Iowa State vs. Iowa Preview: The Rivalry That Completes Me

My brother is seven years older than me, and a Hawkeye fan. The fact that he is my big brother mirrors the sentiment prevalent among many fans that Iowa State is the “little brother” to the Hawkeyes. Growing up and throughout our adult lives, this dynamic has played out similarly. Quite frankly, I’ve always wanted to be like my brother, and in so many ways Iowa State has always wanted to be like Iowa. Now, in so many ways we are.

Recently, with the news about conference realignment, there has been speculation that the yearly CyHawk rivalry could end. There seem to be some fans on both sides that would be OK with that. It’s almost like we go out of our way to act like we don’t care about each other.

Not me.

This rivalry reminds me of a scene in the movie “The Dark Night,” part of the Batman series. Batman, played by Christian Bale, interrogates the Joker, played brilliantly by the late Heath Ledger. In the scene, Batman asks the Joker “Then why do you want to kill me?” The Joker laughs. “I don’t want to kill you. What would I do without you?... You, you complete me.”

I don’t want to kill off the CyHawk series. I need that rival. It completes my fandom.

To be totally honest, as I was beginning to put together this chapter way back in July before the season started (don’t feel too special, Hawkeye fans, I started that process for most of the games on the schedule), I was trying to downplay it in my mind. I was trying to convince myself I didn’t need it anymore.

After all, if this was once Iowa State’s “super bowl,” it is not anymore. Iowa State has now won the Fiesta Bowl. The Cyclones were one drive away from winning the conference championship. They have legitimate playoff hopes. Winning the CyHawk game, I told myself, wasn’t nearly as important.

When I was in the marching band, my parents would come to almost every game. In the 2007 season, an 0-2 Iowa State team shocked the Hawkeyes for one of what ultimately turned out to be three wins on the season (and five wins for head coach Gene Chizik’s entire Iowa State career). Bret Culbertson (who I also shared a journalism class with during this same semester) hit five field goals, including the game winner with just seconds left, to stun the Hawkeyes. It was one of the most unexpected games I have ever sat through. I’m sure most Iowa fans could say the same. My mom likes to tell the story of a game later that season, a 56-3 Iowa State loss against Texas. As my parents were walking out of the stadium that day, some Cyclone fan remarked “Well at least we beat Iowa.”

For many years, beating Iowa could salvage an otherwise forgettable season. Now that this fact is no longer true, I’ve been trying to figure out how much I do care or how much I should care. The Cyclones have bigger fish to fry this year than just beating Iowa.

Now that it’s game week, I realize that I was wrong back in July. I need this now as much as ever.

So many of my most vivid memories of Iowa State football revolve around the Iowa game. The day I truly became an Iowa State fan in 1997 was the same day I fully realized how embarrassing it was (at the time) to be an Iowa State fan instead of a Hawkeye.

The day that my fandom paid off came just a year later in 1998. The Hawkeyes were heavily favored to win their 16th game in a row in the series. Dan McCarney was in his fourth year as head coach and was coming off a 1-10 season. That afternoon, he earned a special place in Iowa State lore as his star running back Darren Davis ran for 244 yards in a blowout win to stun the Hawkeyes. I listened to the game on the radio as the late Pete Taylor brought it to life. It was a seismic shift in the state. I could feel it even as a kid. Suddenly, Cyclone fans believed they could beat Iowa. Suddenly, there was optimism. There was some pride in being a Cyclone fan. The 1998 season was ultimately viewed as a success despite the Cyclone winning only three games. They beat Iowa. 

My first true, in-person experience with the Iowa vs. Iowa State rivalry was the 1999 game in Jack Trice Stadium. I attended with some family friends. It was a largely forgettable game between two poor teams. One of the only things I remember is an interaction after the Hawkeyes scored their only touchdown of the game.

At that point in my life, I was a pretty big fan of both teams. I was wearing an ISU shirt that day, and cheering for the Cyclones, but I also regularly watched Hawkeye games and genuinely cheered for them. So I had no real ill-will toward Iowa. I quickly learned I was in the minority of that opinion.

After the Hawkeyes kicked the extra point, the Iowa cheerleaders prepared to run onto the field carrying their “I” – “O” – “W” – “A” flags. Members of the crowd started to figure out this was about to happen. I could feel the mood in the stadium change. I didn’t quite understand what people were getting upset about, but I could feel it, and something in my gut told me I should be upset too.

Then it happened. The cheerleaders ran onto the field with their flags. The Hawkeye marching band played their fight song. And the crowd booed. The man in front of me stood up and yelled something like “NOT ON OUR FIELD!” I, all of eleven years old, found myself fired up. “Yeah, not on our field!” I echoed. 

