{"id":6938,"date":"2015-12-31T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T16:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=6938"},"modified":"2015-12-28T18:57:41","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T00:57:41","slug":"ten-years-ago-today-dan-mccarneys-last-bowl-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2015\/12\/ten-years-ago-today-dan-mccarneys-last-bowl-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten years ago today: Dan McCarney’s last bowl game"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nDecember 31, 2005:<\/strong>\u00a0A photo I didn’t use so long ago of a fan-made sign at the ISU-TCU Houston Bowl. Remember the chaos at the end of the Nebraska-Michigan Alamo Bowl<\/a>? Remember when instant replay in college football wasn’t a thing? Remember when Nebraska and Michigan were in different conferences? Remember when ISU and TCU were in different conferences?<\/em><\/p>\n

The 2005 season was a barrel of what-ifs for Iowa State football. If the Cyclones had won any one of the three games lost in overtime<\/a>, Dan McCarney would’ve given ISU its second eight-win regular season since Earle Bruce and the sacrificial-lamb position against Texas in the Big 12 Championship. Unlike certain other fanbases with seven-win seasons, though, ISU fans were enthusiastic about a bowl game in warm weather.<\/p>\n

I wrote a blog of sorts for the Register<\/em> on the trip, and talked about visiting the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, Dealey Plaza, Texas’ and Texas A&M’s football stadiums, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and Galveston.<\/p>\n

The Houston Bowl pitted the Cyclones against the one-loss TCU Horned Frogs, champions of the Mountain West Conference. ISU trailed much of the game and lost 27-24. The following year, McCarney was fired in a 4-8 season and ISU AD Jamie Pollard went after the defensive coordinator of an undefeated Texas team that won what turned out to be the last non-SEC national title for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

Back then, the Big 12 had 12 teams, the Pac-10 had 10, the Big Ten had 11, and we could make fun of a conference that couldn’t count.\u00a0Things were simpler back then.<\/a>\u00a0In the decade since, ISU has hired three football coaches, undergone a total logo redesign\/rebranding, gone 1-2 in bowl games, hasn’t had another seven-win regular season, and nearly got tossed into the Sarlacc pit<\/del> relegated in the college athletics universe twice. TCU is now a fellow member of the Big 12.<\/p>\n

But I’m still mostly taking the same-size pictures. The ones that aren’t blurry make the Houston Bowl trip seem like yesterday, even if it was (already) a decade ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 31, 2005:\u00a0A photo I didn’t use so long ago of a fan-made sign at the ISU-TCU Houston Bowl. Remember the chaos at the end of the Nebraska-Michigan Alamo Bowl? Remember when instant replay in college football wasn’t a thing? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6938"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6942,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6938\/revisions\/6942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}