Geoffrey H Wood

 Last night the Minnesota Vikings lost the NFC championship in overtime to the New Orleans Saints. Thus end what has been a more enjoyable season that many of us Vikes fans could have imagined back in August.

The loss is certainly disappointing and it personally ranks in between the 1998 NFC championship (played in January 1999) loss and the 2000 NFC championship loss. The 1998 loss will live in infamy amongst fans, as the 15-1 team that both set scoring records and was flawless from the kicking perspective all season long(1) until a missed 38 yarder left the Vikings on the low side of the 30-27 final score. It was so bad that it made it's way into a subplot on the CBS Show "How I Met Your Mother" in 2008 (see image below). The 2000 game was a debacle with a less talented Vikings team losing 41-0 on the road at the New York Giants, which was embarrassing but not gut wrenching like the 1998 and 2009 losses.


Brett Favre
The big story line for the Vikes this year was obviously Brett Favre, the hero of the rival Packers who upset them last year when he tried to become a Viking but instead wound up a Jet and infuriated them this year when he did become a Viking (and was damn good at it, perhaps having his best season ever).

As a fan, I wasn’t sold on Favre at first. I had trouble getting excited to root for a guy that I always hated as a Packer(2) and Favre was one guy in particular that I disliked for the attention that he received from the commentators and media. Having no other choice (he is our quarterback, after all) I finally bought in the San Francisco game in Week 3 where, for the first time as a Viking, he lead one of his famous come-from-behind 2 minute drives ending with a touchdown to a receiver that no one even knew was on the roster(3).

Loss to Saints
As I mentioned before, the overtime 31-28 loss to the Saints last night was gut-wrenching. The Saints had been the number one team in the NFC all season long and the sports prognosticators that I listen to(4) gave the Vikings no chance. The venue, the Louisiana Superdome, was supposedly the toughest place to play and the Vikes had not looked good on the road in hostile atmospheres outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

However, the Vikes looked pretty darn good. I’m a homer but it certainly felt like the Vikings outplayed the Saints – only they kept turning the ball over which was ultimately the deciding factor. In fact, they turned it over 5 times! And the Saints gameplan was obviously to take Favre out (which they almost did) which was legal but felt dirty. The Saints racked up 3 unsportsmanlike penalties and a few others that looked like they should have been called.

Many people will blame Favre for this loss, who had two interceptions including one with 15 seconds to play while the Vikes were in position for a long (very long) field goal to win the game.

Personally, I have trouble with that thinking, I’m more frustrated with Pro-Bowl running back Adrian Peterson who has fumbled all year long and did so when the Vikes were in a position to score just before half.

I’m not exactly sure why I don’t blame Favre for last night’s loss. It could be that after this weekend I’m emotionally numb on the sports front(5 ) or more likely it’s the fact that the gritty, old man known for his Wrangler jeans and inability to make a decision has actually won me over. I knew that for all the good that came with Favre, so came the bad and that terribly inopportune pick was just part of the bad and we need to game plan around it (we did not) or to put it another way: live by the Favre, die by the Favre.

(1)Vikes kicker Gary Anderson converted all 35 of his field goal attempts and all 59 of his extra point attempts becoming the first kicker in NFL history with a 100% conversion rate in a season. (2) And vice versa, when Vikings that I love, such as Randy Moss, go to other teams I still want them to do well – even when I hate their team, like I do the Patriots. (3) Greg Lewis, a free agent signed a few weeks earlier and was active in his first game. (4)Bill Simmons, ESPN’s Sports Guy & his ilk (5)I sat through Cyclones loss to Kansas on Saturday which ended with that stupid Rock-Chalk chant reverberating inside our gym.

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.

So, yesterday was the Super Bowl. It featured two teams I don't care a whole lot about and 90-some commercials sold at extremely high rates(1).

One commercial that I enjoyed was the following from CareerBuilder.com:

While not a "legendary" ad, I did find it amusing.

I also found it interesting for a few reasons. First of all, in an economy where the news is announcing massive layoffs all across the country each day, CareerBuilder focuses on people that have jobs and want to change them. Second, they followed up the Super Bowl ad with an integrated advertisement (or "gift") in Facebook.

Facebook gifts are icons that can be given from one user to another. A new one is featured each day and today (the day after the Super Bowl spot ran) is "the creepy coworker" from the television spot. The gift then stays associated with the recievers profile for the foreseeable future. Careerbuilder isn't the first sponsored "gift" in Facebook but it's the first time that I've seen it tied into so closely into a larger campaign.

I believe my MBA Marketing Prof would call this an example of a tactic from an integrated marketing communications strategy featuring both the biggest TV venue of the year and the leading social media platform.

It'll be interesting to see if it works out for them.

(1)It has been pointed out by ScottHendo that many of these spots were actually sold by NBC to NBC so that may have inflated the rates/demand abit.

It doesn’t take long on the interwebs to get a nickname and it took I-State’s new head coach Paul Rhoads all of one weekend to get his from CycloneReport.com: CPR (Coach Paul Rhoads). That’s right, we have a new head coach. Almost exactly one week after Gene Chizik (whose nickname to the CycloneReport.com community is now The-Coach Who-Must-Not-Be-Named) stole away to Auburn, AL in the middle of the night, I-State Athletics Director Jamie Pollard named Auburn Defensive Coordinator Paul Rhoads as the new top man in our program.

Just saw this Sportscenter ad the other day and found it amusing - if Ragnar could've found a way to keep the ball in Adrian's hands and we'd be in the playoffs.