At the end of 2016, my decision looked obvious: Schedule the vacation to run over the first weekend of October 2017. There will be no reason to watch football that Saturday, because Iowa State is playing at Oklahoma, and Bob Stoops’ Sooners will grind the Cyclones into a fine powder. It wasn’t until later that Stoops decided he didn’t want to play anymore.
So what happens? The Cyclones upend the world order with a 38-31 win en route to their second-best season in my lifetime, becoming the only team in the nation to beat Oklahoma in the 2017 regular season, and earning the first of two road wins over ranked opponents that year. (Which, ahem, is two more than Michigan has in a decade.) Frankly, it’s the most concrete evidence yet that God set SimUniverse on “haywire” mode.
Now, after some conference machinations, Iowa State and Oklahoma will play in September for only the second time ever (1966). And, after some machinations by Mother Nature, it will be only ISU’s second game of the season. As of this writing, ISU is judged to have the toughest schedule in the country.
But! While last year’s shocker has caused some rewriting of my meditation on the nature of suffering, not all is cleansed. Iowa State still hasn’t beaten Oklahoma at Jack Trice Stadium. Ever. Iowa State hasn’t beaten Oklahoma at home since 1960. The Sooners, again/still a top-10 team, might have a score to settle.
Through the 2025 season, Iowa will play Ohio State four times. Iowa State will play Oklahoma twice as many. If ISU managed to beat Oklahoma seven out of every eight years for the rest of the century … OU would still lead the series in the year 2100.