Double

 Cyclone fans enjoyed a remarkable pair of nights in Hilton. Given how many painful losses we have witnesses to the Goblas, it was fun to hand down a pair of solid wins. 

For the men to hammer the Goblas the way the did was fantastic, especially with Hilton at full roar. If any of the current players didn’t understand the potential of the building at its best, they do now. And the fan base will be returning each night to help carry the team across the finish. 

It’s good to be relevant again. Enjoy the ride.

Leverage

 It seems that each of the last four seasons have ended with rumors of Campbell's imminent departure. But given the current landscape, this might be the year it happens.

Several brand name programs- programs that have won national titles and could win more- are without a coach. Several of the assumed candidates have been locked up by their current schools with massive 10-year contracts. The pool of candidates who would please a fan base is suddenly small.

Coach Campbell may suddenly be the most attractive 'available' candidate.

CMC seems to be wired differently from most coaches, and doesn't come across as a ladder climber. But he also climbed one rung of the ladder to leave Toledo for Iowa State. Why would he not climb another?

He mentioned in an interview a few years ago that he had given "Stillness is the Key" to his staff to read one summer, which is an interesting choice of books. Much of the book harps on being in the moment, focusing at the task at hand, not looking ahead, concepts that fit into his coaching philosophy and you hear repeated by his players.

But a big section of the middle of the book talks about the folly of pursuing riches and fame, as both are fleeting and fail to satisfy. The moment you finish climbing one mountain your brain turns to the next challenge. 

It would be odd to embrace the part of the book that helps one be successful but ignore another part that warns of pursuing success in the hopes of finding happiness.

Perhaps the brand name jobs are becoming less of a goal for coaches. Each coach who signed on with their second or third tier school may have realized that they can have a good life at a place without "Championship or Bust" aspirations. Is $8 million a year worth it if you are being hung in effigy after a disappointing loss in year two? 

Campbell can drive a hard bargain if he wants to try and win a title. ADs who are desperate to appease their fan base will throw unimaginable riches at him this week. CMC may also use the moment to earn another pay raise for the staff, most of whom have coached for him for a decade. 

We will learn a lot about Campbell's priorities in the next few weeks.

Advantage

It's good to see our Cyclones exploit an advantage.

Every long run against TCU came on a cutback on a stretch play- three times to the left, and once to the right. Whether that tendency was noticed on tape of discovered in game, kudos for going to it again and again.

Sometimes if feels that offensive coordinators are trying to win a prize for cleverness from the Offensive Coordinator's Association rather than scoring points and winning games. Example- eight running plays get you First and Goal, so surprise the defense with three pass plays! Dumb. Keep using what's working.

Most turnarounds at football programs involve a core of recruits who dramatically raise the team's performance through ability or execution or both. The group that Campbell and Co. brought in were exceptional, and have claimed big sections of the record book as their own.

Now comes the hard part- finding players who can maintain the culture and continue to raise the bar.

Turnaround

Seven new players and a 6-0 start, playing tough defense and running an offense that uses each player's strengths. This team has learned a lot in only six weeks of practice.

The portion of the fan base that was grumpy at Jamie "hiring one of his buddies" is noticeably quiet.

While we don't expect more than 6 wins in the B12 this year, it will be fun to watch, knowing the Cyclones can win on any night that enough threes find the bottom of the net.

Carry on, fellas.

Good but not Great

 Welcome to the Good but not Great era of Cyclone Football.

As it becomes more clear that the 2020 season was an outlier, Cyclone fans need to come to grips with the fact that while the Campbell regime has improved the baseline for the football program, they are now merely above average in the Big 12. 

Compared to the previous 40 years of football, it's a giant improvement. But the gap between consistent winning and Consistently Great is another large step, one that may be harder than it appears.

We all need to enjoy the feeling that Iowa State could win each week, and celebrate every victory that does appear.

You never know when the ride will come to an end.

Shattered

 The Cyclone football program is broken in both the first half of seasons and first half of games.

Their September stumbles are well documented, and are a long term project.

Opponents have realized that the defensive scheme improves in the second half, so any hay that is going to be made needs to be in the barn at halftime. Teams with gumption and grit are burying the defense in the first half of late.

