September 17, 2016 (projected): An angry TCU team, coming off a double-overtime loss to Arkansas, took out its frustrations on the hapless Iowa State Cyclones to start Big 12 play…
This week’s Iowa State game at TCU means an early start to Big 12 play. ISU has played TCU twice in September before, in 1995 and 1998 as non-conference games (both losses). This year, the early date is for Big 12 TV scheduling purposes.
In the Big Eight era and the 11-game schedule, Iowa State never started conference play before Oct. 1, and didn’t even start the season until the second Saturday in September through the mid-1980s. After that, the number of conference games played before Sept. 23 can be counted on one hand:
- Aug. 30, 1997 — loss to Oklahoma State
- Aug. 31, 2002* — win over Kansas
- Sept. 18, 2010 — loss to Kansas State at Arrowhead Stadium
- Sept. 6, 2014 — loss to Kansas State. This was originally supposed to be the Toledo game but for TV purposes, the K-State and Toledo dates were swapped and ISU hosted Toledo for Homecoming.
*The 2002 schedule is especially weird. ISU played 14 games that season, with the Eddie Robinson Classic, a special allowance game against UConn (which was transitioning to D-IA and beat ISU), and the Humanitarian Bowl. The fifth game of the 2002 season was Sept. 21.
Personally, I’m not opposed to starting the season with a conference game as some SEC teams do — say what you will about Cupcake Saturday in November, but it serves its purpose. Then again, ISU’s alleged cupcakes give us indigestion anyway.