This is a plug for a page I’ve had around but, since it doesn’t fit in the highway-related stuff, just kind of floats. I set up a sortable HTML table of Iowa State football’s record both against teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 and as a team ranked in the Associated Press Top 25. It now goes through the end of the 2019 season.
A couple notes with the update:
- Wins against Oklahoma State and West Virginia in 2018 made for the second time in ISU history that the Cyclones defeated ranked teams in consecutive weeks.
- Similarly, 2018 tied five other years for beating two ranked opponents in a regular season. The 2017 Liberty Bowl defeat of Memphis is the only way to get to three in a year.
- College Poll Archive is an indispensable resource, and I used its data to flesh out the BCS and College Football Playoff ranking situations when ISU was in there but not AP.
- It takes talent to drop out of the poll in an idle week, but ISU figured out how to do it last year. But see the next item!
- In October 2020, ISU had some of its best poll vaults: Four spots with a home win against Texas Tech (24 to 20) and three spots (20 to 17) without playing anybody.
- The best jump is five (20 to 15) after a home win against Kansas State in 1972
- ISU rose four spots in 2002 after beating Nebraska at home and then four more in an off week. Cumulatively, that’s eight spots in two weeks, seconded only by the seven in 2020, also involving an off week.
- ISU also rose three spots (20 to 17) after a road win against Iowa in 1978.
Iowa State is 2-2 all-time against Oklahoma State when the Cowboys are ranked in the top 10. You might have heard about one of those.