Because getting so humiliated in front of a national, undivided, broadcast TV audience that the opponent kneeled inside the 10-yard line with 5 minutes to go wasn’t enough. Oh no. Now comes the statistical part.
Paul Rhoads has become mired in some of Iowa State football’s worst coaching records with the 2014 season. In the past two years, ISU went 5-19, with one win over Iowa, and one conference “oh-fer”. Gene Chizik also went 5-19, with one win over Iowa, and one conference “oh-fer”.
Oh-fer crying out loud.
Rhoads becomes the fifth ISU coach in a row to go winless in conference play for one season, following Chizik, 0-8, 2008; Dan McCarney, 0-8, 2003; Jim Walden, 0-7-1, 1994; and Jim Criner, 0-5-2, 1985. The three coaches before them each had at least one 1-win conference season.
(Here, one may note, is where the individual games begin to fall into the binary structure. Last year’s referee-induced heartbreaker to Texas and the 71-7 pounding from Baylor two weeks later mean the same: L.)
Iowa State reached another ignominious milestone in its 55-3 second-quarter-sad-field-goal loss to TCU: The Cyclones now have as many losses in their history as the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, the team that lost the second game in the history of college football 145 years ago. Both teams now count 621 losses (one more than by NCAA files, based on forfeits). Both teams are one game behind Kansas State, which retains its spot as the fourth-worst-ever team among power-conference members, both by total losses and all-time percentage.
Piling it on a little more, Florida State, which has only had a football team since 1947, passed ISU in NCAA-adjusted all-time wins (512) by doing just enough against Georgia Tech in the ACC championship.
Three-quarters of all power-conference teams are bowl-eligible. Iowa State is not one of them.
Now we have the worst-case scenario of the Big 12 being shut out of the College Football Playoff because of the circular firing squad*, and that will kick off another round of hand-wringing and Conferencepocalypse speculation. All the Playoff did was move the debate from “Who’s #2” to “Who’s #4”, and they call it “progress.”
*Only now the Big 12 gets screwed because there isn’t a championship game, not because there is one. Gary Patterson should’ve told TCU to tack on that extra TD…or not blow a 21-point fourth-quarter lead to Baylor. That quarter may become one of the most important in Big 12 conference history.