Geoffrey H Wood

Craig Brackins images by McClanahan StudioSeason ticket holders who attend tonight's Iowa State v. Iowa basketball game in Hilton will get a copy sweet copy of a limited edition Craig Brackins poster produced by The Meyocks Group and and featuring the image above put together by McClanahan Studio of Ames.

Click here for the blog post by photographer Dan McClanahan on how he put the post together and what it was like working with Craig.

I won't be able to make the game but would really like a poster - if anyone gets a chance to grab an extra, please do and let me know.

Here's a quick post with a couple videos of the team celebrating the streak-breaking win yesterday in Lincoln. While I'm sure that Husker fans are not the least bit happy, hopefully, they look at the Cyclones behavior in Memorial Stadium as respectful.

The team celebrated briefly on the field, then sand the fight song to the visitor (Iowa State) section, then moved into the locker room.

The next video was taken by a fan at the impromptu rally that took place in Ames when the team arrived back home. You see Coach Rhoads and two players who are standing in a pickup truck inside the Bergstrom ITF (football training facility). After the behavior by Gene Chizik just about a year ago in disrespect of this program, it's players, and the fans that bought into him, it's great to see a Coach that so visibly wants to be a part of it.

Update on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 4:17PM by Geoff Wood

The top video is blowing up! It's had nearly 47,000 views on YouTube and is virally spreading around the internet, popping up in news articles and blogs around the theme: "this is why America loves college football".

It's also been slated to be featured as part of a segment on an ESPN college football show later today!

Coach Rhoads celebrates with the fans in LincolnI am 31 years old and for the first time in my lifetime, the Iowa State Cyclones beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska today October 24, 2009.

Let's hope it's the first of many.

It was not a pretty high-scoring exciting offensive showdown. Instead, it was a defensive battle that ended by the slim margin of 9-7. All that is important is that it is a win for Iowa State. That's how the record books will remember it and hopefully the details of the game will fall away with time and confusion as the passionate Cyclones take more and more wins in Lincoln (and for that matter, in Ames) in the future.

The national media story will focus on the 8 turnovers committed by Nebraska and I'm sure that many of their fans will blame themselves for the loss, giving little credit to the Cyclones for their play. Nebraska's vaunted "Blackshirt" obviously played well holding Iowa State to 9 points. However, they weren't able to force ANY turnovers on the Cyclones. Also, those Blackshirts were facing a redshirt freshman quarterback in his very first start and were not able to fluster him to the point of such mistakes. They also were facing a back up RB, as the Cyclones' league-leading rusher was also out with injury.

The Cyclone defense (never described as "vaunted") were able to do what the Blackshirts could not - force, and take advantage of, mistakes by the other team's offense.

I was reminded of the quote from former "Voice of the Cyclones" Pete Taylor following another streak-breaking win(1) by the Cyclones over the Huskers in 2002:

"This may not be the Nebraska of old but this is the Iowa State of new"

This is the second win over Nebraska since Pete made that proclamation and despite the fact we've changed coaches twice in that time, I think it's playing out. We had a 15 year losing streak against the University of Iowa that fell in 1998. In the 12 games since the end of that streak, Iowa State has come away the victor 7 times. That series is once again the rivalry that is should be. Since the losing streak to ended to Nebraska, Iowa State has been the victor in this series 3 of 9 times. Let's hope that we can build on this win in future years to make this series that rivalry that it should be, too.

(1) First win over the Huskers since 1992 and it was at home in Ames

Photo credit: AP Photo/Nati Harnik

Players celebrating the win over BaylorThe Ames Tribune's Bobby La Gesse wrote a column this weekend entitled: "Losing culture around football team must go" which compared the Cyclones' football woes to those of baseball's Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox (pre-2007).

I just had the chance to read Bobby's column and his basic premise is that the Iowa State program (players, staff, and fans) have been hit in the gut so many times in their quest for success that they now expect failure in these situations rather than assume that things will work out for the better.

I agree.

To quote Bobby:

Learning how to win is one of the most important concepts for a team to master. I don’t think it can be overstated. And as the Cyclones have shown its fans for the last two seasons, it can be tough to acquire. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. 

The Red Sox used to be the American League version of the Cubs. But in 2004, they won the World Series, overcame the expectation of failure, and a funny thing happened: the tension around the club was lifted, and Boston went on to win another World Series in 2007. 

As much as I dislike Boston's sports (1), it's a great turnaround model for Iowa State to embrace (we have a start, already playing the controversial Sweet Caroline borrowed from the Red Sox).

Bobby's column was written prior to Iowa State's convincing victory over Baylor on Saturday (which, for the record, still featured 3 missed field goals). Wins over this program are important because the Cyclones don't want the one team that is perceived to be below them in conference prestige to leap frog them (as has happened recently with KU and Mizzou).

Equally important in this win is the fact that the fans were having a great time throughout the game. You could see it in the student section, where a weird almost snowball fight-like event spontaneously took place as the students knotted up freebie touchdown towels and threw them from section-to-section in something that seemed almost choreographed. Further, the entire stadium took part in "the wave" which went around and around Jack Trice at least five times. Personally, I had so much fun that I even enjoyed the marching band's half-time performance (marching bands are not my thing, for sure) which ended with the entire band doing Beyonce's Single Ladies dance.

So, I agree with Bobby's idea that the Cyclones need to bring a winning culture to their football program and, hopefully as they do that, we'll have more Saturday's in Jack Trice Stadium where the enjoyment of the fans is so visible.

(1) Basically because they've found a way to utilize Minnesota's pro teams as a farm system in almost every sport.

As we were packing up last week and getting ready for one last, great trip across the I-States(1) we started brainstorming a list of things we're looking forward to in Tall Corn State:

I purposefully decided to wait a bit to write this post; I wanted to get past my emotions about Cael's departure and write about it after more information came to light and as the Cyclone Wrestling team began the transistion to the post-Sanderson era.