Why in the world would I have been so upset about a standard action of college football — cheerleaders leading cheers? I felt that night the true dislike that exists between rivals, and the tribalism that forms between them. In no world did the Hawkeyes do anything wrong in that situation. In that moment, we just didn’t like them.

Iowa State won five games in a row in the series between 1998 and 2002, capped off by a game that still defines the series. In 2002, The Cyclones fought back from a 24-7 halftime deficit to win, 36-31. The Cyclones were led by Seneca Wallace, who at the time was busy turning himself into a Heisman Trophy candidate. As it turned out, this game gave Iowa its only loss of the regular season and likely cost the Hawkeyes a chance at playing for the national championship. (If Iowa State goes 11-1 with a loss to only Iowa, I’ll like our chances for the College Football Playoff this year.)

When I attended Iowa State between 2005 and 2009, I got to experience four years of the rivalry in the marching band. When the game was at Jack Trice Stadium, the Iowa band would take the field first for its pregame show. The student section would boo. By the time we would take the field, the crowd was nearly full, and the cheers as we marched onto the field were deafening. The fans appreciated our band more during those games because we were theirs, and we were not the Hawkeyes. The 2005 and 2007 games at Jack Trice Stadium were intense as Iowa State pulled major upsets both years.

In Iowa City during the 2006 season, we watched Iowa State grab a 14-3 lead with just 2:47 left before halftime. It was a warm day, which meant that we took off our band jackets during the game. As Iowa State’s Bret Meyer completed a 6-minute-58-second drive with a nine-yard touchdown run, we were putting our jackets back on to prepare to go down to the field for our halftime show. I had just moments ago put my jacket back on, and was now cheering the touchdown when a beer can, still full of at least some beer, hit me in the back, spilling beer all over my jacket. I didn’t see who threw the beer, and I didn’t even turn around to look. Being in the band, I knew it would be frowned upon to confront an opposing fan. I calmly picked up my sousaphone, put it over my shoulder, and headed toward the field. That was the end of my good vibes on the day. I was covered in beer, and Iowa immediately went down the field to score before halftime to cut the lead to 14-10, before coming out of the half and cruising to a 27-17 victory.

The first game I attended post-graduation was the 2009 Iowa game. Just a couple months earlier, I had taken a job covering high school sports in the middle of Missouri. It was a five+ hour drive from my town to Ames, but I was not about to miss the Iowa game. Being a high school sports reporter, this meant I needed to cover a high school football game on the Friday night before the game, and of course the CyHawk game was scheduled for an 11 a.m. kickoff. After the game, I stopped at home around 10 p.m., dropped off my camera equipment, loaded up my car and took off for Ames. Twenty minutes down the road, I was going through my mental checklist. Toothpaste? Check. Change of clothes? Check. Ticket. Ticket? AH **** I FORGOT MY TICKET.” Around 40 minutes later, I was back at the same spot, ticket in hand. The Black Eyed Peas song “I Gotta Feeling” blared on my radio speakers for the first of what felt like ten times during the trip. It was now after 11.

Once I got within ninety minutes or so from Ames, I started feeling less crazy about my decision. It was still the dead of night, and cars were zipping by me with their Iowa State flags flying out the car window. It’s gameday, baby! “I gotta feeling… that tonight’s gonna be a good night…”

I met up with Chris around 5 a.m., and we drove over to the lots shortly after they opened, neither one of us having slept a minute. The Cyclones also looked like they hadn’t really slept the night before in a 35-3 loss. It was a giant letdown, and indeed not a good night afterwards.

Two years later in 2011, for another 11 a.m. kickoff, Chris and I both lived in Des Moines and convinced his now-wife, Kaci, to go up early with us. Although the lots technically didn’t open until 5 a.m., hundreds or maybe even thousands of students and people who were not too much older than students camped out in their cars, waiting for the lots to open. This included some people in our group, but not the three of us. Instead, we made the “sensible” decision to get there by 4 a.m.

Kaci, as I recall, wasn’t fully on board with this plan. A Florida native, she was not much of a college football fan nor did she have a strong tie to Iowa State outside of Chris, and she had never experienced a CyHawk game. As we pulled into the tailgate lot just south of University Boulevard (or was it still Elwood Drive?), it was around 4 a.m. And it was like pulling into a nightclub in the form of a grass parking lot. 

Stereos were blaring with competing music. Rap, country, oldies, it was all there. Tents were set up, and every sign pointed to people having been there for hours. Nobody was just unpacking their cooler or setting up their tent. They were hanging out, drinks in hand, talking, playing bags and beer pong and other such games. For that moment, it was the parking lot that never sleeps. 

Even though I knew what to expect, I was still a little bit in awe. Kaci’s eyes might as well have been bulging out of her head.

