Monthly Archives: September 2016
CYCLONE SOUP: Greatest players who never were
(Originally published at SB Nation’s Wide Right Natty Lite.)
In the current era, Iowa State usually cannot compete with top schools for elite football recruits, probably because those schools have a bankroll that would make Pablo Escobar’s accountant blush. Despite this handicap, Iowa State has turned out talented players and there have been a few times that the nation’s best picked Iowa State over traditional powers. While every fan can name the stars, some of those players failed to reach their potential and have faded from memory.
Let’s look at three of them and consider what might have been.
CYCLONE SOUP: Did Iowa State almost join the Big Ten?
(Originally published at SB Nation’s Wide Right Natty Lite.)
Conference expansion has been a thing from the earliest days of football and after World War II, the Big Ten dangled a vacant spot to schools throughout the Midwest. One of the names most popularly mentioned was Iowa State. To see how close they really came, let’s skip back another half-century.
During the heady days of Iowa State football, back when men were real men with wooly mustaches and spittoons, back when long fluffy hair was considered suitable head protection, back when successful games ended with just a touch of gangrene and crunchy ribs healed by whiskey and cocaine, the football team was good, actually really good.
Counting up all of the totally legitimate and not at all questionable games against teams such as Des Moines Y, Fort Dodge, Rush Medical, and Omaha Light Guards, the first sixteen years of independence through the 1907 season yielded a cumulative record of 75-38-6.
By comparison, those slackers in South Bend only won 79 in the same time period.
The Cyclones were a strong bunch of independents who didn’t need no man or conference, but expansion came dit-dah-ditting over the telegraph wire anyway.