Football experts will have to break down if Iowa State isn't executing early or if teams are breaking out new material at the start of games, but the results of late have been sub-par, especially for a program with such high hopes in August. Perhaps the rest of the league adopting the principals of the the Cyclone defense has removed the exoticness of the scheme. 

2020 being an outlier looms larger with each passing week. Rats.

Hammers

 It was exciting to watch our Cyclones avalanche the Longhorns after halftime. The option pass to Milton to put ISU up 10 was an emotional back breaker for a fragile Texas squad that is definitely unsure of itself under the new staff. 

The 27-0 run in the second was a beautiful dismantling of a of a team loaded with both talent and money that doesn’t know how to properly leverage either.

While it would have been fun to make Texas endure a 25 degree day and sideways snow, (Nebraska 1988 comes to mind)  the mild day allowed Cyclone fans to be at a full lather when it mattered. Fun times.

Margins

 Against OSU, odd officials calls ended up even, or at least were in situations that Iowa State was able to overcome. Against WVU, no such luck.

Given Iowa State's propensity to play close games, they are more susceptible to losing or winning based on one call. Unless the program is able find a way to increase its margin in games, we will all have to get used to more nail biters and the occasional shaft job.

Not that Cyclone fans have ever watched their team be beaten by the refs.

Front seat

The Cyclones are playing like they realize that they have little margin for error in their quest for a return to the B12 Championship game.

Finding a way to lose in Waco limits the paths to Arlington. One path is winning the road games that don't involve Norman, and last week's hit job in Manhattan should make one optimistic that they can also win in Morgantown and Lubbock. The remainder of the path is downing everyone who come to Ames. KU offered little resistance, but Oklahoma State was more than able to put up a fight. Iowa State is fortunate to have that game in the win column.

The short version is that Iowa State needs to win and Baylor needs to lose. Half of that equation is in Iowa State's hands. They may not be in the driver's seat, but they have squeezed into the front.

Steady

 Coming into the game with Kansas State, we knew three things about the Cyclones:

-They could avoid losing to an FCS team

-They could blow out teams in the bottom 10% of FBS

-They could find ways to lose against ranked teams.

Kansas State doesn't fit any of the above categories. They have the talent to be bowl eligible, but have weaknesses that may keep them from getting there. Would ISU find a way to win, or would they muddle along and try to win on the last possession?

The results were the reverse, as the Cyclones put the game away early, and prevented KSU from making it a game in the second half. That was enjoyable.

Oklahoma State will be a much stiffer test, and have been Kryptomite to Iowa State's October magic. But the performance in Manhattan makes a win against the Cowboys plausible.

Habits

An offense which often dramatically out gains their opponent, yet has a habit of kicking field goals in the red zone at a higher rate than the rest of college football.

A defense that is nails in the second half has a habit of giving up touchdowns on the opponent’s first two or three possessions, forcing the team to play from behind all day.

Special teams has a habit of being sub-optimal in general and frequently being the difference between a win and a loss in a bad way.

The staff has a habit of producing lackluster Septembers, which limits the upside of the team and demoralizes the fan base. 

You are a collection of your habits.

Efficiency

The starting offense had 8 trips into the UNLV red zone in 8 possessions and came away with 38 points. That was an improvement over the first two weeks when the offense found a combined 33 points on 8 trips.

So red zone performance isn't the bugaboo it was at times last season- the problem appears to be a lack of red zone trips. 

UNLV will probably be the weakest defense the team will face this year, so the offense will need to be very efficient at converting red aone trips, or discover some explosive play ability.

It was nice to overmatch a team early and put a game out of reach before halftime. Bravo

Outliers

Considering the offensive struggle of the 2021 team, perhaps we should contemplate that the 2020 team was an outlier.

The Cyclones got their best performances when it mattered, avoided major injuries, and played some teams when they were having COVID-19 issues. Human nature is to assume the current situation will remain constant, and change will happen at a steady pace and in the current trajectory.

It's hard to see the outlier in the moment- you can only spot it in hindsight. Would a 7-5 or 8-4 finish make 2021 a dissapointment? Yes. But it would also emphasize how special the 2020 season was.