That day ended well. In what was one of the most memorable games in the series, Iowa State and Iowa fought to three overtimes. In the second overtime, Iowa faced a third-and-long down by seven points. It was a hot day in the 80s, and at this point it had been more than 10 hours since I began tailgating. I was yelling so loud that for a few seconds the sun, heat and fatigue nearly caught up with me as I almost blacked out. Fortunately, I was able to stay upright as Iowa (unfortunately) scored a touchdown to tie it. In the third overtime Iowa State’s James White took an option pitch into the endzone to give Iowa State the walkoff win. It was the first time I ever had the opportunity to rush the field at Jack Trice Stadium in celebration of a big win. 

In 2012, I witnessed my first Iowa State win on the road. It was a game that the Cyclones seemed to be in control of all day, and yet the Hawkeyes were marching down the field trailing only 9-6 with less than two minutes remaining. Iowa’s James Vandenberg threw a pass on first-and-ten from Iowa State’s thirty-two-yard-line. Iowa State linebacker Jake Knott read the play, tipped the ball into the air, and I temporarily forgot I was surrounded by Hawkeye fans as I jumped and yelled as Knott somehow came down with the football that he tipped to himself to seal the Cyclone win.

Back in Kinnick Stadium in 2014, an 0-2 Cyclone team hung in the game and gave themselves a chance to win late. Quarterback Sam Richardson led Iowa State on a 4-plus-minute drive to set up Cole Netten’s game-winning field goal. The Iowa fans around me were almost deathly quiet. I was afraid to show too much emotion on the outside, but inside I was screaming at the top of my lungs. Walking out of the stadium, it was eerie. Chris and I walked in near silence, hyper-aware that we were wearing Cyclone shirts in a group of mostly Hawkeye fans. We saw a friend from across the crowd, another Cyclone fan. We waved at him and I gave a little “woo.” The softest little cheer I’d ever given. I got the impression that I was one stray comment away from getting yelled at, cursed at, having beer thrown at me or worse.

That was the last time we beat Iowa. Now seven long years ago.

Before the 2016 game at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, I walked around the tailgate lots near the stadium. Iowa State had just lost to UNI in coach Matt Campbell’s very first game. Iowa was coming off a historic season and had high aspirations for a repeat performance. Walking around the lots, I couldn’t help but feel the irrelevance of my Cyclones. Once the game started, it wasn’t much different. Iowa ran Iowa State out of the game 42-3. My now-wife Paige and I made the decision to stay in Iowa City in a camper my brother and cousin, both Hawkeye fans, rented. After the game, as I figuratively licked my wounds, I tried my hardest not to talk about the game, or the fact that my team’s new coach had just lost by thirty-nine points to its biggest rival. Yes, I’ll admit it now, that evening I seriously questioned whether Campbell was the right coach for Iowa State, as my Hawkeye family members teased me about the outcome.

It reminded me of so many years being an Iowa State fan and feeling the sting of knowing my team didn’t belong on the same field as Iowa, or most of the rest of the Big 12 teams. The pockets of success since 1998 were interspersed with pockets of great struggle — two-and-three-win seasons, blowouts that were over by halftime. Even though I had mostly been an Iowa State fan post-1998, post-fifteen-game losing streak to Iowa, I still understood the stigma of fandom that developed in the 80’s and 90’s when Iowa would win by scores like 51-10, 57-3 and 63-20. I still felt the condescension of Hawkeye fans on message boards, social media, and sometimes at family gatherings. The belief that despite some success, Iowa State football wasn’t really that much better in the mid-2010’s than it was in the mid-1990’s. 

While I was marinating in this spiral of football depression, legend has it that the culture was changing within the Iowa State football program in those very moments. Campbell, as the story goes, challenged his team that evening. Do we want to accept this type of performance? Do we want to have a culture where we believe we deserve to lose? Or do we want to change? 

It was a turning point in the modern era of Cyclone football.

What has followed are four straight bowl games since 2017, each progressively better than the prior in prestige. Top ten wins. Competing for conference championships. Having a team worthy of writing a book about.

But not yet a team that has beaten Iowa.

They’ve been tantalizingly close.

In 2017, Iowa had just tied the score in the fourth quarter after trailing by 10 points. The Cyclones got the ball back to go on a potential go-ahead drive. After the first down play, ISU running back David Montgomery was tackled as he was running out of bounds. Somewhere down on the field, I saw someone on the ISU sideline calling for a late hit. I don’t know if it was a coach, player, manager, trainer or fan. All I know is it prompted me to stand up and mimic the motion of the referee throwing a flag as I yelled “COME ON!” Whether it was actually a late hit, I have no idea. In that moment I was in the zone, yelling for my team.

