Hot take season!!
Why not?
Who doesn't?
Yep. Almost everyone plays at least a few terrible teams that they slap around. You have to fill out a home schedule.
31 maximum games. (28+MTE)
10 away games from the big 12. 3 neutral games. At iowa.
This leaves you 17 home games, which is about what Iowa State wants (and taking a home and home deal reduces that in the future). 10 of those are big 12 games. One is Marquette.
So you're down to 6 games ISU really has in its control. Now look at where they fit in the schedule:
Half of those are very early in the season. Most P5 teams want to be warming up vs bad competition those first few games. Getting another P5 team to come in there is going to be difficult as they don't want to be playing a tough game any more than we do.
One of them is in between a tough 4-game stretch (Maui\Marquette) and Iowa. It makes sense scheduling-wise to catch a breather.
The last 2 bookend finals week. Never a time you really want to be scheduling anything tough and a great way to see a random upset. Plus there's little value in forking out money to get fans a better game a couple days before christmas when people have a lot of family stuff going on.