It was easy to drink the Kool-Aid in the offseason with everyone coming back. But past performance is no guarantee of future returns. So far the offense has returned little.

Consistency

Perhaps we all need to make peace with the Cyclones being lousy in September as long as CMC is in charge.

The Russian judge hates it, but a win is a win.

Run the table, boys

For the first time since the leather helmet was standard, the unthinkable is a least plausible: a perfect Cyclone football season, a conference football title, and more.

The staff at CSJ, for one season, are taking off the nut cup and hoping that things go our way like they never have before. Our prediction:

Iowa State goes undefeated, 12-0 in the regular season, and wins the Big 12 title game.

But-

They don't get a shot at the title.

We witness a weird season in the Big 12. Iowa State and TCU play for the Championship, while Oklahoma and Oklahoma State can only manage 9-3 overall. Texas stumbles to 4-8. (Iowa underachieves at 6-6 or 7-5) The national narrative dissolves into "The Big 12 isn't good this year." ISU lacks a Top 10 win and earns only 3 Top 25 wins and must settle for a nice, yet weirdly underwhelming New Year's Day bowl game. 

The Cyclones finish at 14-0, but the season is unsatisfying, a disappointment for reasons beyond our control.

The ride will still be thrilling. Buckle up.

Fun Ball League

 The following isn't going to happen, but it's an idea I've tossed around with friends at tailgates.

The new Irate 8 invite Memphis and Tulane into the league to return to a 10-team scenario. Everyone plays everyone else in football each year, home-home in basketball. Tournament still lives in Kansas City.

Why those schools? Both Memphis and New Orleans know how to show visitors a good time. Memphis is driveable for almost the entire fan base of the league. NOLA is a short flight from Iowa and Kansas, driveable from most of Texas and OK.

The CSJ staff would make a road trip to one of those cities every-dang-year if we could roll a football or basketball game into the package.

Merely a pipe dream, but a fun one to joke about.

Upside

 

The CSJ staff is torn on how to approach the 2021 season.

On one hand, Cyclone Football stands at the border of Undiscovered Country, a level of national respect that few expected Iowa State would ever see. An Over/Under win total of 9.5 was unimaginable a few years ago. ISU tossed around as a possible Playoff team, which means a puncher's chance at a Natty. Insane stuff for a fan base that puts the Suffering in Long-Suffering.

On the other hand, the potential for an epic prat fall on the national stage will crank the anxiety of many a Cyclone fan. There have been other claims of arrival at the Big Time, only to crash in the moment. Anyone fearing the drop of the other shoe would be forgiven.

But given that we have never been to this place as a fan base, enjoying the ride is the best path to take. Wearing your nut cup all summer will make it difficult to enjoy the peaks, as clouds of doubt will always shadow the moment. Breathe the anticipation deeply, as it will fuel the celebration if the impossible arrives. 

And if the unthinkable happens, focus on the journey we have made as a community, rather than any perceived fall.  

Decisive

 Given the rapid movement and high profile openings in college basketball coaching jobs, Pollard looks smart for having a plan and acting on it early. While Coach Otz probably wasn't on the radar of a lot of AD's, he's not an unknown commodity. Someone would have come calling if Pollard had lingered.

Here's hoping things shake out well for Ames.

Courage

 The cake that was the basketball season was baked in November, and all we fans could do was watch and wait to learn if it would be lousy or terrible. Terrible it was.

There were some games where I was unsure of what the game plan was on offense or defense, but for many others you could see the players still trying to run their stuff and make something happen. It would have been easy to pack it in mentally after 10 games, but this bunch kept plugging away. They just couldn't figure out how to win a game down the stretch. Good teams find a way, bad teams don't.

It's unfortunate Steve didn't find more success in Ames. It's funny how often the jerks get to keep their jobs, while the good guys have to find something else to do.

The Undiscovered Country

 Iowa State Football now stands in territory it has never before known. 

The foundation appears solid enough to expect a bit of a walk around in this new place.

Enjoy the journey, for none of us know how long we will be able to stay.