A few rows behind me, I heard a fan yell “calm down!” I made a couple assumptions, neither of which I know was actually true. One: This was a Hawkeye fan. Two: This fan was yelling at me. 

Luckily, I have become a bit more in control of my emotions since that 1999 game (“Not on our field!”). I stopped myself from turning around and looking for the fan who just yelled in my direction. I stopped myself from saying anything. 

The next play, Hakeem Butler caught a long pass and broke free from the Iowa defenders for a seventy-four-yard touchdown. As the ball landed in his hands the crowd gave a deafening cheer. It was pandemonium as Butler ran untouched into the endzone. In that moment, with fifty-thousand-plus ISU fans cheering at the top of their lungs, I let out my frustration. “YOU CALM DOWN!” I yelled, fully aware that not even the person next to me could hear me. In that moment, I was sure Iowa State was going to win. In a cruel twist of fate, Iowa scored a touchdown to bring the game to overtime, and then scored the walkoff touchdown to win 44-41.At this point, I was remarkably calm. Just heartbroken.

The 2019 game was more of the same. College Gameday made its first visit to Ames. We waited in two hours of traffic starting at 6 a.m. just to park. The game, which began at 3 p.m. was weather-delayed twice. Iowa State took a 7-3 lead with 5:44 left in the first quarter, and held a lead until Iowa finally grabbed the lead back at 15-14 with 12:10 left in the fourth. The teams traded field goals, resulting in an 18-17 lead for the Hawkeyes, a lead which looked comfortable enough when they got the ball back with two minutes left. The Iowa State defense forced the stop it needed, and Iowa had to punt with 1:37 left. Iowa State was going to have one more shot to go down and win the game… until two Iowa State players ran into each other as one of them was trying to field the punt. The result was a fumble, recovered by Iowa, and my hands going to my head in agony. Every sign, except the final score, pointed to a game Iowa State should have won. Courtesy of Cyclone Fanatic’s Brent Blum on Twitter after the game: “In (the) last 10 years in College Football, teams that gained 7.7 yards per play or more and allowed 4.3 yards per play or less were 498-2. Iowa State was one of those two losses on Saturday.”

Ouch.

After the game, there were altercations between Iowa State fans and University of Iowa marching band members. Your perspective on who was in the right or wrong probably depends on which team you support, but it was another reminder: Sometimes rivals just don’t like each other.

But I still think we need each other.

For me personally, I still follow the Hawkeyes through the eyes of my brother, who has had season tickets at Kinnick Stadium since 2004. For my entire adult life, we have both filled up our fall Saturdays by cheering on our teams. The rivalry is an integral part of my life. The first thing we talk about whenever we see each other in the fall is Iowa and Iowa State football. We text each other to begin every gameday either team has.

I can’t get away from the rivalry. So many Cyclone fans have similar stories. Spouses, siblings, extended family members, close friends and coworkers on opposite sides of the rivalry, forced to interact in everyday life.

This year, it’s unquestionably the biggest game between the two teams, and I would make a strong argument that it is one of the top five most meaningful games in Iowa State football history.

The game matters in an entirely different context than it ever has before. I’m reminded of another book/movie reference from the “Harry Potter” series, when Harry hears the prophet on his relationship with Lord Voldemort. “Neither can live while the other survives.” Both teams are in the top ten in the country. Both are true playoff contenders. In the context of this season, neither team’s playoff hopes can live while the other team’s playoff hopes survive. The winner Saturday can keep dreaming. The loser, while not eliminated, will have an uphill battle. This game may no longer define our season as a success, but a loss would go a long way toward preventing us from having the success we desire.

ESPN College Gameday will be there. The spotlight of the country will be on Ames. It’s the kind of opportunity Cyclone fans could barely have imagined 25 years ago. It’s the kind of day I dreamt about during the darkest days of the spring of 2020.

The meaning goes even deeper than that.

This is a rivalry game. It’s not the Big 12 Championship game, it’s not the Fiesta Bowl. It IS the type of rivalry that made me a college football fan in the first place. The kind of rivalry that makes this sport so special. Whatever happens the rest of this season, this game will live in our memories forever. The conversation I have heard so much this offseason goes something like this. “We have to beat Iowa this year. We just have to beat Iowa this year.” For as much success as the Cyclones have had, we still don’t have the all-important bragging rights over our rival. That still matters.

Coach Campbell likes to say his team is trying to become the best version of themselves. I believe the best version of this Cyclone football team is better than the best version of this Hawkeye football team.

In the same way I’m now a grown adult and on equal footing with my big brother, Iowa State is not the kid brother anymore in this relationship. I don’t need this game to prove that. But this game means more than it ever has before.

We just have to beat Iowa this year.