From this blog post in 2018, emphasis added:
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. … Frankly, it’s the most concrete evidence yet that God set SimUniverse on “haywire” mode. [Burn the witch! — Ed.]
Now, with their first win in Ames against Oklahoma since 1960 and first win against Oklahoma in Jack Trice Stadium, the Cyclones are one game away from their first ever outright conference championship in the history of American football. (In case you were unclear on the stakes.)
All they have to do is… beat Oklahoma. Again. For the fourth time since John Glenn originally went into space and also the third time in the current presidential term. Oklahoma has foiled good Iowa State teams from having nice things in the past, both directly and indirectly, covered elsewhere.
Remember, the Big 12 Championship Game exists because the Powers That Be said 12 games wasn’t enough to make the playoff, and how dare a have-not team take the seat reserved for a TV magnet like Ohio State. (OK, that last part was only implied.)
In 2020, when the number of games each team has played is a variable, ad hoc rules were changed midseason to get a 5-regular-season-win team into the playoff. That team? Ohio State, of course, which won both fewer conference games and fewer games overall than Iowa State this year.
In a way, faceplanting against ULaLa in Game 1 lessens the blow. Otherwise, one might look at the landscape and decide “Iowa State is not allowed to have nice things” is the only ironclad law there is.