Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Two hundred and ninety.

It was 290 days after Iowa State’s last win over Oklahoma in football that Tim Berners-Lee published the first website. That is to say, the last time ISU beat OU, the World Wide Web did not exist.

(And the second-to-last time ISU beat OU, television was barely leaving infancy.)

The 80th incarnation of this series is tonight.

Other statistic of dubious significance, if I’ve done this right: The Kansas-Texas game today is the first between two teams previously defeated by Iowa State in that season since Baylor-Nebraska on Halloween 2009.

UPDATE: University of Iowa graduate and former Hayden Fry assistant Bob Stoops quite enjoys beating Iowa State like a rented mule, doesn’t he?

What better way to come off an awesome, fun victory than to go against an opponent not interested in taking any prisoners? Just like in 2011, the Cyclones are going from a winning high into the meat grinder at Norman. What’s more, the Sooners just saw their season’s single loss get devalued substantially. (They lost to a team that was shut out by Iowa State! We can’t let them into the playoff! Put in the team that lost to a team that lost to Memphis!)

That means it’s time for the annual update to my long piece about Iowa State’s historical futility against Oklahoma. It has been 25 years, and 16 games, since the last win.

With a 24-0 SHUTOUT of the Longhorns, ISU has beaten Texas in Big 12 play more than Nebraska has. ISU also has a better winning percentage than Nebraska against Texas since 1996, and is the first unranked team to shut out Texas since 1961.

That is all.

…

Wait.

(prolonged fit of schadenfreudelicious giggling)

Better.

Texas plays at Iowa State tomorrow night, and the Cyclones have revenge for 2013 on their minds. It is the latest date in the calendar that the Longhorns have played in Ames, and as with Oct. 30, 1999, it took a late Labor Day for that to happen.

Of the 35 games played in Ames on Nov. 1 or later in the Big 12 era, teams from Texas have been involved in two. They are TCU on Nov. 9, 2013, and Texas Tech on Nov. 22, 2014. Both were narrow ISU losses. For comparison, in that span, Oklahoma has been to Ames in November three times and Kansas five — including the coldest game in ISU football history.

It is rare to the point of almost nonexistent that Iowa State is given the opportunity to use November weather as an intangible factor against any team from Texas. That said, there is a batch of caveats to that statement:

• The Big 12 South teams cycled in two of every four years, meaning only one home game in that span.*
• Until very recently, ISU’s last game was the Saturday before Thanksgiving, so in many years there would only be three dates in November to work with.
• After a shuffling of the Big Eight schedule in 1991, Colorado was almost always one of ISU’s last three games — of the last 20 ISU-CU games, only three weren’t played in November. ISU only won one game in Boulder after 1982 — 2000 — and I would like to think the calendar had at least some role in that, both in lateness of season and weather conditions.
• Now, in the new-look Big 12, West Virginia is pegged as ISU’s post-Thanksgiving game, so the Mountaineers have one less chance to use their cold-weather location to their advantage against Texas teams, too.

I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy by our conference overlords** to shelter the southernmost teams from the November winds of the Northern Plains, but I guess I’m not not saying it, either.

*Texas and Oklahoma cycled on and off together, and it shows in the records. Of eight bowl seasons, only three (2002, 2011, and 2012) happened when the Longhorns and Sooners were on the schedule.

**Exactly who I’m referring to there is left as an exercise for the reader.