This weekend, for only the second time in the Big 12 era, Iowa State is in a position it used to be in quite often — the warmup act for the Oklahoma Sooners the weekend before their game against Texas.
It may not have been an official secret bylaw in the Big Eight, but Oklahoma’s season schedules made Iowa State the first conference opponent a disproportionate amount of time. Remember, this was before Oklahoma and Texas were together in the Big 12.
Before 1974, OU played a conference team eight times the weekend before Texas; ISU accounted for three of those. (Oklahoma State was not a conference opponent for most of this time.) Usually, though, in a schedule that started the weekend after Labor Day, OU played all non-conference teams including Texas before the Big Six/Seven/Eight teams.
Then from 1974 (shortly after the emergence of the 11-game schedule) to 1995 (the end of the Big Eight), ISU was both OU’s first conference opponent and the opponent before Texas 10 of 21 times. Five other years, OU’s conference opener and pre-Texas game was Kansas State in the “Futility U” era.
When Big 12 play began, and the North teams only played OU twice every four years, its pre-Texas opponents were more varied. Three of the first five Big 12 seasons, OU played Kansas, but that included the John Blake era and KU managed to win in both Lawrence and Norman.
It’s Oklahoma week, and as such, here’s the link to my compilation of just how thoroughly non-competitive ISU has been in this series. Because of Kentucky’s late-fourth-quarter collapse against Florida this year, ISU-OU remains the sixth-longest active overall winless streak between teams in the same conference.