It only took three hours and thirty-eight minutes to make it official: 2016 is a rebuilding season for Iowa State football.
Losing to an FCS, I-AA or otherwise non-major conference opponent has almost always meant it’s a non-bowl season for the Cyclones. The only exceptions to that: 1972 and 2002, when the bowl bid was already secured before a late-season loss occurred (San Diego State in ’72; UConn in ’02).
In ISU’s ten other bowl seasons, it went 25-0 in such games with all but one of them (San Diego State in 1971) coming in September.
The record book shows us that an I-State team that lost to a I-AA or FCS opponent specifically has never even sniffed coming close to a bowl game. In the post-1970 era of Iowa State going to bowl games, the Cyclones have lost to a non-IA/FBS opponent five times and the combined final records of those Iowa State teams was 12-45-1. The best of those non-achieving teams went 4-7; the worst went 0-10-1.
And four times since 2002, a win over a I-AA or FCS team has literally been why I-State made a bowl game. All three of Paul Rhoads’ bowl seasons were made mathematically possible by such a win, including the 2009 season-opening victory over North Dakota State that made Rhoads the only first-year ISU coach ever to go to a bowl. And, oh by the way, he won it.
Perhaps most troubling is that losses to non-IA/FBS opponents don’t even move the needle that much anymore. Cyclone Country has become alarmingly numb to what it means to watch Northern Iowa (three times in six years) and North Dakota State (2014) waltz into Jack Trice Stadium and smack Iowa State. When the Panthers beat I-State in 1992, it was UNI’s first win over a Cyclone team in 92 years and it was the first ISU loss to a non-IA/FBS conference since 1943 (Ottumwa Pre-Flight).
In a word, it was unthinkable at that time, and the Iowa State fan base reacted with appropriate alarm. And that was 14 years after the last Cyclone bowl game. It wasn’t like Cyclone Nation had become accustomed to some level of great success and it was still flabbergasted that its team could lose to UNI. And when it happened again in 1994, there was absolutely zero doubt in anyone’s mind then that the Iowa State program had reached its lowest point in many decades.
Fast-forward to now and Northern Iowa has beaten Iowa State three times in the past decade – 2007, 2013 and 2016. That’s half of the last six meetings and that’s as many times as UNI had beaten ISU in 100+ years before that (1900, ‘92 and ’94). Losing to Northern Iowa in the 1990s was a much bigger deal than losing to UNI in the 2000s and 2010s. And that’s a tough one to figure out, because the conventional wisdom is that things would never and will never get any worse than the 90s.
The way fans have become accustomed to losing to FCS opponents tells a different story. Iowa State fans were collectively a lot more shocked about losing to UNI in 1992 than now in 2016. Many of the fans are the same people. What struck you as inconceivable 24 years ago is now just how things are half the time. That’s an incredibly profound lowering of the bar, and from 1990s standards no less. New concrete, hype videos, poofs of smoke and pillars of flame have disoriented the Cyclone fan base to the point where it accepts a loss to UNI far more readily now than it did when the stadium was Spartan, gremlins danced on a tiny scoreboard screen and the only smoke and fire was in tailgate Hibachis.
Hey, it’s still perfectly okay to believe that Iowa State will go 6-5 over its remaining eleven games to allow Matt Campbell to join Rhoads in the accomplishment of being a rookie ISU bowl coach. It’s not logical, but it’s okay, because being a fan doesn’t require logic. But the cold, hard reality is that after watching the Cyclones lose to UNI, there might not be a game left where ISU should be expected to win - let alone six.
The handicapping needle surely will move as the season progresses, but right here, right now, that’s where it sits. Even if the ’16 Cyclones turn out to be better than what we saw last night and they win some games – which they will - it’s still all but impossible to count to six without counting UNI.
No, it’s much more likely that this season is about doing the dirty foundation work on which some modest level of future success can be built. It’s about doing things that might not seem to be accomplishing anything now, but might in the future. It’s about focusing on the small picture and ignoring the big picture, compartmentalizing each game as one opportunity to experiencing the joy of posting a W with no regards to any greater context. Every game is just one game, one chance to play, one chance to win.
24 hours ago, I felt Campbell had every bit as good a chance of going bowl in his first season as Rhoads did seven years ago. Actually, I felt he had a better chance. But Saturday night was entirely revealing and now, it’s just not the case. So take this season for what history shows it is: a typical rebuilding effort for a first-year Cyclone coach. One that appears to have all the tools to break through on the timeline of a Johnny Majors or an Earle Bruce – in year four – or maybe sooner.
Campbell isn’t accountable for any of Iowa State’s historical football woes, recent or ancient. The timing and the landscape and the tides of competition are favorable for him to do what a Majors or a Bruce or a McCarney or a Rhoads have done before him – go bowling. He’ll get a minimum of four seasons and perhaps five to do good things at Iowa State. His chin is still strong despite the loss last night and there’s no question he’s a very good football coach with a quality batch of assistants and support crew. Count me in with the still bullish.
Yeah, the honeymoon is over, and that point in time is never any fun for anyone. But it’s still more likely to me that Campbell will conquer the challenge of coaching at Iowa State before it conquers him.
