4 is like 7-5 in ten team round robin era.

8-4 is probably equivalent to 8-4 in later years of b12 north.

8-4 is like 9-3 in big ten west era.
 
I'd love to see where we rank in the 12, in terms of NIL $.
I kinda think last(?)
If not, somewhere near the bottom.
Until this $ figure improves, I'll gladly take 8.
 
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To those who claim 8-4 is disappointing or mediocre, I went back to see how many of the current Big 12 teams have won at least 8 games a majority of the time over the past 10 full seasons. (I excluded 2020 since many of the teams didn't even play 8 games.) From 2015 through this year, only 4 programs out of the 16 in our conference have won at least 8 games more than 5 seasons out of the ten. I know some of you will only be happy if ISU wins 10 games every year, but that's not a realistic expectation at this point. 8-4 is a good season for ISU whether you like it or not.
I think @LAClone is saying we are lucky to get 8 wins because of the stupid mistakes our coaching makes and their unwillingness to tap his unending pool of football knowledge.
 
I think 8 wins, potentially 9 should always be considered a good season at ISU but I think it's also ok for people to be a bit disappointed in this team based on last seasons results, preseason expectations and the first half of the season.

I'm encouraged by how the team finished. Winning the bowl game could bring a 4 game winning streak into next season. That would be some nice momentum with the potential to bring back quite a bit of production next year on both sides of the ball. Had we ended on a skid, I might feel different about how this year went but a winning streak to end the season seems to have me less pessimistic.
 
8 of the 16 teams in the Big 12 have 8 wins. Last season, 8 of the 16 Big 12 teams had 8 wins. I wouldn't use the term "mediocre". However, given the current conference makeup, I think "average" would be appropriate.
Iowa State had ZERO 8 win seasons for 15 consecutive years before Campbell arrived. Campbell has five in the ten years he’s been at Iowa State.
 
I'm not upset with 8 wins after what I have been through as a Cyclone fan over the years but felt like we left a couple wins on the table that this could have been a 10 win season. Colorado and Arizona State are the 2 games that come to mind. Colorado is not a good team and how we lost a game where Sama ran for 177 yards and 2 TD is mind boggling. ASU was a wounded duck coming into Ames and their backup QB somehow has a career game on us.

We may never know exactly what injury Rocco was playing through after that hit against Cincy and losing Cooper and Williams in the secondary were big blows to the defense. Injuries happen, we were playing 3rd and 4th string LB last year and had the best season in program history despite that. Not sure what happened when the 4 game losing skid happened as we looked like a top 15 team that could make it back to the Big 12 championship game to a team that I was worried about losing out when we were down against TCU. We lost talent at WR but were pretty healthy at LB and TE this season which limited us somewhat last year.

The overall theme to this season to me is we did a good job improving in some areas we struggled at last year but regressed in some areas we exceled at last year. We have to win in the margins and we did not do that in at least 2 or 3 games this year.